Unfortunately, there's no good reason to wait until 2004. Between the "unlicensed" doses and the new stock, there's about enough smallpox vaccine to start now. Offer the old stock as boosters to those already vaccinated once.
Posted on 12/11/2002 4:07:58 PM PST by RCW2001
Wed December 11, 2002 06:51 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Wednesday he had decided to make smallpox vaccine available to Americans on a voluntary basis to guard against a possible biological warfare attack.
"I think it ought to be a voluntary plan. ... I don't think people ought to be compelled to make the decision," Bush said in an interview with ABC television's Barbara Walters, a portion of which was broadcast on Wednesday.
Bush was expected to announce details of the plan later this week.
ABC said the vaccine would be given first to military personnel, then to emergency workers, including hospital employees, paramedics and police. It would be offered to the general public in 2004, when newer stocks of vaccine become available.
First Lady Laura Bush, asked in the interview how she would feel about her daughters taking the vaccine, said: "If the vaccine were available, which I think it will be, I would feel like that was certainly safe. ... I know there's a slight risk. That's what people will weigh."
Scientists say the smallpox vaccine, based on decades-old technology, presents a risk of side effects that include death in about one to two cases per million.
Bush Says Smallpox Vaccine Program Will Be Voluntary
ABCNews.com
Dec. 11 — The administration's smallpox program will not endorse compulsory vaccinations for all Americans, President Bush told ABCNEWS' Barbara Walters.
"The need for this government to provide the opportunity for people to protect themselves, should here be a smallpox attack," Bush told Walters in an exclusive interview airing this Friday on 20/20. "In other words, I don't think people ought to be compelled to make the decision which they think is best for their family."
First lady Laura Bush said that as far as her family was concerned, she didn't believe the risk would be high for her daughters, who grew up after smallpox vaccinations stopped being routinely administered to children in the United States.
"If, the vaccine were available, which I think it will be, I would feel like that was certainly safe for them to do. All of us [older Americans] were [vaccinated]," the first lady told Walters. "I know there's a slight risk. You know, that's what people will weigh when they make the decision whether or not to have their children vaccinated."
The president's comments to Walters summarize the administration's decision on how to structure a vaccination program, according to a White House official.
Here are the highlights of the program, which the administration will release to the public this Friday:
• All Americans will have the opportunity to choose to be vaccinated against smallpox by sometime in 2004.
• First responders and military personnel will be vaccinated first, beginning next year. There will likely be an extensive public information campaign to help Americans "digest" (as the president said) the plan and their options.
• 2004 is a key date. By that time, there will be enough newly manufactured, "licensed" smallpox vaccine to cover the entire population. Officials believe this newer vaccine is better than that in the older stocks. There are also liability issues involved.
• Older, unlicensed vaccine will not be used to inoculate anyone — except in the case of an attack. "There will be no 'pre-exposure' vaccinations using unlicensed vaccines,'" according to the White House official. That means there are enough stocks of the new vaccine to cover the first responders and military personnel next year.
Right now, if an outbreak occurred, there is enough smallpox vaccine — new and old — to cover the entire population. It's just that the administration believes the program is more effectively structured — in terms of educating the public, maximizing medical effectiveness, and limiting liability — by using the "licensed" vaccine, with the "unlicensed" as backup
Decades old? Try 228 years old..
From The first recorded Smallpox vaccination
In 1774 farmer, Benjamin Jesty was living in Yetminster with his pregnant wife Elizabeth, two sons, Robert and Benjamin aged three and two, and a baby also called Elizabeth. During the spring and summer of that year the highly infectious disease of smallpox raged in the area. Benjamin feared for the health of his wife and family. Having had smallpox himself as a child, he was immune to the disease. In common with many country folk, Benjamin was fully aware of the age-old tradition that people who had earlier caught the mild disease of cowpox did not catch the normally fatal disease of smallpox. At this time, the Jesty’s had two dairymaids, Ann Notley and Mary Reade. Both of these girls had previously had cowpox, and both had nursed family members with smallpox during the current epidemic. I was probably the fact that neither of these girls had caught the disease that decided Benjamin on his subsequent course of action.
Edward Jenner is renown as the "father of smallpox vaccination". Perhaps rightly so, for he dedicated his life, money and reputation to spreading the use of vaccination. In 1774,some twenty years before Jenner first used vaccination on a boy called James Phipps in 1796, at Berkeley in Gloucestershire, a farmer's wife, together with her two sons was vaccinated by her husband at Yetminster in Dorset.
Unfortunetly, the "tradition" mentioned above was little more than a old superstition, with no basis in scientific fact..
From the above link;
Thomas Carlyle has told us "that no error is fully confuted until you have seen not only that it is an error, but also how it became one." It will, therefore, be as well for me to take you over something of the history of the movement, and give an idea how this gigantic superstition and this monstrous fraud of vaccination came to be enforced, and came to be adopted by the profession and the public. The "discoverer" so-called was, as you all know, a man by the name of Edward Jenner, who lived at Berkeley, in your own county. He was not, however, the discoverer. The whole thing was a superstition of the Gloucestershire dairymaids years before Jenner was born--(laughter)--and the very experiment, so-called, that he performed had been performed by an old farmer named Benjamin Jesty twenty years previously. Now this man Jenner had never passed a medical examination in his life. He belonged to the good old times when George III. was King--(laughter)--when medical examinations were not compulsory. Jenner looked upon the whole thing as a superfluity, and he hung up "Surgeon, apothecary," over his door without any of the qualifications that warranted the assumption. It was not until twenty years after he was in practice that he thought it advisible to get a few letters after his name. Consequently he then communicated with a Scotch University and obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine for the sum of £15 and nothing more. (Laughter.) It is true that a little while before, he had obtained a Fellowship of the Royal Society. but his latest biographer and apologist, Dr. Norman Moore, had to confess that it was obtained by little less than a fraud. It was obtained by writing a most extraordinary paper about a fabulous cuckoo, for the most part composed of arrant absurdities and imaginative freaks such as no ornithologist of the present day would pay the slightest heed to. A few years after this, rather dissatisfied with the only medical qualification he had obtained, Jenner communicated with the University of Oxford and asked them to grant him their honorary degree of M.D., and after a good many fruitless attempts he got it. Then he sent to the Royal College of Physicians in London to get their diploma, and even presented his Oxford degree as an argument in his favour. But they considered he had had quite enough on the cheap already, and told him distinctly that until he passed the usual examinations they were not going to give him any more. This was a sufficient check in Jenner’s case, and he settled down quietly without any diploma of physician. The period in which he lived was undoubtedly a very filthy period. It was a time when, to take London for instance, the streets were nothing but a mass of cobble stones, the roads were so narrow that the people could almost shake hands across the street, and as for fresh air they scarcely knew anything about it, for locomotion such as we have to-day was unknown. Sanitary arrangements were altogether absent. They obtained their water from conduits and wells in the neighbourhood, Water closets there were none, and no drainage system existed. It was in London especially that small-pox abounded, where bodies were buried in Old St. Paul’s Churchyard in Covent Garden only a foot below the soil, and people had to get up in the middle of the night and burn frankincense to keep off the stench; and where those who could afford it had houses on each side of the Fleet river, so that when the wind blew towards the east they lived in the west, and when it blew towards the west they lived in the east. This was the condition of old London, and you cannot be surprised if small-pox was then what Dr. Bond calls a scourge; you cannot be surprised if small-pox has declined since, even after this wonderful discovery of vaccination--(laughter and cheers)--and let us not forget that sanitary improvements began in London as early as 1766, and small-pox began to decline as a consequence before vaccination was invented. A SUPERSTITIOUS PERIOD. This practice of vaccination was simply a legend. The idea of charming away disease has been common in all countries and at all times, not only amongst the ignorant but amongst the educated. In old herb books we find how much the remedies for certain diseases depended on the jingle of the names; and there is no doubt that the way in which the idea got amongst the dairymaids that a person who had cow-pox never had small-pox depended upon the jingle of cow-pox and small-pox, and it was this which had such an extraordinary effect upon the mass of the people at that time. In the old herb books, for instance, we find that if you want to prevent suffering from the bite of a mad dog you must carry a herb called hound’s tongue, and again, to prevent the ill-consequence of a dog bite you must take a portion of the root of a dog rose. This kind of thing was common at that time; it was a most superstitious period in which Jenner lived, when live frogs were swallowed for the cure of worms; when cow dung and human excreta were mixed with milk and butter for diptheria; when the brains of a man who had died a violent death were given in teaspoonful doses for the cure of small-pox. Even Jenner had invented, not merely a cure for smallpox, but also one for hydrophobia, which quite takes the steam out of Pasteur’s treatment. All you had to do was to duck the man who had been bitten three times in a stream of running water, only taking care that each time you ducked him life became almost extinct. (Laughter.) He said he never knew that to fail under any circumstances. (Renewed laughter.) He evidently had an idea that persons bitten by a mad dog become possessed of an evil spirit, and should be treated as they used to treat the witches. So much for Jenner. When he first of all heard the story of the cow-pox legend that the dairymaids talked about, that if you only had cow-pox you can’t have small-pox, he began to mention it at the meetings of the Medico-convivial Society, where the old doctors of the day met together to smoke their pipes, drink their glasses of grog, and talk over their cases. But he no sooner mentioned it than they laughed at it. The cow doctors could have told him of hundreds of cases where small-pox had followed cow-pox, and Jenner found he would have to drop it. HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT.
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/clinup-smallpoxvaccine.asp
Smallpox Vaccine Recommendations for People with MS and Their Families
In the event that people in the armed services and emergency medical personnel are given smallpox vaccinations over the next several weeks or months, it is important for people with MS and their family members to be aware of certain, very important, precautions.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), no person with a weakened immune system* (e.g., by leukemia, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), certain types of hematopoietic stem cell transplants, or immunosuppressant medications) should be exposed to the smallpox vaccine. In rare cases, people who fall into these groups can have serious, possibly life-threatening complications from exposure to the vaccine. Therefore,
A person with MS whose immune system is suppressed by treatment with mitoxantrone (Novantrone®), high-dose corticosteroids, or other immunosuppressant agents including (but not limited to) methotrexate, azathioprine, or cyclophosphamide, or has undergone a hematopoietic stem cell transplant:
Should not be given the vaccine unless he or she has been exposed to the smallpox virus. Should not be exposed to the vaccine by contact with a family member who receives a smallpox vaccination.
A family member of an immunosuppressed person with MS:
Should not be given the vaccine unless he or she has been exposed to the virus or is required to receive the smallpox vaccination in the line of duty.
A family member of an immunosuppressed person with MS, who is required by his or her job to be vaccinated:
Should defer physical contact with the immunosuppressed person until the vaccine site heals (which may be up to three weeks) since people receiving smallpox vaccine shed virus only from the unhealed scratch site. The statement from the CDC reads as follows:
Replication of vaccinia virus can be enhanced among persons with immunodeficiency diseases and among those with immunosuppression (e.g., as occurs with leukemia, lymphoma, generalized malignancy, solid organ transplantation, cellular or humoral immunity disorders, or therapy with alkylating agents, antimetabolites, radiation, or high-dose corticosteroid therapy [i.e., >2 mg/kg body weight or 20 mg/day of prednisone for >2 weeks].
Persons with immunosuppression also include hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients who are <24 months posttransplant, and hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients who are >24 months posttransplant but who have graft-versus-host disease or disease relapse. Persons with such conditions or whose household contacts have such conditions should not be vaccinated.
*Although MS is a disease of the immune system, it is not immunosuppressive in its action, and doesn't create a weakened immune system. Therefore, having MS is not automatically a contraindication for the smallpox vaccine. In fact, any person who is exposed to smallpox-including those with MS-will be given a smallpox vaccination. We do know, however, that viral infections have the potential to cause exacerbations in people with MS, and people with MS are encouraged to avoid viral infections whenever possible.
Since the smallpox vaccine is a live-virus vaccine, no person with MS should be given it unless he or she has been directly exposed to the smallpox. This recommendation differs from recommendations concerning other, non-live vaccines such as those given for flu and hepatitis B. These are highly recommended for people with MS because: 1) they have not been found to increase the risk of onset or worsening of MS; and 2) they help prevent viral infections that could prove quite serious for persons with MS.
No person with MS or family member of a person with MS should receive a non-emergency smallpox vaccination without consulting the treating physician.
Revised November 6, 2002
Unfortunately, there's no good reason to wait until 2004. Between the "unlicensed" doses and the new stock, there's about enough smallpox vaccine to start now. Offer the old stock as boosters to those already vaccinated once.
Am I the only one bothered by this date? I don't suppose Saddam and Osama will hold off until we get our vaccine supply built up, will they?
But for the lunatic fringe to insist that nobody be vaccinated is pure Luddite thought.
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