Prairie Dog Illness Resembles Smallpox; Health Officials First Feared Smallpox Outbreak

Associated Press ^ | 06-08-03

[Brian S]

Health Officials First Feared Prairie Dog Sickness in Midwest Was Smallpox Outbreak

The Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. June 8 —

Doctors initially feared a smallpox outbreak as they began seeing cases of a mysterious disease that has spread to at least 19 people who came into contact with pet prairie dogs in the Midwest, health officials said Sunday.

The symptoms were alarmingly similar fever, chills, rashes and swollen lymph nodes, said Milwaukee's health commissioner, Dr. Seth Foldy. It was when the prairie dog connection surfaced that they knew it must be something else.

"We asked the question but discounted it very early," Foldy said. "Smallpox has never been known to affect another species."

The Centers for Disease Control said Saturday pet prairie dogs from a suburban Chicago pet distributor likely are infected with monkeypox, a member of the same viral family as smallpox.

The virus can pass from animal to animal, and scientists believe it can pass human-to-human, as well, but it had never been documented in North America, Foldy said.

So far, at least 17 people in Wisconsin and one each in Illinois and Indiana have become sick since early May with the symptoms consistent with monkeypox after coming in close contact with prairie dogs.

"It eventually will clear up as you treat the symptoms," said Mark McLaughlin, a spokesman for Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Milwaukee, which has treated several patients with the symptoms.

"We don't need people to go off the deep end. This is not an epidemic in the public's common perception of that," he said.

Of the people infected, two remained isolated at the hospital in satisfactory condition Sunday, McLaughlin said. He said the doctors treating them are wearing masks as a precaution.

State agriculture officials have other concerns. On Sunday, they issued warnings telling people not to dump prairie dogs they might have bought as pets into the wild. Doing so could spread the disease to squirrels, groundhogs and other native rodents, said Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection spokeswoman Donna Gilson.

Monkeypox, found in west African nations, has never been detected in the Western Hemisphere. If the disease gets a foothold in indigenous North American species, it could become almost impossible to control and more people could become ill, Foldy said.

"We don't want that happen," Foldy said. "It would have an unknown impact that I'd prefer not to find out."

The death rate from monkeypox in Africa has ranged from one to 10 percent, he said. However, he cautioned that the mortality rate might not reach those levels in the United States, where people are typically better nourished and medical technology is more advanced.

"The person-to-person transmission in a rural Congolese setting is potentially very different than in a metropolitan American setting," Foldy said. "We have isolation, soap, running water, sterile dressing materials, we have washing machines. These are all things that have reduced the prevalence of germs that are spreadable by person-to-person contact."

Federal health officials believe the disease spread may have started with prairie dogs being infected with monkeypox by a Gambian lizard at a Villa Park, Ill., pet distributor.

South Milwaukee pet distributor SK Exotics purchased some of the prairie dogs and moved them to Wisconsin, and two pet stores in the Milwaukee area purchased them.

Some of the prairie dogs found their way to northern Wisconsin through a pet swap, said Dr. Mark Wegner, chief of the Wisconsin Communicable Disease Epidemiology Section.

On Friday, the state Department of Health and Family Services issued an emergency order banning the sale, importation and display of prairie dogs. Anyone who sells prairie dogs received after April 1 must remove them from contact with the public or other animals.

The order is a stopgap measure until state agriculture officials draft and publish an emergency rule this week, Gilson said.

On the Net:

Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection:

Wisconsin Division of Health and Family Services:

Illinois Department of Public Health:

[FairOpinion]

"State agriculture officials have other concerns. On Sunday, they issued warnings telling people not to dump prairie dogs they might have bought as pets into the wild. Doing so could spread the disease to squirrels, groundhogs and other native rodents, said Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection spokeswoman Donna Gilson."
---

I think this is very serious, because if they can contain, i.e. kill all the infected prairie dogs, hopefully it will eradicate the monkey pox. But if it infects animals in the wild, that means this disease will be with us forever.

And while it's not smallpox, I read that 90% of the DNA of monkey pox is the same as smallpox, and what if it mutates, maybe not into full smallpox, but something in between, it can still have a high enough mortality to be a real problem.

Of course, if they would allow people to get the smallpox vaccine, we wouldn't have to worry about any of this...

[FairOpinion]

"prairie dogs being infected with monkeypox by a Gambian lizard at a Villa Park,"
---
What? Now it's a Gambian LIZARD? Earlier articles said it was a Gambian rat.

Hm... Do I smell a rat? Do they know how the prairie dogs got infected or are they just guessing or trying to find something that sounds plausible?

[Maria S]

Why ANYONE would want a prairie dog for a pet is beyond me! Out here in West Texas, we hate 'em! They're nothing but trouble...for goodness sakes, get a goldfish or a stuffed dog instead.

As for being "allowed" to get a smallpox shot, if the day comes when I'm forced to get a smallpox vaccination (again, after the 1st one a looooooong time ago), I'm joining the revolt that's sure to come! A lot of us do NOT intend to be innoculated with some unknown substance that could cause who knows what. Thanks, but no thanks.

[joesnuffy]

These guys have been selling those prairie dogs for many years at the animal market held a couple times in
Marathon Park Wausau, Wi.

Dont know how many they sold but their prices were pretty high..so hopefully not many..

People came from a ways a way who bought some..my guess is more than a few got loose or turned loose..
Dang varmints..

The prairie dogs sold at Marathon Park were in close proximity to guinea pigs,rabbits and other small animals sold there..

Wonder how many other animals can catch/spread the disease..

If the disease is a mild form of small pox perhaps recovering from it will give one some immunity to smallpox?

[FairOpinion]

"I'm forced to get a smallpox vaccination (again, after the 1st one a looooooong time ago), I'm joining the revolt that's sure to come! A lot of us do NOT intend to be innoculated with some unknown substance that could cause who knows what."
---

Smallpox vaccinations were mandatory for some 30 years, hundreds of millions of people got it, until the 70-s and nothing happened to people. Of course we didn't have as many hysterical people back then...

So what's the big deal now? And we know what's in the vaccine, it's vaccinia virus, NOT smallpox.

[FairOpinion]

"If the disease is a mild form of small pox perhaps recovering from it will give one some immunity to smallpox?"
---

Good point. Interesting idea. I haven't read anything about this, but it's a good point, maybe they'll investigate or find some info about this.

I have read that smallpox vaccine does protect against this pox too.

[Paleo Conservative]

hundreds of millions of people got it, until the 70-s and nothing happened to people.

Not true. It's just that trial lawyers weren't so prevalent. The problem is no one ever modernized smallpox vaccines till the Germans did in the 1960s (and their vaccines were never proved effective due to the erradication of smallpox). The standard vaccines in our stockpile are little different than the ones administered in the 1870s by the New York Board of Health. If you want a Freeper to tell you a first hand observation of the side effects of the smallpox vaccine, ask LadyDoc.

[FairOpinion]

Look what I just happened to come across:

Monkeypox could be used as bioweapon
http://www.whale.to/a/monkeypox.html

By Steve Mitchell
UPI Medical Correspondent
From the Science & Technology Desk
Published 6/9/2002 4:45 AM

The Russians worked with monkeypox virus, a close cousin to smallpox, in their bioweapons program and it is possible terrorists could use it in a biological attack against the United States, scientists and former United Nations weapons inspectors told United Press International.

Although some biological weapons experts are concerned with the possibility of terrorists using another smallpox-related virus called camelpox, which Iraq has admitted to researching, Mark Buller, a biologist at Saint Louis University who conducts research on smallpox vaccines, said he is more concerned about monkeypox.

Buller's concern stems from the fact that monkeypox, unlike camelpox, causes mortality in humans and the incidence of human infection is on the rise in central and western Africa.

In addition, the Russian biowarfare experts are known to have worked with the virus in the Soviet Union's biological weapons program.

The Soviets decided they did not want to work with smallpox by the late 1980's "and there was significant discussion of the possible use of monkeypox as a biological weapon instead of smallpox," Ken Alibek, who was former deputy chief of the Soviet biological weapons program and now resides in the U.S., told UPI.

Monkeypox, which causes symptoms similar to smallpox, can be fatal, but only in the minority of cases, said James LeDuc, director of the division of viral and rickettsial diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. He said he is "not aware of any cases outside" Africa.

The World Health Organization attributes the increase in monkeypox cases in Africa to the fact that smallpox vaccines, which can protect against monkeypox, are no longer administered.

LeDuc said it is uncertain whether the disease is on the increase, but he noted there appears to have been an outbreak of the disease in Africa about 6 months ago.

The "real fear is that (monkeypox) might be engineered as a bioweapon," said Jonathan Tucker, a former weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission who is now with the think tank Monterey Institute in Washington.

Monkeypox is not as contagious as smallpox, but whether it could be or has been modified to be more virulent is unknown. The Soviets were not concerned with contagiousness, Alibek said, because they planned to produce "tons and tons" of the virus -- enough to infect "hundred of thousands of people or even more."

Tucker noted the smallpox vaccine will protect against both monkeypox and camelpox, but Americans do not have access to this vaccine. The CDC, which holds a stockpile of the smallpox vaccine, is currently reconsidering its vaccination strategy and whether to vaccinate everyone or wait until there is an outbreak and try to vaccinate only those exposed.

There are concerns that Russia's smallpox may have been leaked to terrorists, and whether something similar happened with monkeypox is uncertain. Another former U.N. weapons inspector, who requested anonymity, told UPI "There's no confirmation that (monkeypox) leaked out, but the potential exists."

Alibek said he had no idea whether monkeypox had ever been leaked out of the Soviet program. But he noted that from the 1970s until the 1990s, "it was not a problem to get any of the orthopox viruses (smallpox, camelpox and monkeypox)," and many countries had access to them if they wanted them.

Iraq is one of the rogue states that may have obtained access to monkeypox. "We've never ever gotten to the bottom of their involvement with camelpox, whether they were really trying to weaponize it or it was a façade for working with smallpox or monkeypox," said the former U.N. inspector, who was a member of the team that went into Iraq.

There is a lot of suspicion that Iraq had access to smallpox, but "there's no such indirect evidence for monkeypox," the inspector said. Asked if monkeypox was less of a concern than smallpox, the inspector replied, "I wouldn't say it's of less concern ... The fact that we haven't come across evidence from the United Nations doesn't mean it's not there."

No U.N. weapons inspectors have been in Iraq since 1998, so unless the government acknowledges working with a particular biological agent it is difficult to know for certain whether they ever worked with it. No one has any idea what types of agents they have worked with in the past three years, the inspector said.

Iraq is "likely to work with any nasty that comes along" and the government has shown an interest "in all the orthopox viruses," so "it's a strong possibility that they were" working with monkeypox, the inspector said.

The good news is that monkeypox does not appear to be transmissible from person to person and the smallpox vaccine protects against it. Asked whether monkeypox could be modified so that the vaccine is not effective against it, the former weapons inspector said, "I would say that verges on the impossible."

Alibek noted, "There was no such work in getting it resistant to vaccine. I cannot say anything for sure about what they are doing now." Alibek said he left the program more than 10 years ago.

"Making it elusive to the vaccine would be a challenge," CDC's LeDuc said. "The position that we've always held is that it would be very difficult to overcome the vaccine by genetic engineering."

However, Alibek added, "Existent vaccines are not 100 percent effective" against smallpox. They only offer approximately 70 percent protection. "Against monkeypox, the protection could be even lower," he said. "So even if everybody is vaccinated against smallpox, it doesn't mean everybody is protected."

[virgil]

Hm... Do I smell a rat? Do they know how the prairie dogs got infected or are they just guessing or trying to find something that sounds plausible?

This is very bizarre. The never seen before in North America Monkey pox from Africa in prairie dogs in Chicago, Milwaulkee?

[FairOpinion]

This is the first time monkey pox was seen in the entire Western Hemisphere. This was stated by the CDC also.

This could be more serious.

The first cases of West Nile Virus were also dismissed as "isolated incidents"...

[Maria S]

We also did not have the internet in the past so we could look up information about various subjects. The health workers I know (three RN's and 2 MD's) ALL have said no way to the smallpox vaccinations.

[virgil]

You can sense the gov't attempt to downplay this. I'm having trouble believing that the appearance of this monkey pox is accidental too.

[bonesmccoy]

madame,

I am a board certified physician and I have been seeking this vaccine to neutralize the threat for my entire life.

The fact that USMC Marines have been immunized and the front-line homeland physicians have been DENIED vaccine is most frustrating.

The fact that physicians and nurses choose to ignore national security assessments is their problem.

I chose to agree with the WH and POTUS.

When POTUS gives orders, I suggest that physicians and nurses learn to say "YES SIR!".

[stlnative]

OMG... The bioterrorism monkey pox prairie dog threads are everywhere on FR (were all gonna die of monkey pox) </sarcasm off