Biowarfare consultant Richard Danzig urged the gov't to stockpile a type of anthrax remedy and made $3334 million
Over the last decade, former Navy Secretary Richard J. Danzig, a prominent lawyer, presidential advisor and biowarfare consultant to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, has urged the government to counter what he called a major threat to national security.
Terrorists, he warned, could easily engineer a devastating killer germ: a form of anthrax resistant to common antibiotics.
U.S. intelligence agencies have never established that any nation or terrorist group has made such a weapon, and biodefense scientists say doing so would be very difficult. Nevertheless, Danzig has energetically promoted the threat — and prodded the government to stockpile a new type of drug to defend against it.
Danzig did this while serving as a director of a biotech startup that won $334 million in federal contracts to supply just such a drug, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.
By his own account, Danzig encouraged Human Genome Sciences Inc. to develop the compound, and from 2001 through 2012 he collected more than $1 million in director's fees and other compensation from the company, records show.
The drug, raxibacumab, or raxi, was the first product the company was able to sell, and the U.S. government remains the only customer, at a cost to date of about $5,100 per dose.
A number of senior federal officials whom Danzig advised on the threat of bioterrorism and what to do about it said they were unaware of his role at Human Genome.
Dr. Philip K. Russell, a biodefense official in the George W. Bush administration who attended invitation-only seminars on bioterrorism led by Danzig, said he did not know about Danzig's tie to the biotech company until The Times asked him about it.
"Holy smoke—that was a horrible conflict of interest," said Russell, a physician and retired Army major general who helped lead the government's efforts to prepare for biological attacks.
Five other present or former biodefense officials who conferred with Danzig said they, too, had been unaware of his position with the company. Danzig, they said, made no mention of it in their presence during group discussions he led or in smaller meetings.
A seventh person, a former Bush administration official, said Danzig informed him during their first meeting that he was on Human Genome's board and that the company was developing "a treatment product for anthrax."
A Times search found seven papers Danzig had written on bioterrorism since 2001. In only one of those did he disclose his tie to Human Genome.
As an advisor to the federal government, Danzig is required to file confidential forms annually, revealing any outside affiliations but not his related compensation. Danzig said he had noted his position with the biotech firm on the forms.
Asked whether he mentioned his corporate role during contacts with government officials, Danzig replied: "If I thought any of it posed a potential conflict that might cause somebody who knew about it to discount my views, I would tell them."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-anthrax-resistant-20130519-dto,0,3192936.htmlstory
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