-Caveat Lector- From http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/smallpox-usat.htm
}}}>Begin 11/08/2001 - Updated 11:55 AM ET Decades-old smallpox vaccinations may still protect By Rita Rubin, USA TODAY While many Americans worry that bioterrorists will strike with smallpox before the USA has enough vaccine, studies suggest that people immunized 50 years ago or more still have some protection. Researchers also say mass immunization probably wouldn't be necessary because smallpox is not as contagious as other bugs such as measles or the flu. "It's not going to be the Armageddon that some would have you believe," says smallpox expert James LeDuc of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In some countries, smallpox was eradicated after less than two-thirds of people were immunized, LeDuc says. Read more Resources Smallpox facts http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/10/24/smallpox-qa.htm Chat with Bioterror authors Thursday at 5:30 p.m. ET Chat transcript: Scourge author Jonathan Tucker More coverage: America on Alert Graphic A primer on symptoms, infections http://www.usatoday.com/graphics/news/gra/gbioterror/frame.htm When it comes to smallpox vaccine, the immune system appears to have a long memory. "Even if you're over 50 years old and saw the vaccine when you were a child, the risk of dying from infection is much less than if you've never seen the vaccine," LeDuc says. The United States stopped giving smallpox vaccinations in 1972, but the government wants to stockpile doses in case of an attack. LeDuc says the CDC this month will rewrite a section of its Web site to better explain the issue of residual immunity. Currently, the Web site states that smallpox vaccine protects for only three to five years. A 1913 report about a 1902-03 outbreak in Liverpool, England, provides the earliest clues about the vaccine's legs. The study analyzed the severity of disease in 1,163 people. There were 55 cases among people 50 and older who had been vaccinated in their childhood. Only four were severe, and only three died, says Frank Fenner, co-author of Smallpox and Its Eradication and researcher at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra, Australia. By comparison, Fenner says, the disease killed six of the 12 victims 50 and older who had never been vaccinated. In 1996, scientists from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester reported that immune cells from healthy volunteers recognized the vaccinia virus — used to immunize against smallpox — as a foe. Yet up to 50 years had passed since the volunteers' smallpox vaccinations. It's not clear how the immune response seen in the lab would translate into real life, says study co-author Francis Ennis. 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