Return-Path: <sentto-279987-3444-1004061456-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 [204.181.12.215] by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.7.4) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Thu, 25 Oct 2001 18:59:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 30188 invoked by uid 510); 26 Oct 2001 01:57:01 -0000 Received: from n5.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.55) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 26 Oct 2001 01:57:01 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-3444-1004061456-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.1.221] by n5.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 26 Oct 2001 01:57:36 -0000 X-Sender: fc@red.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 26 Oct 2001 01:57:36 -0000 Received: (qmail 66946 invoked from network); 26 Oct 2001 01:57:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by 10.1.1.221 with QMQP; 26 Oct 2001 01:57:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO red.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta1 with SMTP; 26 Oct 2001 01:57:35 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by red.all.net (8.11.2/8.11.2) id f9Q1vdm22215 for iwar@onelist.com; Thu, 25 Oct 2001 18:57:39 -0700 Message-Id: <200110260157.f9Q1vdm22215@red.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> X-Yahoo-Profile: fcallnet Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 18:57:39 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Subject: [iwar] [fc:U.S..Takes.Smallpox.Precautions.Amid.Anthrax.Scare] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit U.S. Takes Smallpox Precautions Amid Anthrax Scare By Maggie Fox Reuters WASHINGTON (Oct. 24) - By the seventh day, the baby in the photograph is barely recognizable. Her eyes are squeezed shut by the pustules that have not spared even the delicate eyelids and obscure her lips. Smallpox was one of the most horrific diseases known to humankind, and its official eradication in 1980 is one of the greatest successes of modern medicine. The child in the World Health Organization photograph was one of its last victims. Just two years ago, health experts were debating whether to destroy the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus. But bioterrorism experts won out, and instead research was launched on making a new and better vaccine, just in case smallpox was ever used as a weapon -- and the recent spate of letter-borne anthrax attacks in the United States has added a real-life urgency to what were theoretical concerns. ''Smallpox, because of its high case-fatality rates and transmissibility, now represents one of the most serious bioterrorist threats to the civilian population,'' Dr. Donald Henderson of Johns Hopkins University and colleagues wrote in a report on bioterrorism published in February. Anthrax is the only agent used in a series of mail attacks that have killed three people and sickened nine others since the Sept. 11 assaults on New York and Washington. But officials say they want to be ready for smallpox, just in case, and are escalating efforts to produce enough vaccine. The U.S. Health and Human Services department has asked companies to bid to produce 250 million doses of vaccine which, combined with current stocks of about 15 million doses and 54 million already on order from British-based Acambis, should be enough to cover the population. ''We plan to move quite quickly to select a company or companies that can produce the vaccine,'' HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said on Tuesday. ''We want 300 million doses so that every American can be assured there is a dose with his or her name on it.'' Rockville, Maryland-based BioReliance had already built new production facilities to manufacture smallpox vaccine under contract to Acambis and to the U.S. military before the attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In addition, trials are starting to see if the current stocks can be stretched by diluting them. Everyone in the United States was vaccinated before 1972, but people's immunity has almost certainly worn off. Very few people born after 1972 have been vaccinated and would quickly succumb to smallpox. Thompson said there were no plans to offer smallpox vaccine to the public now, but added the government would move quickly to vaccinate if it became clear someone had deliberately released the virus. NORTH KOREA, IRAQ MAY HAVE SMALLPOX Only the United States and Russia are supposed to have any samples of smallpox virus, but Ken Alibek, a former head of the Soviet Union's biological warfare program who now lives in the United States, says others do have it. ''We knew that North Korea was experimenting with smallpox in late '80s, early '90s,'' Alibek told Congress earlier this month. ''And we knew that Iraq was experimenting with camelpox as a good surrogate for smallpox.'' Smallpox virus could be sprayed from a cropduster, released in a bomb, or introduced the old-fashioned way, from person to person. In the mid 1700s, during the French and Indian wars, the British deliberately infected Indians with smallpox by giving them blankets that had been used by smallpox patients. ''It would be so easy to introduce it into the country and so hard to fight it,'' Dr. Richard Duma, head of infectious diseases at Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, and a member of the board of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said in a telephone interview. ''Microbes know no boundaries. They don't need passports.'' Smallpox kills 30 percent of infected victims and easily spreads from person to person -- both by touch and through the tiny droplets of saliva that everyone releases when sneezing, coughing or even speaking. It has an incubation period of 7 to 17 days and starts with a high fever that puts the patient right into bed. Victims have headaches and backaches, sometimes severe abdominal pain. OOZING PUSTULES COVER BODY Then the rash starts. Oozing pustules quickly form and cover the entire body. If the patient survives, these scab over and eventually leave deep, pitted scars. Death comes on the fifth or sixth day after the rash starts. Henderson, who led the worldwide vaccination effort that eradicated smallpox, says it would be hard to infect a lot of people person-to-person because the rash is such a giveaway. But Alibek disagrees. ''This is the only contagious infection in which people become contagious before the onset of symptoms,'' he told Congress. ''Unfortunately, we've seen many cases when monkeys became infectious the last day of the incubation period.'' There is no treatment for smallpox but a small California biotechnology company, Gilead, has a drug for a virus known as cytomegalovirus called cidofovir, which works in animals infected with pox viruses related to smallpox. Gilead said last week it had no plans to develop cidofovir, sold under the brand-name Vistide, as a treatment for smallpox. but Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, told reporters last week he was keeping an eye on it as a possibility. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-12-31 20:59:57 PST