Posted on 07/02/2005 3:12:27 PM PDT by LSUfan
The bottom line here...is that Smallpox will eventually return to our civilization (through an accident or through a terrorist method). For scientists to sit there and think they eradicated it from the Earth...is a joke. Its still around. And we (maybe not in my generation)...will see a return.
Yes, Cuba and Iran are partners in the manufacture of vaccines.
Take a look at some of the links in these searches:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Cuba+Iran+smallpox&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&client=googlet&biw=
http://www.google.com/search?client=googlet&q=Cuba%20smallpox
That article's from 1999. Since then, post-9/11, more stocks of vaccine have been found, and later trials have shown that the vaccines from the '70s could still be effective if diluted 10:1. At least that's the official line; it's possible they're blowing sunshine up our skirts.
And your source for the assertion that "it's still around" is ...? The notion that a life form has gone extinct is not an exotic one. Seen a dodo or a mastodon lately? So why not a virus?
But I've also learned from this thread that a superstrain of smallpox broke out in Iran in 1972. It is possible that an Iranian lab has nurtured a smallpox culture for the last 33 years undetected. It's possible -- and therefore it's prudent to be prepared -- but I don't consider it likely.
Michael Jackson, Richard Gere, and Saddam Hussein should be concerned.
Since I'm not a doctor, I've wondered then why all the hysteria came a couple years ago when the thought of smallpox weapons in the wrong hands first entered the mainstream. Yes, smallpox is a horrible virus, and yes the stores of the virus in the hands of the "good guys" has mostly been destroyed. But, as you point out, the actual smallpox virus isn't what was used for most vaccinations-- vaccinia (cowpox) virus was. So why the hysteria, and what is keeping major production of vaccinia-based vaccinations from getting underway so that cities may be stocked with the stuff just-in-case?
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