Posted on 07/07/2002 3:14:48 PM PDT by PatriotReporter
Experts Urge Mass Vaccination for Smallpox Attack
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mass vaccination would save thousands more lives in a smallpox attack than the current limited strategy that has been recommended to the U.S. government, experts said on Sunday.
In a study criticizing the limited vaccination plan, they recommended federal officials be ready to vaccinate millions of people.
"Mass vaccination really leads to fewer deaths than the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( news - web sites)) interim plan," Lawrence Wein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( news - web sites), who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
Besides, he said, if there were a smallpox attack, "I think it highly likely that people would take to the streets to demand vaccination, or would flee," possibly spreading the disease even more widely.
Wein and Edward Kaplan of Yale University, both experts in modeling epidemics, published their study in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( news - web sites) and urged the CDC to change its current policy when it issues new guidelines later this year.
Smallpox, once a scourge that killed nearly a third of its victims and scarred the rest, was eradicated in 1979. But some countries, including Iraq and the former Soviet Union, experimented with the virus as a potential germ warfare agent.
Fearful of a smallpox attack, the U.S. government last year ordered millions of doses of smallpox vaccine -- enough, in the words of Health and Human Services ( news - web sites) Secretary Tommy Thompson, to vaccinate "every man, women and child" in the country.
PLANS FOR VACCINATING 500,000 REPORTED
Government advisers last month said a so-called ring vaccination strategy, which would involve finding and vaccinating people who had contact with an infected person, would probably be sufficient in case of an attack. More people could be vaccinated if this approach failed, they said.
They also recommended vaccinating potential first-line responders now as a precaution. On Sunday, The New York Times reported the federal government was planning to vaccinate 500,000 health care and emergency workers soon.
The newspaper quoted federal officials as saying the government was laying plans for a mass vaccination of the population, just in case.
But a U.S. Health and Human Services Department spokesman, Bill Pierce, told Reuters the exact number of those to be vaccinated had not yet been decided.
Pierce said these recommendations were very general and required more work by HHS and the Centers for Disease Control to identify which groups should be vaccinated.
The ring vaccination policy was used in the 1970s to eradicate the virus, which lives only in people, in the last few places where smallpox infection remained.
Kaplan said current policy is based in part on this past success.
"But it is one thing when ring containment means putting a ring around a village ... as opposed to trying to put a ring around New York City," Kaplan said in a telephone interview.
Kaplan and Wein ran a computer model of what would happen if someone used a smallpox weapon against a city of 10 million people. Kaplan told an advisory meeting on smallpox vaccine that an initial 1,000 infections could lead to 97,000 deaths.
SIDE-EFFECTS
Ring vaccination would lead to 4,000 more deaths than mass vaccination would, they predicted -- even taking into account a high rate of side effects from the vaccine.
"We tried to take into account the likely number of people that you would have running around tracing and vaccinating," Kaplan said in a telephone interview.
"What if you can't identify everybody?" People can be ill with smallpox and pass on the virus before they develop the distinctive blisters, Kaplan pointed out. "The disease doesn't stand still and wait for you to intervene."
Since vaccination was scrapped in the United States in 1972, experts assume almost no one has any real immunity any more. This means smallpox, which is highly infectious, could spread like wildfire through the population.
But the current vaccine is based on old technology and is not considered very safe. It has a high rate of side-effects, some of them deadly.
In addition, more people have suppressed immune systems now than in the 1970s, and they could be at special risk not only from the vaccine, but from people recently immunized with it.
Such people include cancer patients being treated with chemotherapy and people infected with the AIDS ( news - web sites) virus.
The current CDC policy, endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices last month, takes this into account. It calls for quarantining anyone confirmed to have been infected in a smallpox attack.
Anyone who may have had contact with the infected patients would be tracked down and vaccinated
By Celia Hall, Medical Editor
(Filed: 03/07/2002)
Doctors voted yesterday to abandon a system of payments for vaccination targets, which they say destroy their credibility with patients, and could contribute to a feared epidemic of measles.
In a deal introduced 12 years ago, GPs can earn £2,865 extra if 90 per cent of the children on their list are vaccinated or £955 if 70 per cent are vaccinated.
But since the controversy over the MMR triple jab, with many parents fearing that it can lead to bowel disease and autism, the doctors want a new payment system.
MMR vaccination levels have fallen to 84 per cent and as low as 73 per cent in some areas. GPs told the British Medical Association conference in Harrogate, North Yorks, that they should not be put in the position of bullying patients into having their children vaccinated.
Dr Richard Vautry, a Leeds GP, said that two weeks ago he had sat in his surgery with his son waiting for his booster injection of MMR. "I was there to ensure that my son had the best possible protection against measles mumps and rubella and I believe that MMR is the best way to protect our children from these dreadful diseases.
"However, yesterday I met with one of my one patients who is yet to be convinced. She is a sensible mum who wants nothing but the best for her child, but she still needs a little more time to think about whether she should bring her daughter for the MMR.
"She should be allowed that time. She shouldn't be pressured or bullied as a result of some diktat from a Whitehall civil servant."
Dr Vautry said that the target system failed in that situation. "Surely patients have a right to say no. Surely patients of young children have the right to make an informed decision and surely GPs should not be penalised as a result of the decisions their patients make." He said he refused to pressurise his patients however much money he might lose. "For if I did my patients would start to wonder whether my advice could be trusted as they could see that I have a vested interest in reaching a target."
The doctors also heard that there was an alternative to target payments which is being negotiated as part of the new GP contract.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, joint deputy chairman of the association's GPs' committee, said they had proposed a system of "informed dissent" in which an informed patient who decided against vaccination would not be included in a revised target list.
He said later that just as patients understood the idea of informed consent there should also be a system in which they could refuse treatment.
"Patients don't want to deprive their doctors of income because they don't want their child immunised. The majority of parents just want to exercise parental choice.
"I fully support MMR and I am convinced of its safety but I don't think I want the Government to make it mandatory.
He said that GPs were so convinced of the value of MMR that they would strive to have as few informed dissenters as possible.
Dr Joan Black, a GP from West Berkshire, told the conference that it was easy to understand a patient's fears.
"Target payments are an inappropriate way to run a service in a free society. Patients must be aware of a conflict of interest when their doctor stands to lose or gain a substantial sum of money depending on what the patient decides to do."
I actually have quite a bit ( you have to hunt for it among the links, and use the "links within those links" ) about vaccination & biowarfare here:
Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Warfare- Survival Skills, Pt. II
Feel free to copy, retransmit, or otherwise use anything you wish.
backhoe
You don't suppose that would include members of Congress, do you? Their families? Girlfriends?
What are you talking about.
This is nutcase leftist conspiracy nonsense that is not ever needed but especially not needed now.
One, I doubt your facts.
Second, whatever accuracy there may be to your psychotic claims, it is like someone in WWII saying, A-Ha - those tank makers got a monopoly that's what it is all about.
You guys need to grow up and get a dose of reality quick or go play somewhere else.
By Nick Farrell [28-06-2002]
Google et al provide 'unsafe' advice on vaccination Information found by internet search engines is biased against the vaccination of children, according to a survey. A report published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood journal shows that the top 10 results from popular search site Google all referred to anti-vaccination sites.
Many of them purported to give both sides of the argument, but very few of them did, the BBC reported.
More than 55 per cent of adults with internet access use the web for health information, and some doctors are concerned that official sites run by governments or expert groups have equal status with those set up by people with no medical qualifications.
Researchers from the University of Sydney typed the words 'vaccination' and 'immunisation' into seven search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Lycos and Altavista.
In total, 43 per cent of the links led to anti-vaccination sites, including what the researchers described as "quasi-official" sites with referenced material from medical journals.
Others were personal testimonies, 'back to nature' appeals and sites alleging cover-ups and conspiracies involving doctors, governments and pharmaceutical companies.
Lead researcher Professor Simon Chapman told the BBC: "Many of them referred to the medical literature, but not in a way which was coherent or comprehensive."
He explained that the most disturbing aspect is that a parent going to the web to search out information is going to have a very high probability of arriving at such a site.
"They look authoritative and they have a lot of information, but many of them are really very irresponsible," concluded the professor.
Let's say you had the money...whatever the cost, to get vaccinated right now.
Who should one contact? Does anyone have a phone number or website?
just set back and Watch how it done first the report, next the Media ,Tv, news,newspappers
Initially in the post 9/11 confusion, the CDC and other experts stated that the side effects were too dangerous -- anywhere from 1 to 6 people per million vaccinated could die..
I don't kown if you will like this one?
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