Bioterrorism and compulsory vaccination: Arguments for current vaccines are based on inadequate support for older vaccines

EDITOR—Jefferson discussed some of the major flaws of the study by Brachman et al with respect to policies making certain vaccines compulsory in the US military.1 2 Additional shortcomings of the study by Brachman et al have been described in fuller detail elsewhere.3^–5 For example, the often reported rate of 92.5% effectiveness for the anthrax vaccine sounds impressive but should be considered against the actual results in which 99.7% (378/379) of vaccinated workers avoided anthrax infection compared with 96.4% (399/414) of placebo workers. Thus the vaccine protected …