The Boeing Max 737: A Vaccine Procurement Strategy
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There is a common saying in acquisition program management.
…Good, cheap, and fast, but you can only pick two.
If industry wants something built fast, it will cost more and quality will suffer. Where human safety is of primary concern, quality is the driving factor. Aviation is a perfect example. Aircraft manufacturing is expensive and slow, but the resulting product is very safe. Recent events with Boeing’s 737 Max show a clear example of accelerated production leading to a reduction in quality and loss of life.
US Department of Defense (DOD) chose fast when it came to its vaccine procurement strategy. Operation Warp Speed (OWS) quickly rewarded us with the most costly tax-payer funded program of fraud, waste, and abuse in US history, and the deadliest medical experiment on mankind in world history.
A strategy in the making.
In February 2014, the Joint Project Management Office, Medical Countermeasure Systems (JPMO MCS) released an industry-wide request for information.
How can DOD attract more companies to support its vaccine manufacturing capacity?
DOD described a standard acquisition process and a standard timeline in the request, seeking assistance that would allow for rapid contract awards and reduce US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine approval timelines.
In MCS’s own words…
The MCS preference is for unencumbered technology.
June 2013 through 2016, Army Colonel, Russell E. Coleman led the JPMO MCS.
The JPMO MCS falls under the authority of the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense (JPEO CBD). From November 2012 to 22 October 2015, Mr. Carmen J. Spencer was the JPEO CBD Executive Officer.
The JPEO MCS is a sub-office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisitions, Logistics, and Technology. From September 2012 through 30 January 2016 Mrs. Heidi Shyu held the position of Assistant Secretary, serving as the Army Acquisition Executive and the Senior Procurement Executive.Â
An Other Transaction Authority (OTA) contract was awarded to Advanced Technologies International (ATI) in April 2016 with a not to exceed value of $10 Billion. OTAs eliminate Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) from the contract in order to attract companies that would not otherwise seek business with the Government. Often seen as overly burdensome, these regulations offer procurement process safeguards. When administering an OTA contract, the Government program office and acquisition staff must use sound judgement and best business practices to ensure that ethical and legal standards are upheld where they’ve been granted considerable leeway.
One month after Mr. Spencer’s tenure at the JPEO CBD, he became the President and CEO of Analytic Services Inc. (ANSER). On 31 January 2017, ANSER announced that it purchased ATI, which includes a subordinate consortium called the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC). After leaving the Army in 2016, Russell Coleman served as the Business Development Executive for Military Health Systems at Battelle Memorial Institute until 2019. He moved on to become a member of the Executive Committee for ATI’s MCDC; Battelle Memorial Institute is a member of the MCDC consortium managed by ATI.
With the JPMO MCS and its oversight responsibilities impacting military and civilian populations, a reasonable person should be concerned. Touting rapid acquisition as the highest priority, OWS procured products injected into a majority of the population. They were neither safe nor effective. After witnessing the incestuous relationships between our public health establishment and the pharmaceutical industry, we shouldn’t be surprised by the occurrence of the same phenomenon in DOD’s biodefense community. Col. Coleman and Mr. Spencer’s departure to lucrative private sector biodefense positions raises serious ethics questions.
This is especially true since their former supervisor, Mrs. Shyu, was confirmed as the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineer on 25 July 2021. OTA contract awards over $500 Million require approval from this position and would have been reviewed in her prior capacity as the Assistant Secretary.
With failed attempts to keep vaccine injuries a secret, the Government is continuing the process of developing vaccines. Among others, a request in 2017 to the MCDC through the OTA contract was for the following vaccine development to counter bioweapons:
Development of Marburg Vaccine Prototype Against Aerosolized Marburg Virus: (Prevention sub-objective);
Development of a multiple-target single-vector Vaccine Prototype Against Aerosolized Equine Encephalitic viruses including Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus (Prevention sub-objective);
Development of a lightweight, low complexity device that diagnoses pathogenic biological weapon agents and regional infectious diseases in syndromic, multiplexed assay panels (Detection sub-objective);
Development of Sudan Ebolavirus (SUDV) Vaccine Prototype against aerosolized SUDV (Prevention sub-objective).
These requests are in response to real and perceived threats. The last round of fast tracked injections were disastrous, the injuries sustained were anything but rare, and the diminution of trust in public health was rightfully severe. Wouldn’t a different approach to tackling biological weapons of mass destruction be a better alternative?
If we continue down this path, the questions will no longer be about how we protect ourselves from these type of threats… We will be asking ourselves, are our protectors also our tormentors?
F4F volunteers are writing a number of key articles on Operation Warp Speed. Feds for Freedom is in FOIA litigation with DOD to secure the release of over 20,000 emails related to the execution of OWS by DOD. Please consider being a paid subscriber to help us cover this costly litigation.