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Brian Vastag

JAMA. 2002;287:2639.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Washington—Last fall's anthrax attacks provided the first test of the US medical system's preparations for bioterrorism. As physicians and scientists from a host of government and academic organizations felt their way through the crisis, eventually limiting the medical damage to five deaths in 22 cases, they bungled research opportunities, said Greg Koski, MD, PhD, director of the Office for Human Research Protections, at a recent meeting.

"We in a sense squandered an opportunity to get meaningful data," Koski told a Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) advisory committee that helps guide research policy. "That's very alarming."

In particular, Koski lamented the scant data collected on the safety and efficacy of anthrax vaccine after just 2% of postal and other government workers eligible for the injections opted for them. The result, in his view, of a tangled net of arcane regulations and official hesitations, participation in research . . . [Full Text of this Article]