Replies

I won't get one! Not hearing how sick our military would get, to the point where they can no longer force them to take the vaccine!

I think an old vaccine protects for 10 years?
________________________________________________________

This from knak:

Expert warns of smallpox danger from terrorists
01/29/04

JOSH KELLEY
For The Birmingham News

AUBURN - A leading expert on bioterrorism warned Tuesday of the dangers of smallpox and other pathogens that rogue nations and terrorist groups could be developing.

Richard Preston, a fellow at the Council on Humanities at Princeton University and author of three best-selling nonfiction books on emerging diseases and pathogens that could be used as bioweapons, spoke to a group of about 500 at the Auburn University Hotel and Dixon Conference Center.

"You will have no doubt that smallpox is an extremely grave disease," he said before showing slides of victims with blisters covering their faces and hands.

Smallpox is a highly contagious virus that kills 30 percent of its victims, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Preston said he fears that nations such as North Korea and even groups such as Al-Qaida could have access to the smallpox virus despite its eradication in nature 30 years ago. By 1980, the World Health Organization believed the only samples of the virus remaining in the world were at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and at the State Center for Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia. But Preston is not convinced the virus is in safe hands.

"The experts are deeply concerned that we don't actually know where the smallpox ... is today," he said.

He fears smallpox was grown at a lab in the former Soviet Union in Siberia and stockpiled for possible weapons.

"Some of these Soviet scientists went off the grid. They went off the map," he said. Preston is worried the scientists ended up in North Korea.

Preston also warned that despite having developed a stockpile of smallpox vaccine, the United States is not prepared to administer the vaccine if the virus spreads rapidly.

"Most hospitals haven't even thought about that," he said.

President Bush recently received a smallpox vaccine in a demonstration of its safety after ordering military personnel to begin receiving the vaccination.

Preston said that the exploding world population could lead to the rapid spread of viruses, particularly in locations the United Nations has identified as future tropical super cities. Dhaka, Bangladesh, for instance, is estimated to have a population of 35 million by 2015. That's roughly the population of California in one city.