A seven-year state of anthrax emergency declared last month has been blasted by critics as a ploy to give immunity to the makers of antibiotics and a controversial vaccine. The declaration was issued October 1 in the absence of an actual emergency or risk of attack.

“Not a single case of human anthrax has been reported in the United States this year, but the nation is now officially in a state of anthrax emergency,” wrote Brandon Keim in a Wired Science brief. “Whether it will protect public health is debatable, but it will certainly protect makers of faulty anthrax vaccines.”

The protection comes in the form of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which shields manufacturers, distributors, medical professionals, emergency program planners, and others involved in instituting anthrax countermeasures from litigation for any role they play in providing anthrax countermeasures.

“Providing liability protection to all involved in such efforts will help ensure their full participation and bolster response efforts,” according to an October 1 Health and Human Services press release announcing the PREP declaration. The majority of the release was devoted to a more widely publicized bid to have postal workers deliver antibiotics door to door in an anthrax-related public health emergency.

Some see the hushed announcement as an indication of less than savory politics and pointed to the timing of the release. A day earlier, the agency posted notice of a $404 million contract with Emergent Biosolutions to stockpile the vaccine. The company is the sole manufacturer of the vaccine named in the PREP declaration. In addition, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory group was scheduled to issue advice October 22 regarding whether first responders should routinely take the vaccine or not.

"There are people still getting ill from side effects and from the vaccine," John Michels, an attorney litigating the Pentagon's inoculation program, told Global Security Newswire. "When they expand this vaccine from the military population to a civilian population, they're going to have people who sue."

The CDC group later recommended voluntary inoculation for first responders who might be exposed in an attack, according to a subsequent Newswire report.

Correction: A news item in the October 23 issue of Disaster Research incorrectly stated U.S. Postal Service workers might soon be cleared to deliver anthrax vaccine during a public health emergency. Anthrax antibiotics were under consideration for postal delivery in an emergency.