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Smallpox as a Weapon
In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner (a country
doctor in England) heard of a milkmaid who claimed she could
not catch smallpox because she had previously contracted
cowpox. Jenner noted that there were those who milked cows
and did not get smallpox---even when repeatedly exposed.
He decided to undertake a daring---by
today’s standards, unethical---experiment. He infected a
young boy with cowpox in hopes of preventing smallpox. After
the boy recovered from cowpox, he intentionally infected the
boy with smallpox by injecting pus from a smallpox lesion
directly under his skin. As predicted, the boy did not
contract smallpox.
Jenner’s process came to be called
“vaccination,” derived from “vacca,” the Latin word for
cow. Through the works of Jenner and a highly effective
world wide humanitarian effort in the 1960’s, small pox was
eradicated.
Before 1972, the smallpox vaccination
was mandatory for all citizens in the U.S. There has not
been a case of smallpox in the U.S. since the 1940’s and the
last reported case was in Bangladesh in 1975.
In 1977, the World Health Organization
(WHO) declared the virus officially eradicated. Samples of
the virus still exist at the Centers for Disease Control in
Atlanta and at a Russian Virology lab
in Siberia. The U.S. government however, suspects other
countries such as Iraq and Iran have secret stockpiles of
the virus and organizations such as the al Qaeda are trying
to obtain them as well for use in a weapon of mass
destruction.
The smallpox virus is commonly spread
person-to-person making, the spread of this highly
contagious disease relatively slow. Even if it was used as a
weapon and thousands of citizens were exposed, the
incubation period is 10 to 14 days allows enough time to
vaccinate those exposed.
After exposure to the virus, flu-like
symptoms, such as muscle aches and a high fever, start to
show up in10 to 14 days. These symptoms are followed by a
pimple-like rash two to four days latter. A person is not
considered to be infectious until symptoms occur.
Should a bioterrorist use such a
weapon, medical personnel would have to recognize these
symptoms and rapidly diagnose smallpox in order to contain
the spread of this highly contagious virus. If suspicious
cases were detected, the FBI, the CDC and the state health
departments would have to be notified immediately. Patients
would then need to be placed in isolation and the area
quarantined with plans to vaccinate those in the vicinity.
About 20 to 40 percent of smallpox
cases are fatal. Though modern medicine and the use of newer
antiviral agents, the actual fatality rates may be
significantly reduced.
The United States has at least 7 to 14
million vaccines available, with the goal of more than 250
million vaccines to be available by year’s end, 2002. The
population on the whole would not be vaccinated unless an
attack makes this a necessity. The old vaccination is still
considered highly effective and relatively safe, however,
the risk of serious illness from receiving the old
vaccination is 1 in 18,000. At this time, the risk of
obtaining the vaccination outweighs the risk of contracting
the virus.
The greatest success story in modern
medicine has been the use of vaccinations to control and
eliminate disease---a tribute to the English physician who
started it all more than 200 years ago. The tragic irony,
however, is that a virus once thought to have been
successfully eliminated is now poised to become a threat to
mankind once again.
Content
of articles can only be used with writer attribution to Dr.
Kevin Weiland.
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