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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!

I am old enough to have been living and vaccinated back then, and yes, everybody knew that there was the slight chance that a vaccination could go bad. One occasionally might hear of such happening, but not much was made of it in the media. The media was not so adversarial in those days. This was still too close to the days of the FDR New Deal and WWII, and the attitude was that if the government felt that something had to be done for the public good, then the public (including the press) should get behind it, unless something went terribly wrong.

Getting a vaccination was a little like being a soldier. You knew that somebody might possibly die, but of course, that would always be somebody else, not you.

A good analogy is cobra anti-venin.
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Actually that sounded more like an extreme example both with its danger, and frequency to be given.

As for the "dangers" of the smallpox vaccine -- I bet all vaccines have dangers, yet childhood vaccines are mandatory against many diseases, which are not even close to fatal, merely inconvenient, like whopping cough, measles, etc. Not to mention just about any medication has that at least 1 in a million having a serious negative reaction. Have you read the insert on a "simple" anti-biotic lately, which people routinely get, because they have a minor infection.

Just about anything you do, has some risk.

The point you made about the question whether smallpox is a "real" danger is well taken. We may not be 100% certain, that it is. However, I am personally quite certain, that our government must be 100% certain that there is smallpox in the hands of Saddam and even Al Qaeda, they just don't want to come out and say so, to avoid mass panic. It's "never mind what they say, watch what they do": They would never have started to get all those vaccines ready, vaccinating the military, etc., if they weren't 100% certain of the threat and its seriousness.
And if these suicidal terrorists have it, do you think they would give a second thought to releasing it? Picture 100 terrorists putting smallpox aerosol into the air at airports, malls in a number of major cities. By the time it's discovered, tens of thousands would be ill, and given it to many others.

As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I think the threat of smallpox may not be as small, as we would like to think, and if it's there at all, we are all completely vulnerable. Smallpox wiped out some 500 million people in the twentieth century alone. I don't have my source at my finger tips, but you can do research and find the same info.

I think that is not fear-mongering, merely recognizing, that based on the evidence I see, smallpox today is indeed a clear and present danger.

The danger from the vaccine is minimal, as the article I posted show -- there were NO fatalities between 1948 to 1990, when it was given to the military.

You both have supplied excellent answers.

I really get a kick out of spetznaz's insights into some of these questions. You certainly have a unique perspective! LOL. I WAS around in the 70s, but even during my childhood (the 40s) people weren't afraid of Smallpox. I don't think anyone alive in America younger than 80 had ever seen the disease here or known anyone who died from it. But no one was afraid to take it. I remember lining up at school to get my booster. We welcomed the smallpox booster over the tetanus shot -- the former was a scratch, and the latter really hurt! One of my children reacted pretty harshly to the vaccine (1960) but the others really didn't even get a temperature from it.

One of my friends had an allergic child who could not take the vaccine. All of us young mothers tsk, tsked about it certain that the little girl was in danger. But my friend explained that there had been no cases for so long that it was more dangerous for her daughter to take the vaccine, than not. Besides everyone else was protected so the chances of her daughter getting sick were slim to none!

I've read that there were more deaths caused by smallpox in the aftermath of the American Revolution than were caused by fighting. Smallpox decimated whole villages, brought home by the returning soldiers.

FairOpinion has an astute take on the problem too. Because those with deficient immune systems will not be allowed the vaccine there seems to be a PC movement afoot to discourage everyone else from taking it.

It is interesting that in my AOL News today there was an announcement that the government has removed liability from health professionals who receive the vaccine and unwittingly pass the infection on to their unvaccinated patients. Since the person being vaccinated is actually mildly contagious for about three days afterward this may present a big problem when they start vaccinating emergency workers and health professionals.