Second, I would hope that you could address the question of whether or not you would recommend vaccinating all of our people should the vaccines be available. I have seen the film, and I remember your dilemma as to where you put the small amount of vaccine that you have. But would we be able to produce enough, in enough time to vaccinate everybody, should the decision be made to do so? I have actually had discussions with President Bush on that subject. It is not an easy decision, because there is a small death rate, but a death rate nonetheless from vaccinating people, and if it is one in 1,000, that means that for every million people you are going to be losing, I think, 100, if my math is correct. That means that for 100 million people, it is going to be 100 X 100, which I think is 10,000.
THE DARK WINTER SCENARIO AND BIOTERRORISM
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 25, 2001
Senator Collins: 'Colonel Larsen, what is being done now in the field of genetics and what investments are being made by DOD/medical communities today toward this end?'
Larsen: "DARPA is developing a variety of therapeutic countermeasures using state-of-the-art techniques in genetic engineering. The objective of their efforts is to develop a suite of medical countermeasures against broad classes of biological pathogens (bacterial, viral, bioengineered, etc.) that share common mechanisms of pathogenesis. Some of the specific project objectives include the following:
Develop novel genomic countermeasures that target multiple biological warfare pathogens using optimized small molecule drugs to bind with high affinity to critical A-T rich DNA sequences within the pathogen genome.
*Develop a new class of small molecule antibiotics effective against multiple biological warfare agents using RNA-based drug design.*
Develop broad-spectrum small molecule inhibitors against the essential bacterial cell division protein FtsZ."
(post is archived)