Posted on 09/29/2001 3:16:32 PM PDT by Paul Ross
Smallpox Threat Small but Worrisome
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Smallpox Threat Small but Worrisome
NewsMax.com WiresWASHINGTON -- The U.S. population is vulnerable to a terrorist attack using smallpox as a weapon but the risk of it actually happening is reduced because of the difficulty in obtaining a sample of the virus.
Friday, Sept. 28, 2001
The vulnerability stems from the eradication of the virus itself - the last case was found in Somalia in 1977 - with routine vaccinations ending in the United States 1972. Both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated are at risk, experts told United Press International, because the vaccination required periodic updates that did not occur.
The country also is at risk, these experts said, because of America's failure to upgrade and maintain its public health system and provide appropriate surveillance to quickly catch and contain any outbreak.
"The vulnerability absolutely is very high," said Michael Powers, a research associate with the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington.
"The United States is very susceptible to an outbreak of smallpox." Dr. Nils Daulaire, president and chief executive officer of the Global Health Council in Washington agreed although he said the actual risk is moderate.
"It would be low if we had big stockpiles of vaccine on hand," he said, adding that following the World Health Organization's declaration in 1980 that the deadly virus had been eradicated. "There was a sense of security. We did not need to maintain the relatively high cost to maintain a vaccine for a disease that no longer existed."
There are about 10 million doses of the vaccine in storage, but even if the United States had a huge stockpile from the 1970s, questions remain about its efficacy and whether its use would be acceptable today because of the side effects.
Daulaire said the vaccine causes a severe and sometimes fatal adverse reaction in people infected with humane immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. That would mean it could not be used for all populations.
America's vulnerability, however, is counterbalanced by the difficulty in obtaining a sample of the virus. Jonathan Tucker, whose new book, "Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox" comes out this month, said during a talk on his book that in 1976 the WHO urged the 75 laboratories around the world with stocks of the virus to destroy or transfer them to secure repositories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta or to a site in what was then the Soviet Union.
In 1983, South Africa became the last country to destroy its stock of virus, said Tucker, who also is director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington.
"It was possible that countries did not declare (their stock) for various reasons, possibly for nefarious reasons," Tucker said, adding it now is believed from three to eight countries - Iraq and North Korea often are mentioned - actually may have samples of the virus. In 1994, Russia moved its secured virus stock to a laboratory in Siberia known as Vector and Tucker said many experts who believe work was done there to develop a smallpox weapon.
Tucker said scientists believe a "viral slurry" was created at Vector and that perhaps 20 tons of a smallpox weapon, suitable for use on warheads, was maintained. He said while there is no "smoking gun" to indicate any undeclared stocks of virus, "the evidence is sufficiently compelling to make government officials concerned."
Knowing samples exist is one thing, but getting one and making it work as a weapon is another. "There are very significant technological hurdles that would have to be overcome," Tucker said, including ensuring the sample still is viable, finding a way to disseminate it -- such as in aerosol form or by having suicide terrorists infect themselves and walk through large crowds.
He noted, however, the methodical, long-term approach terrorists apparently took in the planning and execution of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"This is ominous if they apply the save methodological approach to biologics" especially if they have any help from other countries or organizations, he said.
Powers said the chance of terrorists acquiring a virus sample are low because "even those countries that support terrorist organizations have been less than willing" to provide them with the best technology and weapons. He added even if Osama bin Laden, considered by the Bush administration to be a "prime suspect" in Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington, is involved and if Iraq has a smallpox sample, there is "no great love" between bin Laden and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
"I don't think the public should be worried about it [smallpox], but I think we have been a bit behind the curve in our planning and action in this," Daulaire said. He said the United States needs a surveillance system geared toward picking up relatively common but serious diseases so that smallpox surveillance can be easily be added to it.
Powers said the U.S. health care system is not geared toward early detection of smallpox, which has a 10- to 12-day incubation period before symptoms occur.
He said more government support is needed at the state and local levels to create an infrastructure that can detect, contain and eradicate any smallpox outbreak.
Tucker said should smallpox be released into the general population, each person infected could infect 50 others - or more - before a diagnosis is made, creating waves of smallpox occurring in about two-week cycles, each wave larger than the previous.
Prior to its eradication, smallpox killed hundreds of millions of people over the ages, throughout the world. Still today, there is no effective treatment, only containment of an outbreak and vaccination.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
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Yeah...we didn't have to worry about hijacked airliners being used as "cruise missiles" until 9/11/01 either. By then it was too late. These so-called "expert" opinion makers should be silenced. The risk of actually relying on anything they say can be fatal to our civilization.
Are we seriously supposed to wait for a brand-new vaccine formulation because HIV + people might die of the old one? If you think you have HIV, don't get vaccinated. If everyone else does it will help save your life, in the event of an attack.
Bloody PC. Forget the HIV + problem for now and send non-citizen Muslim Arabs home.
Mrs VS
I am told that DOD evaluations were that the facility is essentially nuke-proof. Reducing it would require a direct invasion by ground troops--with (I am told) staggering projected casualties.
--Boris
The only solution I can offer is to boost your immune system....I suggest you research FULVIC ACID.....I know of a product that can help...if interested let me know...and yes I have a interest in the product
Nearly every pharmaceutical drug, herbal extract, health supplement, or therapeutic substance from nature, can somehow be traced to the functions and actual makeup of fulvic acid.
The DNA of every living or extinct species of organism on Earth, whether plant, animal, or microbe, has eventually become a highly refined component of fulvic acid.
The original life giving, protective, and healing components from plants (phytochemicals) do not disintegrate during natures fulvic acid production process, but become highly concentrated
And what's THIS supposed to mean???...
THE FULVIC STORY
With regard to currently marketed liquid mineral products the bottom line is not how much mineral they contain, but how much Fulvic acid they contain. Regardless of product cost, even the strongest of the so-called colloidal minerals have, at most, a few cents worth of minerals per quart. If their mineral content is truly colloidal it is of no value to plants of animals since they cannot use minerals in this form. Fulvic acid is the biological substance that changes inorganic colloidal minerals into organically complexed, soluble minerals which can be used by plants and animals. Fulvic acid is an "organic" acid produced by soil microorganisms in trace amounts in healthy soils. It is vital to all life forms and without it there would be no you. In aqueous solutions it is the most powerful natural electrolyte known. It is also the most powerful natural chelating substance known which makes it an extremely effective anti-oxidant.
SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENTATION
A causal glance at the thousands of current scientific references on Fulvic acids will reveal the vital nature of this unique substance. All food, directly or indirectly, originates in the soil. What is taken up by plants also ends up in man's food chain. That which beneficially affects healthy plants will also beneficially affect humans. Fulvic acid is responsible for carrying these organically complexed minerals into the plant, where the Fulvic remains and becomes a vital link in our food chain.
NEW GENERATION DISEASES
It is evident that the pandemic deficiency diseases now occurring in America are the direct result of intensified chemical farming which destroys indigenous soil microorganisms vital to the production of Fulvic acid. Without healthy microorganisms, we have no Fulvic acid. With organically rich, Fulvic enhanced soils, we can have as much as 1,000 times more of vital trace elements and other bio-nutrients in our foods than is found in foods grown in chemically sterile soils. It is physically impossible to eat enough of these commercially grown, nutritionally-hollow fruits and vegetables to overcome the deficiencies currently being manifested in America. It is not enough to emphasize eating adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables. Fulvic acid is the vital and indispensable link in the chain of vibrant health and longevity.
VITAMINS, MINERALS AND ENZYME
The world at large now recognizes the essential nature of vitamins and enzymes. Less understood is that vitamins and enzymes cannot be properly formed without specific, organically-complexed minerals. For instance, zinc is absolutely necessary in the formation of over 200 different enzymes. Calcium is essential in over 500 different enzymes. The billions of cells in our bodies are all capable of producing their own specific enzymes. The metabolic and biochemical systems of the body are all enzyme driven. We have tens of thousands of functional enzyme systems within the healthy human body. Whenever any of these enzyme systems are stressed or malfunction to any degree, degenerative diseases begin to occur. We cannot have vitamins and enzymes without biologically complexed minerals without Fulvic acid.
SUMMARY
As an electrolyte, Fulvic Acid is unsurpassed. It carries all the natural components necessary for balance, cellular integrity and electrical potential. When combined with other supplements, it potentizes and adds positive benefit far beyond its role as an essential electrolyte. As a natural antibiotic, it is a wide spectrum antimicrobial, antiviral and antifungal agent and enhances the effects of colloidal silver, topical silver gels and aloe skin preparations of all kinds. There is no finer treatment for burns, cuts, abrasions and skin disorders than Fulvic acid. As an antioxidant, acting alone or in conjunction with other proven ingredients, it is unrivaled in its ability as a "free-radical" scavenger. Acting at times as an acceptor, and at other times as a donor (depending upon need), Fulvic acid helps to create balance. As a complexing agent, Fulvic acid helps to create balance. As a complexing agent, Fulvic acid can chelate, detoxify and restructure otherwise toxic substances into non-toxic, useful substances for the body. It can reduce mineral compounds from a higher oxidative, unavailable state to a lower oxidative, available ferrous oxide to eliminate iron deficiencies. There is no other known biological substance that can beneficially modify so many essential biochemical, electrochemical and metabolic processes as can Fulvic acid. It is frequently referred to as "Fantastic Fulvic" and, as the late Dr. Clyde Sandgrin used to express it: "If I had to choose between that liquid mineral and electricity, electricity would have to go."
AT the present time, the United States' national stockpile of smallpox vaccine is a collection of four cardboard boxes that sit on a single pallet behind a chain-link fence inside a walk-in freezer in a warehouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River, at a facility owned by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories. The vaccine is slowly deteriorating. The Food and Drug Administration has put a hold on the smallpox vaccine, and right now no one can use it -- not even emergency personnel or key government leaders.
The vaccine is owned by the federal government and is managed by Wyeth-Ayerst, which is the company that made it, twenty-five to thirty years ago. It is stored in glass vials. The vials contain freeze-dried nuggets of live vaccinia virus. Vaccinia is a mild virus. When you are infected with it by vaccination, it causes a pustule to appear, and afterward you are immune to smallpox for some years. People who have been vaccinated have a circular scar the size of a nickel on their upper arm, left by the vaccinia-virus pustule they had in childhood after vaccination. Some adults can remember how much the pustule hurt.
People from Wyeth periodically open the boxes and send some of the vials out for testing, to see how the vaccine is doing. The vials once held fifteen million good doses, but now moisture has invaded some of them. The nuggets are normally dry and white in color, but when moisture invades they turn brown and look sticky, and the vaccine may be weakened. The vaccine was made by a traditional method: the manufacturer had a farm where calves were raised. The calves' bellies were scratched with vaccinia virus, and their bellies developed pustules. Then the calves were killed and hung up on hooks, the blood was drained out of them, and the pustules were scraped with a knife. The resulting pus was freeze-dried. The vaccine is dried calf pus. According to one virologist who examined it under a microscope, "It looks like nose snot. It's all hair and wads of crap." It was a good vaccine for its time, but the F.D.A. would never clear it for general use today except in a national emergency. Furthermore, some people have bad or fatal reactions to the vaccine. There is an antidote, but the supplies of it have turned strangely pink, and the F.D.A. has put a hold on the use of these supplies, too.
1. I've heard varying numbers of small pox vaccine still exist - 15 million was the number kicked around a few nights ago on one of the news shows. Not only is there not enough vaccine available to vaccinate our entire population (even if the amt we have is upwards of 40 million), but the vaccine that is left over is very old and therefore its efficacy is questionable.
2. Just because you may have received a smallpox vaccination as a child doesn't mean you still have a measure of protection. If the body isn't challenged periodically, (this usually is a result of updating vaccinations on a repetitive basis or on being challenged by the actual disease causing agent) the body's "anamnestic response" - its' ability to recognize and REMEMBER the pathogen and therefore mount a larger & quicker response, often decreases over time (depending on the agent and the vaccine).
3. Vaccine efficacy, and therefore the body's ability to mount a protective response, can depend on whether the vaccine is a "killed" product or a modified live one. Killed products usually require annual updates to maintain effectiveness. Modified live vaccines can also require annual repeat dosing. The modified live, or attenuated vaccines, are vaccines in which the organism is still alive & therefore better awakens, or initially stimulates, the body's immune respone. These vaccines use the real live organism but in a modified form so that it doesn't actually cause the disease in the person vaccinated. Part of that depends on how healthy a person's immune system is. That is why people with AIDS can be at risk from modified live & perhaps other "non-killed" vaccines (not to scare any HIV pos folks out there - this depends on which vaccine and pathogen we're talking about).
4. It is conceivable that terrorists have access to smallpox virus. It is conceivable that terrorists have access to all kinds of hideous pathogens, toxins, and chemically lethal substances. You cannot vaccinate against everything. Even if we could vaccinate against every known pathogen, today organisms can be modified genetically so that they are still virulent and so that our current vaccine isn't effective against this newly created form of the pathogen.
We do need to improve detection capabilities so that exposure to biohazards is minimized. We do need to better train physicians to think outside the box - not many docs think "Anthrax!" when someone presents with acute respiratory distress and high fever then seizures and death within 24-72 hours (nor should they have until now). We do need to have, and should have had prior to now, biological disaster plans for our cities AND rural areas. It is scary to think that Tom Clancy has given more thought to bio-terrorism than our city governments have. After all, he's simply a novelist (albeit a damn fine one).
I have no doubt that we could be hit w/bio or chemical terrorism. I also will be damned if I walk around with a gas mask on all the time. That is not to say that we do nothing - not at all. There is a lot we can do and must do to stay on top of these possible scenarios. Welcome to our brave, new world.
Disclaimer: I am not an M.D. I am a veterinarian - but the above info applies to both humans and animals.
Don't be overcome by fear. DO be overcome by knowledge and use the knowledge to pressure appropriate officials to put plans into place to minimize the ability of terrorists to use these types of "weapons" and to improve detection and therapeutic capabilities. It really isn't rocket science and we CAN do this.
Endeavor
Do you think people can have natural immunity? After at least four vaccinations, I am not looking forward to another one!
Vaccines can be very helpful. Gas masks will be critical for our troops to carry. They are not particularly geared for our every day life in the US - I personally will not be purchasing one until Ralph Lauren comes out with a designer model. I joke here to lighten the tension! Remember, most effective gas masks will only protect against chemical and not biological scenarios anyway.
You can only beef up an immune system just so much. Let's face it, there are lethal organisms. There are lethal chemicals. But there are methods we can implement to minimize terrorists ability to compromise our air, water, & environment.
We all have to face the fact that no one gets out of life alive! The trick is to be wise, to implement plans which minimize our exposure and maximise our ability to contain attacks.
Lastly, and it should be firstly, make sure you know where you stand with the Man Upstairs - that's the best therapy ever!
Warmest regards,
Endeavor
yes there are such things as natural immunities and those who have them are darned lucky. Immunology is such an incredibly alive science right now. The advent of various molecular techniques currently allows us to literally daily gain clearer understandings of just how the immune system works - how genes modify immune responses, etc. When I use the term "molecular technique" I'm referring to new exploratory tools we have discovered to better understand the immune response.
Regarding your specific question about smallpox vaccination, perhaps an MD will respond - we don't really see the virus which causes human smallpox in animals. However, a very very close relative to it does occur in the cow - causing "cowpox." You may remember that Edward Jenner (http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/nathist/jenner.html) created the very first vaccine ever - it was based on his observation that milkmaids never got infected with smallpox even when smallpox was descending upon the population in plague-like exposures. The cowpox virus, which the milkmaids came into contact with when milking the cows (cowpox caused blisters on the teats of the cows), is so closely similiar to smallpox and so when the milkmaids would get exposed to the cowpox virus, their body's immune system would develop antibody protection which also ended up protecting them from smallpox. I won't go in to the biochemical reasons for this here; suffice it to say that Jenner's assessment led to his development of the first vaccine for any known disease and that just happened to be for smallpox. Natural immunity is technically different from the kind of immunity developed via vaccination but that discussion is not important to us here in this venue. I don't know how long smallpox vaccination protection in the human lasts. That's why an MD could better answer your specific question.
Hope this helps.
Endeavor
FWIW, I remember reading something that optimistic people generally have stronger immune systems, and resist common disease better than those with "glass if half empty" attitudes. Interesting.
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