Replies

tests show any residual is plenty effective... even up to 45 years I read last week...

Where did you read that??? On that same whack job website you posted from earlier? The CDC and other sources say that you're wrong on that score. Ever see pictures of a smallpox victim? Are you willing to bet your vaccine is still effective with that as the ante?

President Bush deserves our support on this. I'll bitch and moan and complain every single time I think he's caving to the dims on their social agenda, but I'll never give an inch of ground to anyone who claims that W is anything less than an honorable, decent and good man who has the best interest of his country at heart...period.

Study: Smallpox Vaccine Protects For 50 Years
Microbiologist Says Revaccination Unnecessary
Updated: 9:46 a.m. EDT August 29, 2002

New research says people who received smallpox vaccinations at birth can rest assured in the event of an outbreak.

SMALLPOX
Smallpox FAQs
Smallpox Diagnosis Online
CDC Smallpox Resource Center

Dr. Jeffrey Frelinger, a microbiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, observed that people who received the smallpox vaccine years ago still had a high level of immunity.
In the fall of 2001, Frelinger and his team conducted a formal study to determine how long the vaccine protects people. The results are published in the Aug. 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"When Sept. 11 happened, we realized somebody might care about this," Frelinger said. "With the whole anthrax thing, this might be useful information to have out there in the world."

The team tested blood samples from 13 laboratory workers who had been vaccinated they work with the weakened virus in the vaccine. Four had been vaccinated less than five years ago. Another nine individuals had been vaccinated either between five and 35 years earlier or more than 35 years ago.

He tested immune response and discovered that people who were vaccinated up to 35 years ago had enough immunity to protect them. Even after 50 years, there is protection.

"It might not be enough protection to keep you from getting sick. It's almost certainly enough protection to keep you from getting killed," Frelinger said.

If a smallpox outbreak occurred, Frelinger believes the government may not need to revaccinate.

"Instead, worry about people who were born after 1972, who've never been vaccinated," he said.

New government proposals do not call for mass vaccinations; however, in the event of an outbreak, people who are not vaccinated are expected to quickly use up the stockpiled doses.

The government has enough vaccine in hand for 75 million people, with more on the way.

next time dan, please do be a little more polite and knock off with the "whack job" insults... This by the way... IS a CDC source... the New England Journal of Medicine published the study, and they say, fifty years. This is hardly a "whack job" article. And we discuss reese pretty often around here... posting one of his articles is "fair game" and does not indicate agreement with its content... fair enough?

Old Smallpox Vaccine Shows Resiliency
A small study finds it generates an immune response even 35 or more years after it was given.

By Adam Marcus

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 28 (HealthScoutNews) -- People who received the smallpox vaccine more than three decades ago still appear to have substantial protection against the deadly virus.

Researchers have found that while a fresh inoculation may offer the best defense against smallpox, even immunization that occurred 35 years ago or longer retains most of its potency. They report their findings in a letter appearing in tomorrow's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

The durability of the vaccine has been a wild card for health officials, who are considering a return to widespread smallpox vaccination to blunt a possible terrorist strike with the microbe. The United States abandoned routine immunization against the virus in 1972, and the World Health Organization declared the infection eradicated in 1980. However, the United States and Russia have preserved samples of the virus, and intelligence experts fear that rogue states like Iraq and North Korea may have obtained supplies of it to use as a bioweapon.

To meet that threat, the Bush administration has set about stockpiling enough smallpox vaccine to cover every American.

Earlier this year, an advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that mass vaccination wasn't necessary and could lead to hundreds of deaths from complications of the inoculation, which involves scratching the vaccinia virus underneath the skin with a tiny pitchfork-like device.

Instead, the group's guidelines produced an estimate that roughly 15,000 health and emergency workers first to respond to a smallpox outbreak might need the vaccine most. Yet, some officials reportedly are urging that as many as half a million people receive it.

The government has yet to announce its decision regarding the panel's recommendations. Bill Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said his agency had given itself a deadline of the end of September to determine its course.

"We're still in the time frame we said we'd be in," he said.

Pierce said officials were aware that smallpox vaccine could remain effective for many years, and would use that information in its decision-making.

In the new study, which fell out of an HIV experiment, University of North Carolina immunologist Jeffrey Frelinger and a colleague looked at the durability of the smallpox vaccine in 13 lab workers who handle the inoculation.

Of those, four were immunized not more than five years ago, while nine received the vaccine six to 35 years ago and longer. Looking at the response of immune agents called CD8 cells to the vaccinia virus, the researchers saw that people who were immunized recently tended to have the strongest reaction to the vaccine. Yet, those vaccinated more than 35 years ago had only about a third less reactivity, on average, than the recent recipients.

"That's actually pretty resilient to [a virus] you haven't been exposed to for 30 years," said Frelinger, who bared his arm for the study as a volunteer.

Frelinger said policy makers may want to consider his results in prioritizing how smallpox vaccine is distributed, should that prove necessary. "You would want to vaccinate unvaccinated people first," he said.

The study also may be of some comfort to those who've already had at least one round of smallpox vaccine in the past, he added, since their risk of an adverse reaction to the inoculation likely is lower than that of someone naive to it.

"Ever see pictures of a smallpox victim?"

well dan, yes, I was alive when smallpox was a problem. and yes, we were shown those pictures, and some folks were still dying from it in the early sixties.

and the bush administration, plans to prioritize the folks who have NOT had any vaccination, discontinued for the general population circa 1972, before they would give me a "booster" shot.

Bush has my support. But the planning on this goes well beyond planning for smallpox alone. That was what my question was about... and I have gotten some pretty good freepmail from medical folks about other potentials... requiring mass innoculation.