PALM HARBOR -- For 20 years, Alan Morris waged a lonely struggle to sell radiation-blocking pills that he felt would save lives in a nuclear disaster.

Year after year, sales slumped. Potential investors snubbed him. Government officials disagreed with him. But Morris clung to his conviction that one day people would change their minds.

"We have paid our dues during periods of times when we were laughed at," said Morris, 60, of Palm Harbor. "People said you were chasing something that will never be real."

Sept. 11 all but silenced that argument.

The threat that nuclear plants are potential terrorist targets has invigorated the debate over whether federal and state governments should stockpile antiradiation pills.

"Now it's a very robust business," Morris said. "We sell a lot of this stuff."

Morris started a company called Anbex Inc. and in 1982 began making potassium iodide pills under the brand name Iosat. Potassium iodide, also known by its chemical symbol KI, is a nonprescription drug that can reduce the risk of thyroid cancer during a nuclear disaster by blocking radioactive iodine from entering the thyroid gland.

Iosat is one of two thyroid-blocking agents approved by the Food and Drug Administration for over-the-counter use during radiation emergencies. But for two decades, that distinction hasn't been worth much.

Before Sept. 11, Morris sold tablets mainly to survivalists, nuclear plants, hospitals and some state health departments. Business picked up briefly in 1999 with the Y2K scare.

"At the time of Y2K, all the survivalists Web sites were telling people they had to buy it," Morris said. "On Jan. 2, that market went away. But a lot of people have that product now, and I bet they are glad to have it."

In February, Anbex was awarded a contract to supply up to 6-million tablets to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission so it could create stockpiles of the drug in the states that request it. The regulatory commission now is offering potassium iodide to 34 states with nuclear plants. Florida has requested about 780,000 pills.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also bought 1.7-million tablets from Anbex, sending about 700,000 of those pills to the Olympics, Morris said.

"After Sept. 11, when it became clear that nuclear power plants were very attractive targets . . . it became very apparent that the product was more useful to the general public than originally thought," Morris said.

Because Anbex is one of two companies with FDA approval to make the pills, the opportunity exists to raise prices as demand increases. But that's not going to happen, Morris said.

"I could have easily price-gouged, and we didn't," Morris said. "The reason is simple. We would rather have a lot of tablets out there than not have a lot of tablets out there because we honestly believe this is something the country should prepare for."

Anbex sold the pills to the regulatory commission for 17.8 cents per tablet, making the deal worth about $1-million. On its Web site, http://www.Anbex.com, the company sells a package of 14 130-milligram tablets for $10. That's enough to protect an adult for about 30 days.

"It's certainly a very useful supplement to the other measures that should be taken during a nuclear accident," Dr. David V. Becker, a professor of radiology and medicine at Cornell University's department of nuclear medicine in New York. "It's cheap and easy to use and nontoxic, so it's a reasonable thing to do."

Some experts have pushed for the federal government to stockpile the drug since March 28, 1979, when equipment failure and human mistakes led to a loss of coolant and partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island reactor in Middletown, Pa. It is the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history.

The cause became even more important to some after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Shifting winds blew a radioactive cloud all over Europe. The American Thyroid Association reports that about 2,000 people exposed to that radiation have developed thyroid cancer. Most had been babies or young children living in Ukraine, Belarus or Russia at the time of the accident.

According to a United Nations report, another 8,000 to 10,000 exposed people will develop thyroid cancer within the next 10 years. Poland is the only European country in the path of the radioactive cloud that seems not to have had an increase in thyroid cancer, according to the association, presumably because the government distributed KI to the population in advance.

"The American Thyroid Association has been urging stockpiling for 15 years, ever since Chernobyl," said Edie Stern, the association's director of public affairs.

Anbex, which has four full-time employees, is manufactured in New York and packaged in Michigan. Morris, who has lived in Palm Harbor for five years, is the company's president; his wife is the chairman; and his business partner Bruce Rodin of New Jersey is the vice president.

For years, sales were so low that Morris worked a second job in telemarketing to support himself. Morris declined to release what the company's yearly revenue was before Sept. 11, only to say, "It was very small. "It took a horrific event to make people decide, "Well, perhaps we ought to have this stuff on hand,' even though the data has always been there," Morris said.

Because the thyroid gland cannot distinguish between regular and radioactive iodine and can only store so much of the substance, potassium iodide works like this: When ingested, the drug floods the gland with safe iodine and blocks radioactive molecules from accumulating in the thyroid.

KI works best if used within three to four hours after exposure, according to the FDA. People with iodine sensitivity should avoid the drug.

Critics say the tablets provide a false sense of security, since potassium iodide protects against only one of the effects of a nuclear disaster. There also is the logistical problem of how to distribute the pills and how to tell people when and how many to take.

Opponents also argue that widespread distribution of the drug may lull people into thinking they did not have to evacuate, which is viewed by experts as the best defense.

Morris passionately disputes each argument.

Depending on the wind, he said, evacuation may not be an option. He points to reports that showed people living as far as 300 miles from the Chernobyl site having high rates of thyroid cancer.

"I can show you a dozen different studies that looked into what was the damage in Chernobyl," Morris said. "The evidence is overwhelming."

To those who might argue that he is just making a profit off the Sept. 11 tragedy, Morris compares himself to a manufacturer of life preservers or fire extinguishers, not to mention the fact that he has been extolling the virtues of stockpiling the drug for 20 years.

Morris started the company in the wake of the Three Mile Island emergency. At the time, he wanted to buy potassium iodide for his son but was not able to do so. He decided to start making the drug and to help ensure that anyone who wants the tablets can purchase them.

"I had a 2-year-old, and I got scared," Morris said. "Not because I was paranoid but because I thought if it happened once, it could happen again."

Even though the federal government and some states have begun to stockpile the drug, the amount that is being stored is still not enough for a nuclear emergency, Morris said.

"This is very serious stuff," Morris said. "A lot of children's lives could depend on this if it's ever needed."

Ed Quioco can be reached at (727) 445-4183 or at quioco@sptimes.com.

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