Smallpox

U.S. intelligence has concluded that four nations outside of the United States -- Iraq, North Korea, Russia and France -- probably possess hidden samples of the smallpox virus, a U.S. official said Monday. U.S. officials worry that Iraq and North Korea could develop potent biological weapons with their samples, and Russian laxity could allow other nations to obtain the deadly disease for use as a weapon.

The decision to begin widespread vaccination for smallpox, starting with 500,000 military personnel and an equal number of "first-responder" health-care workers, will probably cause a few hundred serious adverse reactions and perhaps some deaths -- a dark side of vaccination unseen in the world for 25 years. Most people tolerate the smallpox vaccine with only minor effects, such as fever and body aches.

Billie Raney was 21 when she stood on the sidewalk with her three grown sisters, watching morticians drag their mother out of the family home, still wrapped in the sheets in which she had succumbed to smallpox. Lillian Barber, then 43, was the only person to die in the last smallpox outbreak in the United States, which infected eight known victims in the Rio Grande Valley in 1949. The survivors are now retired pastors, tractor salesmen, grandmothers and grandfathers.

The approval of a new vaccine against smallpox was announced by the Food and Drug Administration, which says the shots could be made quickly if the virtually extinct virus reappears. The vaccine, ACAM2000, is intended to inoculate people at high risk of exposure to smallpox, a highly contagious disease. The FDA said the vaccine also could be used in the event of a bioterrorist attack.

Top aides to President Bush looked at ways they might deal with a possible smallpox attack, a drill that included reviewing some lessons from the response to Hurricane Katrina. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there was no evidence a smallpox attack was imminent. The drill was one in a series of exercises the administration is holding to look at preparedness for potential public-health disasters. Officials held a similar drill in December on pandemic flu.

Computer Sciences Corp. won U.S. regulatory approval of a treatment for people who develop rare, dangerous reactions to the smallpox vaccination. People with weakened immune systems or other skin problems can develop infections from the smallpox inoculation because it contains a live virus. El Segundo-based Computer Sciences' product, called Vaccinia Immune Globulin Intravenous, or VIGIV, contains antibodies to fight such reactions, the Food and Drug Administration said.

Nearly 1,400 people walked by tranquil water fountains and statues of biblical figures at the Crystal Cathedral on Wednesday, just before they passed a sign reading, "Welcome to the Smallpox Exercise." The Orange County Health Care Agency, in conjunction with the county's American Red Cross chapter and other organizations, staged the mock smallpox immunization drill at the cathedral in Garden Grove; no one was actually given the vaccine.

Smallpox is a highly contagious viral disease that killed untold millions until it was officially eradicated in 1979. But fears after the September 2001 attacks that it might be used as a biological weapon sparked a U.S. effort to ensure there was enough vaccine. Now researchers have reported that heavily diluted doses of the existing vaccine remain effective, which means the U.S. stockpile of the vaccine can be stretched if needed.

WASHINGTON -- Just days before President Bush's smallpox vaccination program was originally set to begin, the number of front-line health-care workers expected to volunteer to be inoculated has shrunk dramatically and some states are still months away from launching their campaigns.

Government health officials insisted Friday that President Bush's smallpox vaccination program would move forward as planned, despite a drumbeat of calls to slow down.

"Eleventh Hour" "Containment" episode CBS, Nov. 6 The premise: Dr. Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell) is a biophysicist and a science advisor to the U.S. government who investigates crises. An old friend, Dr. Calvert Rigdon (Oded Fehr), virologist and director of the Pennsylvania Health Department, asks Hood to come to a demolition site to help investigate an infectious outbreak.

The approval of a new vaccine against smallpox was announced by the Food and Drug Administration, which says the shots could be made quickly if the virtually extinct virus reappears. The vaccine, ACAM2000, is intended to inoculate people at high risk of exposure to smallpox, a highly contagious disease. The FDA said the vaccine also could be used in the event of a bioterrorist attack.

Top aides to President Bush looked at ways they might deal with a possible smallpox attack, a drill that included reviewing some lessons from the response to Hurricane Katrina. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there was no evidence a smallpox attack was imminent. The drill was one in a series of exercises the administration is holding to look at preparedness for potential public-health disasters. Officials held a similar drill in December on pandemic flu.

Computer Sciences Corp. won U.S. regulatory approval of a treatment for people who develop rare, dangerous reactions to the smallpox vaccination. People with weakened immune systems or other skin problems can develop infections from the smallpox inoculation because it contains a live virus. El Segundo-based Computer Sciences' product, called Vaccinia Immune Globulin Intravenous, or VIGIV, contains antibodies to fight such reactions, the Food and Drug Administration said.

Smallpox is a highly contagious viral disease that killed untold millions until it was officially eradicated in 1979. But fears after the September 2001 attacks that it might be used as a biological weapon sparked a U.S. effort to ensure there was enough vaccine. Now researchers have reported that heavily diluted doses of the existing vaccine remain effective, which means the U.S. stockpile of the vaccine can be stretched if needed.

Nearly 1,400 people walked by tranquil water fountains and statues of biblical figures at the Crystal Cathedral on Wednesday, just before they passed a sign reading, "Welcome to the Smallpox Exercise." The Orange County Health Care Agency, in conjunction with the county's American Red Cross chapter and other organizations, staged the mock smallpox immunization drill at the cathedral in Garden Grove; no one was actually given the vaccine.

An experimental smallpox inoculation using a weakened form of the vaccinia virus may protect people from biological attacks and could also be used on those with damaged immune systems, researchers said Wednesday. The experimental vaccine protected monkeys against a virus related to smallpox without causing some of the dangerous side effects of the older vaccine, the U.S. researchers reported in the journals Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The genetic quirk that enables some people to be resistant, or even immune, to the deadly AIDS virus has long been considered a legacy of the bubonic plague, which swept Europe seven centuries ago. Two UC Berkeley scientists found such a connection highly unlikely, however -- the plague simply hadn't been around long enough to cause a widespread DNA alteration, they believed.

Many of the 120 million Americans who were vaccinated against smallpox more than 30 years ago may still have enough immunity against the disease to protect them from infection should the virus ever be used as a biological weapon. That is the conclusion of a study, published Sunday, that examined the immune systems of more than 100 people immunized against smallpox before 1972, when that vaccination ceased being routine for American children.

The Bush administration's smallpox vaccination plan is too narrowly focused to adequately protect Americans from bioterrorism, and the vaccine itself is too risky to be made widely available to the public, a scientific advisory panel reported Tuesday. "Smallpox is not the only threat to the nation's health, and vaccination is not the only tool for preparedness," said Dr. Brian L.