|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
Rumsfeld Requires Smallpox Shots for Military; for Public They're Optional NewsMax.com WiresWASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has ordered smallpox vaccinations for the U.S. military, he said Thursday. President Bush has decided to make the risky but effective shots available to the public. "It's been through the process at DOD, and we've coordinated it with the White House, and they are aware of it," Rumsfeld told CNN. President Bush will announce the program today, and shots are expected to begin in January, the Associated Press reported Thursday. "The shots will be mandatory for about 500,000 military personnel and recommended for another half-million who work in hospital emergency rooms and on special smallpox response teams." The general public will be offered the vaccine, but not encouraged to get it, when large stockpiles are licensed, probably early in 2004, according to AP. Unlike anthrax, for which there is also a controversial military vaccination program, smallpox is contagious and kills one-third of its victims, usually within two weeks. Some members of the military have resigned because of the mandatory anthrax shots. Feast Day for Trial Lawyers The Centers for Disease Control estimates that one or two people in each 1 million people who receive the vaccine will die as a result of the treatment. The Pentagon is afraid that smallpox, which was deemed "eradicated" worldwide and vaccinations for which were suspended in 1980, could be used as a biological weapon on the battlefield. There are also concerns it could be used against the civilian population. Small reserves of smallpox cultures were kept alive in the United States and Soviet Union. U.S. intelligence fears Russian scientists might have stolen Soviet strains and sold them on the black market. There were smallpox outbreaks in Germany, Russia and Yugoslavia in the early 1970s. The Russian outbreak was a result of smallpox field testing on the Aral Sea. A technician crossed the area of the test and contracted the disease. She spread it to 10 people, three of whom died. The Soviet government quarantined the city and vaccinated its 50,000 inhabitants, containing the outbreak. UPI Quotes NewsMax's Alibek Tape Dr. Ken Alibek, a former Soviet scientist who defected to the United States in 1992 and has been a primary source for information about the Russian program, told NewsMax.com's Off-the-Record Club in a taped interview he has "little doubt" Iraq has smallpox. The smallpox vaccine would be unlikely to protect against a genetically engineered variant of the disease. Copyright 2002 by United Press International.
Off the Record with Dr. Ken Alibek: Get two for the price of one. All rights reserved.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: |
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2009 NewsMax.Com |