1:08pm UK, Tuesday July 30, 2002

The Government has bought the wrong vaccine to protect itself from the threat of a smallpox attack by terrorists, according to a leading American scientist.

Steve Prior, of the Potomac Institute says the Lister vaccine has not been proven to work against the so-called "battle strain" virus.

SP Vaccine 2

He said the US government had selected an alternative vaccine developed by the New York City Board of Health which had proved successful against endemic smallpox in India.

Embarrass

The claim is likely to embarrass the Government, which has been criticised for awarding the vaccine contract to a company run by a Labour donor.

"I was very surprised for the Department of Health to suddenly come out and say 'we know something about the threat that nobody else knows that means we have to have Lister' was very surprising," Dr Prior told the Times.

"When you are making decisions of this magnitude, you cannot afford to make the wrong one and you certainly cannot afford to make it for the wrong reasons. I think it is indefensible."

Expert

However the Department of Health, which placed the £28m order for the vaccine, insisted that it was acting on expert medical and scientific advice.

A spokesman said that it had chosen the same vaccine as other European nations.

"The decision to purchase the Lister vaccine was based on the expert medical and scientific advice that we and the Ministry of Defence had," the spokesman added.

"As far as we are concerned it is the best we can get which is why we bought it."