THREE months after the US started vaccinating against smallpox, there is still huge opposition to vaccinations among hospitals and health workers. Yet the vaccine is turning out to be far safer than some predicted.
It consists of live vaccinia virus, and can cause potentially fatal complications, including severe skin infections and brain inflammation, especially in people being vaccinated for the first time. So when President Bush announced on 13 December that half a million civilian health workers, as well as half a million troops, would be vaccinated by 15 March, it was feared that side effects would be more common than in the past.
But so far severe reactions have been rare. The first 205,000 military personnel to be vaccinated have now been observed for the three to four weeks in which complications can develop. Only three had serious problems, two of them encephalitis, says Al Zelicoff, a bioweapons expert ...
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