Posted on 11/03/2001 2:49:26 PM PST by samtheman
The government has ordered millions of doses from a British company. There presently is no capability in this country to manufacture smallpox vaccine.
If the terrorists blow up the British firm that is making vaccine, be very worried.
The glee of "eradicating" smallpox caused an all-too-typical case of hubris. If we have eradicated it, we don't need to make or use any vaccine anymore, right?...with the result that most of the world's population is now "innocent" of smallpox, meaning that their immune systems have never been exposed in any way. If the virus is released it would cut through the human population like a wildfire. Maybe 1, 2 billion dead.
--Boris
This is absurd.
The benefit of mass vaccination is that it takes smallpox off the table for the terrorists.
Americans are going to die in this war-6000+ are dead already.
The notion that any military intervention, like commando raids on the Taliban, or smallpox immunizations of 280 million people, can have a zero risk or zero casualty rate is absurd.
I strongly favor universal smallpox immunization ASAP.
It's like setting your sister's room on fire. Sounds good until you realize that your room burns up, too.
Sound reasoning unless the terrorists feel like their days are numbered. Then, they may just adopt the attitude, "F*** it, I'm goin' down, everyone's goin' down." Hard concept for all of us to get used to that these radical Islamists do NOT behave rationally.
Realistically, we're more likely to contain the disease than the Islamic countries which are crowded and have questionable sanitation.
On the question of supply, how hard can it be? What decade technology are we talking about here? 1940? 1910? 1890?
In 1980, as a result of Jenner's discovery, the World Health Assembly officially declared "the world and its peoples" free from endemic smallpox.
And yet all the smallpox vaccine is, is a virus which replicates very quickly. It's not like they really have to manufacturer it, it manufacturers itself.
I get very suspicious of why they are pretending it's hard to fill the supplies. It can't be incompetence because the small pox virus and vaccine aren't new issues they are really having to learn about for the first time.
They are not pretending.
One of the major problems is that vaccines are low-profit items. Hence pharmecutical makers don't want to make vaccines--especially given the legal liability issues from the few persons who have a bad reaction to a vaccine.
Since nobody wants to make them, and they are low-profit, nobody wants to invest in the plants and machinery necessary to manufacture vaccines.
This point of view held prior to the current bio-terror scare. Thus there is not now any native capacity to make new vaccines.
Another problem is absurd FDA hoops that drug manufacturers have to jump through. The sinlge U.S. source of Anthrax vaccine is Bioport, which used to be run by the State of Michigan (I think)...and which cannot manufacture any vaccine today because it cannot meet the FDA's regs.
Most of the vaccines in use in the 1950s could not be passed today under current FDA regulations.
--Boris
I get very suspicious of why they are pretending it's hard to fill the supplies. It can't be incompetence because the small pox virus and vaccine aren't new issues they are really having to learn about for the first time.
I too am suspicious. Very suspicious. What gives, oh mighty government? What coverup in yonder Capitol taketh place?
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