I shouldn’t be so snarky because the story is actually really interesting. Check out this link from yesterday’s LA Times, which details the behind-the-scenes politicking which proved the coup de grace for one of the nation’s first next-generation vaccines against a category A agent: VaxGen’s rPA102 anthrax vaccine. Deft lobbying and savvy rhetoric by Emergent BioSolutions, Inc., proved insurmountable for the South San Francisco company, which not only failed to produce the nation’s first BioShield-related vaccine, but was kicked in the teeth for trying. Amongst all the great reasons for not wanting to see anthrax ever appear amongst human populations in epidemic proportions is the discomfiting imagery of the six shot series of vaccinations that will still be needed in the event of such a threat. Emergent BioSolutions, manufacturer of said scary but mostly-kind-of effective vaccine, effectively argued that VaxGen’s (substantially less onerous) product was of questionable worth, developed by novices. Ouch. I thought BioShield’s point was to get novices in the game, because BigPharma was avoiding orphan vaccines like the plague. Ha! The plague!

Oh yeah, and look at this cool picture.