Smallpox
Contents
Bush administration "plan"
The smallpox vaccination plan announced by President George W. Bush in December 2002 -- "to protect Americans in the event of a terrorist attack" -- was "ceased" in October 2003 after only "a fraction of the expected number of health workers [had] been immunized and the much ballyhooed program [was] dead in the water," USA Today reported October 16, 2003.
The first phase of the smallpox vaccination program was "to be mandatory smallpox vaccinations for half a million military personnel, and voluntary vaccinations for another half a million 'first responders' -- the healthcare workers needed to carry out emergency vaccination and treat victims during an outbreak." [1]
"That number was derived by multiplying the 2000-odd emergency rooms in the US by the staff needed to run them, says D.A. Henderson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who led the successful worldwide smallpox eradication campaign in the 1970s and helped devise the US plan. 'State health officers counted 420,000 people they would want to vaccinate to provide some reasonable standard of emergency care.'" [2]
"But doctors and nurses stayed away in droves," the Washington Post reported December 17, 2002. "The vaccine is a live virus that can spread from person to person and might have harmed patients, especially those with impaired immunity. Major hospitals, such as the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, refused to have any of their staff vaccinated."
"The second phase, in which the vaccine was to be offered to millions more healthcare workers and the public, was quietly shelved by the CDC in June [2003], after recently vaccinated soldiers and civilians developed complications. There were 52 cases of pericardial or heart inflammation. There were also other heart problems, including 8 heart attacks, 3 of them fatal, though this was in the normal range." [3]
Question
Who profits from the needless manufacture and storage of this needless vaccine?
Publications
Smallpox and its eradication was published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1988 (ISBN 92-4-156110-6). It contains illustrative material both from WHO and from other published sources, as indicated. In the case of the latter, the copyright holders granted WHO permission to reproduce their material in this book.
Stocks of Smallpox and its eradication were exhausted some years ago and the book is now out of print. In view of current concern about the threat of smallpox, WHO has decided with some urgency to make the book available on the World Wide Web. WHO requests the understanding of the copyright holders of the illustrations from other published sources and invites those who object to their material being made available in this way to contact us. [4]
External links
- Report by the Institute of Medicine: here; here; and here.
- Jeremy Scahill, "Germ Warfare: The Second Front of Scooter Libby, Judy Miller and Dick Cheney," Common Dreams, November 17, 2005.
