The
smallpox vaccine was the first successful
vaccineA vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism...
to be developed. The process of vaccination was discovered by
Edward JennerEdward Jenner was an English scientist who studied his natural surroundings in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. Jenner is widely credited as the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, and is sometimes referred to as the 'Father of Immunology'...
in 1796, who acted upon his observation that milkmaids who caught the
cowpoxCowpox is a disease of the skin that is caused by a virus known as the Cowpox virus. The pox is related to the vaccinia virus, and got its name from dairymaids touching the udders of infected cows. The ailment manifests itself in the form of red blisters and is transmitted by touch from infected...
virus did not catch
smallpoxSmallpox is an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning spotted, or varus, meaning "pimple"...
. Prior to wide-spread vaccination, mortality rates in individuals with smallpox were high—up to 35% in some cases.
Pre-vaccination history
Before the introduction of a vaccine, the mortality of the severe form of smallpox—variola major—was very high. Historical records show that a method of
inducing immunityImmunity against infections that can cause serious illness is generally beneficial. Since Pasteur provided support for a germ theory of infectious disease, we have increasingly induced immunity against a widening range of diseases to prevent the associated risks from the wild infections...
was already known. A process called
inoculationInoculation is the placement of something to where it will grow or reproduce, and is most commonly used in respect of the introduction of a serum, vaccine, or antigenic substance into the body of a human or animal, especially to produce or boost immunity to a specific disease; but also can be used...
, also known as insufflation or
variolation was practiced in
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
as early as 1000 BC.. This interpretation is disputed, however: other investigators contend the ancient
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
medical texts of India do not describe these techniques. The first clear reference to smallpox inoculation was made by the
ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
author Wan Quan (1499–1582) in his
Douzhen xinfa (痘疹心法) published in 1549. Inoculation for smallpox does not appear to have been widespread in China until the reign era of the
Longqing EmperorThe Longqing Emperor was the 12th emperor of the Ming dynasty in China between 1567-1572. His era name means "Great celebration". Born Zhu Zaihou, he was the Jiajing Emperor's son...
(r. 1567–1572) during the
Ming DynastyThe Ming Dynasty , or Empire of the Great Ming , was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history," was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
. In China powdered smallpox scabs were blown up the noses of the healthy. The patients would then develop a mild case of the disease and from then on were immune to it. The technique did have a 0.5-2% mortality rate, but that was considerably less than the 20-30% mortality rate of the disease itself.
Variolation was also practiced throughout the latter half of the 17th century by physicians in
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
, Persia, and
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
. In 1714 and 1716 two reports of the Turkish method of inoculation were made to the
Royal SocietyThe Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, or even the Royal, is a learned society for science that was founded in 1660 and is considered by most to be the oldest such society still in existence...
in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, by Emmanuel Timoni, a doctor affiliated with the British Embassy in Istanbul, and Jacob Pylarini. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador, is widely credited with introducing the process to Great Britain in 1721. The procedure had been performed on her son and daughter, aged 5 and 4 respectively. They both recovered quickly. In 1721, an epidemic of smallpox hit London and left the
British Royal FamilyImage:Roy-fam-2007.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Members of the Royal Family gathered for a dinner celebrating the 60th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh Image:Roy-fam-2007.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Members of the Royal Family gathered for a dinner...
in fear. Reading of Lady Wortley Montagu’s efforts, they wanted to use inoculation on themselves. Doctors told them that it was a dangerous procedure, so they decided to try it on other people first. The test subjects they used were condemned prisoners. The doctors inoculated the prisoners and all of them recovered in a couple of weeks. So assured, the British royal family inoculated themselves and reassured the English people that it was safe.
Stimulated by a severe epidemic, variolation was first employed in North America in 1721. The practice had been known in Boston since 1706, when
Cotton MatherCotton Mather . A.B. 1678 , A.M. 1681; honorary doctorate 1710 , was a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer. Cotton Mather is often remembered for his connection to the Salem witch trials...
(of Salem witch trial fame) discovered that his slave, Onesimus had been inoculated while still in Africa and that many slaves imported to Boston had also received inoculations. The practice was, at first, widely criticized. However a limited trial showed that 6 deaths occurred out of 244 who were vaccinated (2.5%) while 844 out of 5980 died of natural disease, and the process was widely adopted throughout the colonies. By 1777
George WashingtonGeorge Washington was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and served as the first President of the United States of America...
, who initially hesitated to have his
Revolutionary WarThe American Revolutionary War , also sometimes known as the American War of Independence, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen united former British colonies in North America, and concluded in a global war between several European great powers...
troops inoculated during a smallpox outbreak writing, “should We inoculate generally, the Enemy, knowing it, will certainly take Advantage of our Situation;”, eventually ordered mandatory inoculation of all troops and recruits who had not had the disease.
This technique was documented as having a mortality rate of only one in a thousand. Two years after Kennedy's description appeared, March 1718, Dr. Charles Maitland successfully inoculated the five-year-old son of the British ambassador to the Turkish court under orders from the ambassador's wife
Lady Mary Wortley MontaguThe Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from Turkey, which have been described by Billie Melman as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient”.-Life:Lady Mary...
, who four years later introduced the practice to England.
An account from letter by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Sarah Chiswell, dated 1 April 1717, from the Turkish Embassy describes this treatment:
The small-pox so fatal and so general amongst us is here entirely harmless by the invention of ingrafting (which is the term they give it). There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation. Every autumn in the month of September, when the great heat is abated, people send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox. They make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox and asks what veins you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch) and puts into the vein as much venom as can lye upon the head of her needle, and after binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins. . . . The children or young patients play together all the rest of the day and are in perfect health till the eighth. Then the fever begins to seize them and they keep their beds two days, very seldom three. They have very rarely above twenty or thirty in their faces, which never mark, and in eight days time they are as well as before the illness. . . . There is no example of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am very well satisfied of the safety of the experiment since I intend to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it if I knew any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of their revenue for the good of mankind, but that distemper is too beneficial to them not to expose to all their resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it. Perhaps if I live to return I may, however, have courage to war with them.
Early vaccination
In the early empirical days of vaccination, prior to Pasteur's work on establishing a germ theory and Lister's on antisepsis and asepsis there was considerable cross-infection. One of the early vaccinators is thought to have contaminated the cowpox matter—the vaccine—with smallpox matter (he worked in a smallpox hospital) and this produced essentially variolation. Other vaccine material was not reliably derived from Cowpox, but from other skin eruptions of cows
http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/london2001/august2001/18aug2001c/. In modern times an effective scientific model and controlled production were important in reducing these causes of apparent failure or iatrogenic illness.
Some of the earliest
statisticalStatistics is a branch of mathematics concerned with collecting and interpreting data. According to other definitions, it is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. Statisticians improve the quality of data with the...
and
epidemiologicalEpidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations, and serves as the foundation and logic of interventions made in the interest of public health and preventive medicine...
studies were performed by
James JurinJames Jurin FRS FRCP was an English scientist and physician, particularly remembered for his early work in capillary action and in the epidemiology of smallpox vaccination...
in 1727 and
Daniel BernoulliDaniel Bernoulli was a Dutch-Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is particularly remembered for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, especially fluid mechanics, and for his pioneering work in probability and statistics...
in 1766.. Another early account was Dr Fewster's 1765 paper in the London Medical Society, entitled ""Cow pox and its ability to prevent smallpox". He reported that variolation induced no reaction in persons who had had cowpox. Dr. Rolph, another Gloucestershire physician, stated that all experienced physicians of the time were aware of this.
At the age of thirteen, Jenner was apprenticed to Dr. Ludlow in Sodbury. He observed that people who caught cowpox while working with cows were known not to catch smallpox. He assumed a causal connection. The idea was not taken up by Dr. Ludlow at that time. After Jenner returned from medical school in London, a smallpox epidemic struck his home town of
BerkeleyBerkeley is a town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It lies in the Vale of Berkeley between the east bank of the River Severn and the M5 motorway within the Stroud administrative district. The town is noted for Berkeley Castle where the imprisoned Edward II was murdered.- Geography...
, England. He advised the local cow workers to be inoculated. The farmers told him that cowpox prevented smallpox. This confirmed his childhood suspicion, and he studied cowpox further, presenting a paper on it to his local medical society.
Perhaps there was already an informal public understanding of some connection between disease resistance and working with cows. The “beautiful
milkmaidA milkmaid or milk maid is a girl or woman employed to milk cows. She also used the milk to prepare dairy products such as cream, butter, and cheese...
” seems to have been a frequent image in the art and literature of this period. But we know for a fact: In the years following 1770 there were at least six people in England and Germany (Sevel, Jensen,
JestyBenjamin Jesty was a farmer at Yetminster in Dorset, England, famous for his early experiment in inoculating against smallpox using cowpox....
1774, Rendall, Plett 1791), who tested successfully the possibility of using the cowpox vaccine as an immunization for smallpox in humans. In 1796 Sarah Nelmes, a local milkmaid, contracted cowpox and went to Jenner for treatment. Jenner took the opportunity to test his theory. He inoculated James Phipps, the eight-year-old son of his gardener, not with smallpox but with cowpox. After an extremely weak bout of cowpox, James recovered. Jenner then tried to infect James with smallpox but nothing happened—the boy was immune to smallpox.
Jenner reported his observations to the Royal Society. Further work was suggested, and Jenner published a series of 23 cases, including his son Edward, none suffered severely from smallpox. Two years later a society to oppose vaccination had been established in Boston, Massachusetts — an indication of rapid spread and deep interest. By 1800 Jenner’s work had been published in all of the major European languages. The process was performed all over Europe and the United States. The death rate was close to zero with the process, which became known as
vaccinationVaccination is the administration of antigenic material to produce immunity to a disease. Vaccines can prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by a pathogen. Vaccination is generally considered to be the most effective and cost-effective method of preventing infectious diseases...
and was continued to around 1974 in the UK. A typical death rate at that time was roughly one per million, making vaccination against smallpox with
vacciniaVaccinia virus is a large, complex, enveloped virus belonging to the poxvirus family. It has a linear, double-stranded DNA genome approximately 190 kbp in length, and which encodes for approximately 250 genes. The dimensions of the virion are roughly 360 × 270 × 250 nm, with a weight of...
the most dangerous immunisation widely provided in modern times. Thanks to the development of the smallpox
vaccineA vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism...
, the disease was officially
eradicatedEradication is the reduction of an infectious disease's prevalence in the global human or animal host population to zero. A number of world organizations together with local governments are working to fully eradicate various diseases...
in 1979.
The
Balmis ExpeditionThe Balmis Expedition was a three year mission to the Americas led by Dr Francisco Javier de Balmis with the aim of giving thousands the smallpox vaccine. He set off from La Coruña on 30 November 1803...
(1803) carried the vaccine to Spanish America, the
PhilippinesThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
and China under commission of the Spanish Crown.
Some years before Dr. Jenner,
Benjamin JestyBenjamin Jesty was a farmer at Yetminster in Dorset, England, famous for his early experiment in inoculating against smallpox using cowpox....
, a
farmerA farmer is a person who raises living organisms for food or raw materials.- Definition :The term farmer usually applies to a person who grows field crops, and/or manages orchards or vineyards, or raises livestock or poultry such as chicken and cows...
at
YetminsterYetminster is a village in north west Dorset, England, five miles south west of Sherborne. The village has a population of 1,095 . It is served by a railway station on the Heart of Wessex Line....
in
DorsetDorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town has been Dorchester since at least 1305, situated in the south of the county at . Between its extreme points Dorset measures from east to west and north to south, and has an area of...
(he later moved to and is buried at
Worth MatraversWorth Matravers is a village and civil parish in the English county of Dorset. The village is situated on the cliffs west of Swanage. It comprises limestone cottages and farm houses and is built around a pond, which is a regular feature on postcards of the Isle of Purbeck.The civil parish stretches...
) is recorded as observing the two milkmaids living with his family to have been immune to smallpox and then inoculating his family with cowpox to protect them from smallpox. This was done in 1774 and can be found with Crookshank's History and Pathology of Vaccination, London 1889, vol. 1, p.110ff. But the question of who first initiated smallpox inoculation/vaccination can not be answered properly, as there is in the sources the exact date and time only for the predecessor Plett (1791), but not for Sevel, Jensen and Rendall.
Louis T. Wright, an African-American and Harvard medical school graduate (1915), introduced intradermal vaccination for smallpox for the soldiers while serving in the Army during
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
.
Eradication
By 1977, smallpox, long considered to be the most deadly and persistent human pathogenic disease, was eradicated by the
World Health OrganizationThe World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health...
. This was accomplished through a massive, worldwide outbreak search and
vaccinationVaccination is the administration of antigenic material to produce immunity to a disease. Vaccines can prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by a pathogen. Vaccination is generally considered to be the most effective and cost-effective method of preventing infectious diseases...
program. However, the
variolaSmallpox is an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning spotted, or varus, meaning "pimple"...
virus that led to the death of 300 million in the 20th century alone was not completely exterminated with the disease it caused. Three known repositories of the virus were left, one in Birmingham, England which was later destroyed after an accidental escape from containment caused the death of
Janet ParkerJanet Parker was the last known person to die from smallpox. She was a medical photographer and worked in the Anatomy department of University of Birmingham Medical School. Parker died after being exposed to the smallpox virus which was grown in a research laboratory, on the floor below the...
, and two still remaining at the Centers for Disease Control in
Atlanta, GeorgiaAtlanta is the capital and most populous city in the state of Georgia, as well as the urban core of one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States....
and the
State Research Center of Virology and BiotechnologyThe State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR, also known as the Vector Institute, is a highly sophisticated biological research center in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia. It is roughly analogous to both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Army Chemical...
in
Koltsovo, RussiaKoltsovo is an urban-type settlement in Novosibirsky District of Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia, located from the center of Novosibirsk. Population: 11,479 ; Municipally, Koltsovo is incorporated as an urban okrug...
. Each of those States reports that the repositories are retained for possible anti-
bio-weaponryBiological warfare , also known as germ warfare, is the use of pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, other disease-causing biological agents, or the toxins produced by them as biological weapons ....
research and against the possibility that some obscure reservoir of natural smallpox may be discovered in the future.
It is important from the perspective of bioterrorism to note that some countries, including North Korea, did not participate in the WHO eradication program, choosing instead to mount their own program. There is no information at all to suggest that North Korea, which like many countries at the time was reported to have a bioweapons program, eliminated its samples of the virus.
Post-eradication vaccination
The vaccine consists of the virus which causes the related, yet far milder,
cowpoxCowpox is a disease of the skin that is caused by a virus known as the Cowpox virus. The pox is related to the vaccinia virus, and got its name from dairymaids touching the udders of infected cows. The ailment manifests itself in the form of red blisters and is transmitted by touch from infected...
disease; this virus is appropriately named
vacciniaVaccinia virus is a large, complex, enveloped virus belonging to the poxvirus family. It has a linear, double-stranded DNA genome approximately 190 kbp in length, and which encodes for approximately 250 genes. The dimensions of the virion are roughly 360 × 270 × 250 nm, with a weight of...
, from the Latin
vaca which means cow. This vaccine has functional viruses in it which improves its effectiveness but, unfortunately, causes serious complications for people with impaired
immune systemAn immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease by identifying and killing pathogens and tumour cells. It detects a wide variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, and needs to distinguish them from the organism's own...
s (for example
chemotherapyChemotherapy, in its most general sense, is the treatment of disease by chemicals especially by killing micro-organisms or cancerous cells. In popular usage, it refers to antineoplastic drugs used to treat cancer or the combination of these drugs into a cytotoxic standardized treatment regimen...
and
AIDSAcquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus ....
patients, and people with
eczemaEczema is a disease in a form of dermatitis, or inflammation of the epidermis. The term eczema is broadly applied to a range of persistent skin conditions. These include dryness and recurring skin rashes that are characterized by one or more of these symptoms: redness, skin edema , itching and...
) and is not yet considered safe for pregnant women. A woman planning on conceiving within one month should not receive the smallpox immunization until after the pregnancy. In the event of an outbreak the woman should delay pregnancy if possible. A small, yet significant, percentage of healthy individuals also suffer adverse side-effects which, in rare cases, include permanent neurological damage. Vaccines that only contain attenuated vaccinia viruses (an attenuated virus is one in which the pathogenicity has been decreased through
serial passageSerial passage is a virus attenuation technique developed originally by Louis Pasteur in the 1880's. It is similar to selective breeding, and can be used to create an attenuated strain of a virus to develop vaccines, or to increase the virulence of a viral strain in order to create epidemics.The...
) have been proposed but some researchers have questioned the possible effectiveness of such a vaccine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CDCCenters for Disease Control and Prevention is a United States government public health agency.CDC is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:-Government:* California Department of Corrections, the US state of California's prison system...
, "vaccination within 3 days of exposure will prevent or significantly lessen the severity of smallpox symptoms in the vast majority of people. Vaccination 4 to 7 days after exposure likely offers some protection from disease or may modify the severity of disease." This, along with vaccinations of so-called first-responders, is the current plan of action being devised by the
United States Department of Homeland SecurityThe United States Department of Homeland Security is a Cabinet department of the United States federal government with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the U.S...
(including FEMA, now part of DHS) in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The vaccine can cause complications for those around those who are vaccinated. People who get the vaccine will shed virus particles through vesicles on their skin and possibly through their respiratory tract. Infections in close and not-so-close contacts can ensue. The current plan to vaccinate first responders has the potential to cause infection in the most vulnerable section of the population, the hospitalized ill. Family contacts are also susceptible, although they are less vulnerable because their immune systems are presumably intact. Secondary infection can cause skin disease, pulmonary disease and rarely, neurologic disease.
As of June 21, 2003, a scientific advisory panel had issued a recommendation against further vaccination of first responders because a significant number of those vaccinated suffered heart problems, notably
pericarditisPericarditis is an inflammation of the pericardium .-Classification:Pericarditis can be classified according to the composition of the inflammatory exudate.Types include:* serous* purulent* fibrinous...
and
myocarditisIn medicine , myocarditis is inflammation of heart muscle . It resembles a heart attack but coronary arteries are not blocked....
.
In May 2007, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted unanimously that a new live virus vaccine produced by Acambis,
ACAM2000ACAM2000 is a smallpox vaccine developed by . It was approved for use in the United States by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on 31 August 2007. It contains live vaccinia virus, cloned from the same strain used in an earlier vaccine, Dryvax...
, is both safe and effective for use in persons at high risk of exposure to smallpox virus. However, due to the high rate of serious adverse effects, the vaccine will only be made available to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (a part of the
United States Department of Health and Human ServicesThe United States Department of Health and Human Services is a Cabinet department of the United States government with the goal of protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is "Improving the health, safety, and well-being of America"...
) for the
Strategic National StockpileThe Strategic National Stockpile is the United States' national repository of antibiotics, vaccines, chemical antidotes, and antitoxins. In the event of a national emergency, the SNS has the capability to supplement and re-supply local health authorities that may be overwhelmed by the crisis, with...
.
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/07/briefing/2007-4292B2-00-index.htm http://www.acambis.com/default.asp?id=1893
The main problem with developing a new, safer vaccine, is that, barring a bioterrorist attack on immunized individuals, its effectiveness cannot be tested on humans, and other animals do not naturally contract smallpox.
MonkeyA monkey is any cercopithecoid or platyrrhine primate. All primates that are not prosimians or apes are monkeys. The 264 known extant monkey species represent two of the three groupings of simian primates...
s at USAMRIID research facilities have been infected, but tests on animals that are artificially infected with a human disease are notorious for giving false or misleading results. To demonstrate safety and effectiveness, human trials always have to confirm data obtained from animal testing.
In the United States the smallpox vaccine is the only FDA-approved treatment for smallpox and
monkeypoxMonkeypox is an exotic infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus. The disease was first identified in laboratory monkeys, thus providing it with its name, but in its natural state it seems to infect rodents more than primates...
. As with smallpox, vaccination after infection is effective if the vaccine is given before symptoms develop.
Currently, the United States Air Force has made it mandatory that any Airman deploying to the Middle East must receive the smallpox vaccination before leaving stateside. The same is true of the U.S. Army, and any US Marine being deployed outside the contiguous United States (OCONUS), as well as any Marine or US Navy sailor being deployed ship side. It is also a requirement for all Department of Defense employees and contractors traveling to the United States Central Command's Area of Responsibility (CENTCOM AOR).
http://www.armyg1.army.mil/MilitaryPersonnel/PPG/Hyperlinks/ADOBE%20Files/CENTCOM%20MOD%209.pdf
Vaccine stockpiles
In late 2001, the governments of the United States and the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
considered stockpiling smallpox vaccines, even while assuring the public that there was no "specific or credible" threat of bioterrorism. Later, the director of State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR warned that terrorists could easily lure underpaid former Soviet researchers to turn over samples to be used as a weapon, saying "All you need is a sick fanatic to get to a populated place. The world health system is completely unprepared for this."
In the United Kingdom, controversy erupted over the company contracted to supply the vaccine due to the political connections of its owner, Paul Drayson, and questions over the choice of vaccine strain being different from that used in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Plans for mass vaccinations in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
stalled as the necessity and undesirable side-effects came into question.
See also
- Kinepox
- Benjamin Waterhouse
Benjamin Waterhouse was a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School. He is most well known for being the first doctor to test the smallpox vaccine in the United States, which he carried out on his own family...
first doctor to test the smallpox vaccine in the United States.
- Vaccination Act
The UK Vaccination Acts of 1840, 1853 and 1898 reflect the continuing argument over vaccination policy in the United Kingdom. Similar legislation was passed in the USA and other countries....
- Eczema vaccinatum
Eczema vaccinatum is a rare severe adverse reaction to smallpox vaccination.It is characterized by serious local or disseminated, umbilicated, vesicular, crusting skin rashes in the face, neck, chest, abdomen, upper limbs and hands, caused by widespread infection of the skin in people with previous...
External links