Replies

How come we didn't hear scare stories about deaths and maiming from the small pox innoculations we all were required to take it up until the 1970s?

Is this a mutent virus? Because everybody's immunity has been diminished, will new vaccinations hit us harder than the ones we had as children?

-----
I am not a medical doctor, so this is not a professional answer. However, I have done a lot of reading and research.

It appears to me that for healthy people this is not any more dangerous than the "old" vaccine, it's the same as that.

Here is an article from the Washington Post, which addresses some of your questions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40356-2003Jan10.html

"From 1942 to 1990, when smallpox inoculations ceased for military personnel, the armed forces did not record a single fatality from the vaccine, records reviewed by The Washington Post show. The overall incidence of adverse reactions was so low that the military program continued years after experts counseled that there was no longer a reason to vaccinate, since smallpox had been eradicated worldwide.
The armed forces vaccine was made from the same strain of vaccinia virus, a cousin of the smallpox virus, that the government plans to use in the coming months to immunize as many as 11 million police officers, firefighters and medical workers who may be called upon to deal with a biological warfare attack."

I think the two real reasons some people (typically the liberals, curiously enough) oppose it, is that there are more people with compromised immunse systems (AIDS, HIV, those who have cancer, or had transplants) (those people could avoid taking the vaccine, that is no reason to deny making it available for everyone else, IMO), and the other reason is just plain political, they don't want to recognize that there is a threat.

How come we didn't hear scare stories about deaths and maiming from the small pox innoculations we all were required to take it up until the 1970s?

I am not a medical professional (and come think of it neither was i even alive during the 70s LOL) however i think a probable answer for not being inundated with scare stories about the vaccine was because back then smallpox was a real and present danger (instead of a nagging threat as it is today).

It was a dangerous mallady that had to be expunged no matter what, and hence there was a lot of emphasis on the vaccinations and innoculations. Furthermore if you think of it smallpox is a malaise that really messes up your face (if you survive)! That was also a major impetus since no one wanted to have a face full of pockmarks for life.

Thus there was more motivation to get vaccinated even if there were risks. Today small pox is just an open-ended question that could come to haunt us ...but at the same time may never pop up. Hence there is not so much motivation to get vaccinated, and thus the risk factors take pre-eminence over any advantages of vaccination.

A good analogy is cobra anti-venin. Over 10,000 people are killed in India every year by cobras alone (if you add in Banded Kraits and Russell Vipers the number becomes exponentially higher). In India it would be prudent to be injecting villagers in certain areas with cobra anti-venin every 2 weeks so as to hopefully build-up progressive resistance to neurotoxic venom! However the danger of anti-venin is 10% of people are allergic to it, and to that 10% the anti-venin is as dangerous and as potent as the venom itself! However in India that is a risk that can be negated.

However if in the US you started injecting the population with cobra anti-venin every fortnight the deaths (from those people lalergic to the anti venom) would not be worth it since the chance of getting bitten by a cobra (or any 'really dangerous' snakes.....for example those that are called 'Requiem snakes' such as the African Black Mamba and the Australian Taipan which are 70 and 80 times more venomous than a rattlesnake respectively...and that is why i do not include rattlesnakes and copperheads as 'really dangerous') is virtually zero! Thus the warnings would be given about the dangers of cobra anti-venin. However if somehow 500,000 cobras were to be brought to the US and released into the sewer systems of New York (in India there are tales of cobras coming into the house through the toilet) then you would see the warnings against anti-venin disappear and it would be given freely to everyone in NY to keep in their home.

In the same way until SmallPox becomes a real and present danger (instead of a potential improbable one) the warnigns against vaccination will stay. Just hope Small Pox stays in the nightmares of pessimists and is never used as a terrorist weapon!