alt.conspiracy,sci.med,fr.bio.medecine,fr.soc.complots

http://www.informedchoice.info/index.php

INFORMED CHOICE

In a compulsory inoculation program, it is the responsibility of the
developers, promoters and enforcers to prove safety and efficacy

WHO Recommends Smallpox Virus Alteration
November 11, 2004
An influential World Health Organization committee is sending shock
waves through the scientific community with its recommendation that
researchers be permitted to conduct genetic-engineering experiments
with the smallpox virus. The idea is to be able to better combat a
disease that is considered a leading bioterror threat though it was
publicly eradicated 25 years ago.

The WHO had previously opposed such work for fear that a "superbug"
might emerge. Because the disease is so deadly, the WHO has even at
times recommended destroying the world's two known smallpox
stockpiles, located in secure labs at the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention in Atlanta and in the former Soviet Union.

The recommended policy shift has reignited a debate over whether such
research will help or hinder bioterrorism defenses.

The World Health Assembly - the ruling body of the 192-nation WHO -
would make a final decision on whether to approve the experiments,
which would include splicing a "marker" gene into the smallpox virus
so its spread can be better tracked in the laboratory. The WHO
committee said inserting the marker gene wouldn't make the disease any
more dangerous, and that allowing such experimentation would speed
depletion of the remaining smallpox virus stocks.

It has been U.S. policy to refrain from genetically engineering
smallpox, but that would undoubtedly change if the WHO endorses such
research.

To Top of Page

Bush Smallpox Inoculation Plan Near Standstill
Medical Professionals Cite Possible Side Effects,
Uncertainty of Threat

By Ceci Connolly
Monday, February 24, 2003; Page A06
Washington Post

When President Bush issued the call for 500,000 volunteer health care
workers to be immunized against smallpox, Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy G. Thompson promised to get the job done in 30 days.

At today's one-month mark, however, the total number of people
inoculated nationwide is just 4,200 -- less than 1% of the
administration's target for the first phase of bioterrorism
preparations. "It is as close to stalled as you can get," said William
Bicknell, former Massachusetts health commissioner and a professor at
the Boston University School of Public Health. "There has not been a
sufficient push from senior administration officials."

SMALLPOX UPDATE (CDC)
Non-Military Vaccination
as of March 31, 2005
Total 39,608
as of September 30, 2004
Total 39,597
Pennsylvania 308
New Jersey 671
Delaware 109
as of April 30, 2004
Total 39,512
Pennsylvania 308
New Jersey 671
Delaware 109
as of May 9, 2003
Total 36,217
Pennsylvania 179
New Jersey 657
Delaware 107
For all 50 states data: CDC
Although the federal government has shipped 274,000 doses of vaccine
to states since the program began Jan. 24, hundreds of hospitals, a
half-dozen major unions and even some public health departments have
refused to participate. Even the states that are vaccinating
volunteers report that they have drastically scaled back their
original plans. Aside from a few pockets of enthusiasm, the vast
majority of medical professionals remain unconvinced that the threat
of a smallpox attack is serious enough to administer a vaccine known
for its serious side effects, especially when federal officials have
refused to create a compensation fund for people sickened by the
vaccine.

"At this point I'm more concerned about seeing a vaccine complication
than a case of smallpox," said Steven Gordon, hospital epidemiologist
at the Cleveland Clinic, where fewer than 100 of thousands of eligible
employees will be inoculated next month. The slow start has alarmed
many national security experts who fear the looming war with Iraq will
increase the likelihood of a biological attack on the United States.

"If anything happens in the near term, we will be in serious trouble,"
said Edward Kaplan, who teaches public health management at Yale's
School of Management and School of Medicine. "It seems at a time when
the risk is going up, we're advertising loudly this is one threat
we're not ready to deal with."

Bicknell said that until the government reaches President Bush's
ultimate goal of vaccinating millions of medical personnel and
emergency responders, "we are not protected." In the event of a
smallpox attack, those are the medical and emergency workers who would
be needed to treat early cases and rapidly open mass vaccination
clinics for the rest of the population. Experts believe that many
people can survive a smallpox exposure if they are vaccinated within
96 hours.

Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, played down the focus on numbers of people immunized,
saying the true measure of the program is whether the entire nation
could be vaccinated within 10 days of an attack.

"We are not there now," she acknowledged. In an effort to revive the
program, Thompson plans to make a personal appeal at today's session
of the National Governors Association, and Gerberding is preparing to
send informational packets to 3.5 million doctors, nurses and nurses'
assistants.

When Bush announced his unprecedented immunization program Dec. 13, he
said the goal was to protect the nation's frontlines here and abroad.
He ordered mandatory inoculation of 500,000 military personnel and
called for as many as 10.5 million medical workers and emergency
responders to be vaccinated on a voluntary basis. Later that
afternoon, in a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors,
Thompson outlined an ambitious timetable: One month for the first
500,000 immunizations and an additional 90 days for millions more. At
the time, the Bush administration said anyone who suffered a serious
complication could apply for workers' compensation benefits or sue the
federal government for negligence.

That policy has proved a major obstacle for the program. Some unions
that represent tens of thousands of health care workers advised their
members not to be vaccinated until the government offered compensation
for potentially severe side effects, which include blindness and
encephalitis.


Generalized vaccinia adverse vaccine reaction
more reactions
"They should be covered the same way a police officer is covered if he
is hurt in the line of duty," Kaplan said. Although smallpox has not
been seen in this country in five decades, security experts worry that
terrorists could use the highly contagious, deadly germ as a weapon.
Inoculation with the live virus vaccine -- called "vaccinia" --
provides protection but can also cause complications in a small
percentage of people immunized.

That tension has sparked an emotional debate among some of the
country's most respected physicians, who are weighing the unknown risk
of attack against the known risks of vaccination.

"This is a modern version of the first line of the Hippocratic Oath:
Do no harm," said William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine
at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The hospital board's decision
not to vaccinate employees was heavily influenced by concern that
immunized workers could accidentally spread live virus to patients,
many of them with already weakened immune systems, he said.

Gerberding, however, said that she is "a little bit concerned we may
have overstated the adverse effects of vaccination." She and other
experts said that with careful screening and inoculation site
bandaging, adverse effects should be kept to a minimum. Of the more
than 100,000 military personnel recently vaccinated, five have
experienced severe but treatable reactions.

Another major factor was the lack of evidence regarding a possible
smallpox attack. "It is not enough for someone -- whether it is the
president or the secretary of state -- to say, 'I'm worried about
this; trust me,' "Schaffner said. "We need more than that today as a
profession and as a society." Thompson and Gerberding acknowledged
that it has been difficult to convey to the public an imprecise threat
based on classified intelligence.

"We have to do a better job of explaining to them this is a
possibility and it will be too late -- if it does happen -- to be able
to get people vaccinated," Thompson said. "We need these individuals
to be able to be vaccinated so they will in turn be able to vaccinate
the masses in case there is a smallpox epidemic." Much of the debate
centers on the definition of "prepared." Many infectious-disease
experts said stockpiling vaccine in regional locations, training staff
and practicing emergency drills would adequately position them to
handle an outbreak. But others said the panic likely to ensue with
even a rumored case makes that unrealistic.

"Frankly, the more of these workers, along with police and fire
personnel, who are vaccinated before an event occurs, the greater will
be our ability to maintain essential services in the crisis situation
of a deliberate smallpox release," said Michael Osterholm, director of
the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the
University of Minnesota. Many physicians said they have been unfairly
pilloried as "unpatriotic" because they have not reached the same
conclusion as the president.

"People are not ignoring the government recommendations, but they are
trying to apply them to their own situations," said Jeffrey Koplan,
former CDC chief and vice president for academic health affairs at
Emory University, whose medical center has decided to vaccinate 20
people.

Officials at nearby Grady Memorial Hospital, for instance, decided not
to inoculate staff in large part because "you can't walk on a ward
without being near patients who are significantly immuno-compromised,"
he said. But at the local Veterans Administration hospital, staff
members have accepted the need to be immunized because they are
already treating military personnel who have been vaccinated.

For now, states such as Tennessee, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Illinois and
Connecticut have cut in half projections of the number of people they
will vaccinate during the first phase of the program. The CDC,
meanwhile, has put plans for Phase 2 -- inoculating emergency
responders -- on hold.

Hundreds of major hospitals -- including Virginia Commonwealth
University in Richmond and Children's in Philadelphia -- do not plan
to immunize any workers unless circumstances change. Several statewide
nurses' associations have advised against vaccination, while the
AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union and the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have urged the
Bush administration to postpone the program.

The health departments of Michigan, Arizona and New York City have not
begun vaccinations while awaiting establishment of a compensation
program.

"We're having all kinds of problems with it," said Doug Campos,
medical director for clinical services at the Maricopa County
Department of Health, which covers 3.5 million people in the Phoenix
area. "The failure to anticipate this compensation issue was a major
mistake." Sources on Capitol Hill say the White House has been
reluctant to commit money to a compensation program. But Thompson is
confident one will be established. "Once we get the compensation fund
out there, I think [the vaccination program] is going to move quite
rapidly," he said.

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Military Personnel Suffer More Heart Troubles Than Expected After
Smallpox Vaccinations, Researcher Says
By Chris Schneidmiller
May 13, 2004
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON - More than 70 people suffered heart troubles after
receiving smallpox vaccinations from the U.S. Defense Department, a
surprisingly high figure compared to the limited cases of other health
problems linked to those inoculations, a Walter Reed Army Medical
Center researcher said this week (see GSN, April 13).

"Reported rates of noncardiac complications have been very low, in
line with the rates of complications we saw historically, when
children were routinely vaccinated for smallpox," Dimitri Cassimatis,
a Walter Reed cardiology fellow, said in a prepared statement on his
clinical review of reactions to smallpox vaccinations among military
personnel. "The rate of cardiac complications, however, has been
higher than expected," he added.

The American Medical Society today presented Cassimatis' review, which
was finished last summer.

More than 615,000 military personnel, contractors and
"emergency-essential civilians" have received smallpox vaccinations
since the Pentagon began inoculations in January 2003 in an effort to
protect its forces from biological attack (see GSN, Oct. 23, 2003).
Seventy-seven men and women subsequently suffered from myopericarditis
- inflammation of the heart muscle or the sac around the heart, the
department said in April.

As of April 30, 21 civilians had also contracted the heart condition
amongst the 39,500 U.S. medical professionals who have been
vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. In addition, the British biotechnology company Acambis
last month halted enrollment for clinical trials on a new smallpox
vaccine last month after three people contracted myopericarditis.


Anticipated "normal" response to smallpox vaccine

Bifurcated needle with retained vaccine
No deaths have been connected to the heart illness when brought on by
the vaccination. Something about the vaccine causes a "cross-reaction"
that triggers the heart response, Cassimatis told Global Security
Newswire. The exact cause remains under investigation, said CDC
spokesman Von Roebuck.

Myopericarditis causes continuous chest pains that can last for "hours
and often days," Cassimatis said. Patients experience fatigue,
shortness of breath and heart palpitations. The heart trouble becomes
serious only for a small percentage of patients, and will usually
dissipate naturally over a period of weeks, he said.

The rate of incidence for myopericarditis in the armed forces in 2002,
prior to vaccinations, was two per 100,000 people every 30 days,
Cassimatis said. That rate was maintained for military personnel who
had previously been inoculated against smallpox; however, those being
vaccinated for the first time saw an incidence rate of 16 per 100,000
over 30 days. "That's about a 7 1/2-fold increase for primary
vaccinations," he said.

Military personnel received anti-inflammatory drugs and were barred
from "high-level exertion" for several weeks while recovering,
Cassimatis said. Most returned to full health. Myopericarditis was by
far the most prevalent health side effect linked to the smallpox
vaccinations, the Defense Department reported.

A 22-year-old U.S. Army reservist died last year after receiving
vaccinations against smallpox and other diseases. Two panels of
experts concluded that the inoculations likely caused her death from a
"lupus-like illness," but they were unable to identify a specific shot
as the fatal agent.

Post-vaccination deaths of five other military personnel were not
caused by the smallpox treatments, the department said. The Pentagon
also reported 36 cases of generalized vaccinia - a widespread rash and
sores caused by the injection ð- and 34 cases in which the infection
from the smallpox shot was transferred by contact to another person.

There were 24 civilian cases in which a health worker spread the
infection to another part of the body by touching the vaccination site
and then an eye or another body part, the CDC reported. The agency
also found one case of brain swelling and three incidents of
generalized vaccinia among inoculated civilians.

Cassimatis said he hopes in coming months to organize a study of 600
to 800 people who would receive the smallpox vaccination. By studying
the group over a period of weeks, he hopes to better learn who is at
risk for heart problems and why it occurs after inoculations.

Smallpox vaccinations would continue as needed, the CDC and Defense
Department said. Mass injections can be performed safely through staff
training, patient education, screening out of people with medical
conditions that could make vaccinations dangerous and attention to
bandaging, officials said.

"We feel it's very much of importance to have people vaccinated before
a smallpox event," Roebuck said. "We hope we never have to see it, but
if it's there we'll have a plan to deal with it and folks who have
been vaccinated can help from the very beginning."

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Nurses urged to refuse vaccinations
Texas group says smallpox shots carry risks, wonders who would foot
medical bills

By Sherry Jacobson
February 1, 2003
Email: sjacobson@dallasnews.com
www.dallasnews.com

Texas' plan to vaccinate as many as 40,000 health-care workers against
a possible smallpox threat appears to be running into resistance. The
Texas Nurses Association began urging its 5,000 members by e-mail
Friday not to volunteer for a smallpox vaccination.

The association's board of directors voted unanimously last Saturday
not to support the vaccination effort because of growing concerns over
who would cover medical costs if nurses suffered adverse side effects
or were forced to take sick leave from their jobs.

"We're telling our members they should decline the shots," said Clair
Jordan, executive director of the state's largest organization of
registered nurses. "As an organization, we have asked the government a
lot of questions, and we're not getting answers. So we hope our
decision will force the issue."

The group's national counterpart, the American Nurses Association,
expressed the same concerns and asked federal officials to delay the
nationwide vaccination process, which got under way Jan. 24 in
Connecticut. The first round of immunizations in Texas is scheduled to
begin during the week of Feb. 17. Resistance to vaccination has arisen
elsewhere in the country, but this appeared to be the first organized
opposition in Texas.

About 375 of Texas' 550 hospitals have indicated that some of their
employees will participate, along with workers at 70 public health
departments around the state. The plan is to have a team of vaccinated
workers who are prepared to take care of potential smallpox patients
until more workers and the general population could be vaccinated.

President Bush authorized the initial phase of a national vaccination
effort in December after noting the possibility that terrorists could
have obtained the smallpox virus from stockpiles around the world.
Smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980, eight years after
the United States stopped public vaccinations against the disease. The
last U.S. smallpox case was reported in 1949, and the last naturally
occurring case in the world was documented in Somalia in 1977.


Illustration from Newsweek May 2001
Bringing back vaccination against the disease has caused widespread
concern in various employee groups even though participation is
voluntary. Calls for a slowdown in the government's distribution plan
also have come from the Service Employees International Union, the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the
American Public Health Association, among other groups. Texas doctors
are not actively opposing the idea of a vaccine, but they share many
of the same concerns as other workers.

"The doctors are calling us about putting together their response
teams and wondering whether they will be covered if something bad
happens," said Heidi Jackson, a lawyer for the Texas Workers'
Compensation Commission, the regulatory agency that handles workers'
compensation appeals. So far, there is no definitive answer about
claims that may arise from the vaccinations, she said.

"It's like every other workers' comp case; it depends on the facts,"
Ms. Jackson said. The voluntary nature of the shots could be an issue
in deciding whether or not an insurance claim would be paid for an
extended illness related to the vaccination, she said. "That they are
calling it voluntary makes it more difficult to make a call." However,
such uncertainty isn't stopping some health-care workers from signing
up for the shots, said Dr. James Luby, acting chairman of infectious
diseases at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at
Dallas.

"On a personal level, there are doctors who are concerned about
potential complications and the cost of dealing with them," he said
after signing up for the vaccination. "The problem with adverse side
effects from the immunization is a real one. But we are committed to
doing this, slowly and carefully." Wade Dansby, a registered nurse,
said he joined about 100 employees at Parkland Memorial Hospital who
signed up recently to get the vaccine. The hospital has been seeking
only those employees who have previously been vaccinated against the
disease in hopes they will have fewer side effects.

"I didn't have an adverse reaction the first time around," recalled
the 45-year-old associate director of infection control. "Knowing what
I know now, I should have been more worried when I got the shot as a
6-year-old."

Local hospital officials said they are unsure whether the decision by
the Texas Nurses Association would present a roadblock to their
efforts to seek volunteers for the vaccinations. Dallas County has
requested 5,400 doses of the vaccine. "We've had 18 employees
volunteer for the shots in the emergency room; many of them are
nurses," said Dr. Ron Anderson, Parkland's president and chief
executive officer. "I think some will drop out if the ... [Nurses
Association] says no."

Dr. Anderson said that Parkland, which is self-insured, intends to
offer medical coverage and sick leave to patients who have problems
with the inoculation. Adverse reactions to the shots can include minor
complaints such as fatigue, muscle aches and low-grade fevers. A
recent vaccination trial of 680 people all of whom received a smallpox
inoculation for the first time found that a third were sufficiently
ill to have trouble sleeping, which caused them to miss school, work
or recreational activities.

Severe side effects from a smallpox vaccination are considered rare
but are estimated to affect 52 people for every million vaccinated.
The illnesses include encephalitis, or swelling of the brain; severe
skin rashes that can lead to scarring or death and ongoing infection
of the vaccination site, which can cause tissue destruction.

One or two deaths per million people vaccinated have been recorded in
previous smallpox vaccination efforts. However, the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention has been working for more than a year
on guidelines that attempt to limit such severe reactions. Much of the
effort has focused on defining which people should not be vaccinated,
including those who suffer diseases that suppress their immune system,
including lupus, cancer and HIV, and those with any history of skin
disorders such as eczema and atopic dermatitis.

But there are many more disqualifications. For example, anyone being
treated with steroid eye drops should not get the vaccine. Anyone who
is breastfeeding or planning to become pregnant in the month after the
vaccination is excluded. The same is true for people who've had
life-threatening reactions to certain antibiotics, including polymixin
B, streptomycin and neomycin. Likewise, people should not be
vaccinated if they have close contact with anyone suffering these
conditions.

Despite the long list of disqualifying conditions and the ongoing
concerns about side effects, state officials said they remain
convinced that enough health-care workers would be vaccinated to
handle any future smallpox threat. "If we get 20,000 people instead of
40,000, that will be fine as long as we have sufficient numbers
prepared in each community," Doug McBride, spokesman for the Texas
Department of Health, said Friday.

To Top of Page

Third Heart Attack Death Reported Following Smallpox Vaccination
March 28, 2003 SOURCE:
www.foxnews.com

WASHINGTON - A 55-year-old National Guardsman died this week from a
heart attack, the Pentagon said Friday, in the third such death that
followed a smallpox vaccination. The Defense Department is joining the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in deferring people with
heart disease from being given the vaccinations until a possible
relationship can be investigated, said Dr. Bill Winkenwerder,
assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.

To Top of Page

Disaster plans neglect kids, experts say
Focus on adults means treatment, prevention overlook juveniles' needs

By Aparna Kumar
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - The United States is not prepared to protect and treat
children in the event of a terrorist attack, child health and safety
experts said Thursday as they concluded a conference.

"The possibility of large numbers of children in this country being
affected by weapons of terror has not been addressed -- on state or
federal or local levels in most parts of the United States," said Dr.
Irwin Redlener, President of the Children's Health Fund, which
develops health-care programs for disadvantaged children.Redlener, who
also serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics' task force on
terrorism, said that disaster planning since the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks has focused primarily on the needs and requirements of adults.
"Children cannot be managed in the same way (as) adults, for a variety
of reasons that have to do with the anatomical and physiologic makeup
of children," Redlener said. Because of those differences, he said,
treatments and preventive measures that may be effective for adults
could cause problems in children.

For example, children require smaller doses of vaccines and antidotes
than adults do, but most doses stockpiled by hospitals and the
government are only for adults. Because they are shorter and therefore
closer to the ground, where toxic gases would be more concentrated or
particulate matter would settle, children also have an increased risk
of exposure to chemical or biological agents, Redlener said. Their
skin is also more porous and they breathe more rapidly than adults,
meaning they could absorb more toxic material in less time, he said.


'Blossom of Heaven,' an 18th century Chinese representation of a girl
suffering from smallpox, from the book' Science and Secrets of Early
Medicine, by Jürgen Thorwald.
Nearly 70 experts on the effects of chemical, biological and
radiological agents on children came here for the three-day conference
on pediatric preparedness. In a survey at the conference, 90 percent
of the respondents said they were concerned about the lack of
information from public health officials on the needs of children in
disasters. More than 80 percent agreed that more resources were needed
to protect children in the event of a catastrophe, while 66 percent
worried that the lack of new funding for disaster planning has shifted
resources from other programs crucial to child welfare.

While they did not advocate vaccinating children against smallpox as a
preventive measure, the experts agreed that if exposed to the virus,
children should be inoculated. After an attack, the risk of smallpox
far outweighs the vaccine's side effects, which may be more potent in
children and in rare instances could be fatal, said Dr. David
Markenson, director of the pediatric preparedness program at
Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York City.

The experts also agreed that the country should have enough child
doses of potassium iodide on hand to treat children in the event of a
radiation leak at a nuclear power plant. Communities near power plants
should be prepared to administer the doses to all children within two
hours of exposure, they said. While most of the recommendations
focused on the roles of the government and the medical community,
Markenson said parents should discuss with their children what to do,
where to go and how to keep in touch in the event of an attack.

"Children have a bigger fear about what they don't know than what they
do know," he said. "Give them concrete steps that you, the parent,
have taken to make them safe and make you safe -- that's what they
want to know."

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Smallpox vaccine study on kids halted
February 14, 2003
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A controversial proposal to study diluted doses of smallpox vaccine
for children has been canceled. The study would have involved 40
children at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. But in late January, the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration's Office for Human Research Protections pulled the
plug.

Federal and state officials have begun vaccinating emergency and
medical first-responders to prepare for the chance of a terrorist
using smallpox as a weapon. But that first wave of vaccinations does
not involve children. And by the time children may need the shots,
newer, safer vaccines might be ready for testing.

"Bioterrorism preparedness plans have evolved such that, under current
plans, the potential to use diluted Dryvax (the brand name for
smallpox vaccine) in children will no longer exist," states a Jan. 24
letter from the FDA to the research team.

To Top of Page

12 Reasons Not to Allow Your Child to be Subject in Smallpox Vaccine
Trial
Alliance For Human Research Protection (AHRP)
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
email: veracare@ahrp.org
http://www.ahrp.org

Recent public and professional debate about a smallpox vaccine trial
and its risks provides the framework for evaluating the ethical
justification for conducting clinical trials on children. The Alliance
for Human Research Protection has submitted documented comments (8
pages) to the Food and Drug Administration regarding the proposed
smallpox vaccine trial on 2 to 5 year old children.

We note the overwhelming objection by the public to this unethical
trial: more than 350 citizens who (so far) have submitted their
comments to the FDA:

http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/02n0466/02n0466.htm

Below are some of the concerns raised by AHRP about the trial and the
false claims made in the informed consent documents.

There is no imminent risk of smallpox exposure for the children.
The risks of the vaccine are significant and, for some, they can lead
to disability and even, death.
Stockpiles of the vaccine (Dryvax) to be used in the experiment have
deteriorated.
Another vaccine using a purer laboratory grown vaccinia virus not the
impure method that was used to create Dryvax (harvesting the virus
from infected calves) is under development.
According to leading experts, smallpox vaccine can be administered 3-4
days AFTER exposure to the smallpox virus.
Plans are underway by every state for providing rapid response clinics
to vaccinate the public should a smallpox infection occur in the U.S.
Leading experts have stated publicly they would not give the vaccine
to their own children.
The proposed trial is not designed to shed any light on the "safety"
of the vaccine or provide any information that is not known or not
procurable by other means -- a requirement under The Nuremberg Code.
Vaccinated children can transmit the virus and pose a high risk to
others who have not been vaccinated. The risk is both to healthy
adults and children as well as those with eczema or a compromised
immune system.
The informed consent documents make false claims about a potential
benefit to the children. Such claims are false and intended to mislead
parents.
If the informed consent document is inaccurate, the research is
unapprovable.
Serious questions are raised about whether the vaccine would protect
from a bioterrorist attack. It is more than likely that terrorists
would not use a pathogen for which the targeted population has vaccine
capability.
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Company finds forgotten doses of smallpox vaccine
Reuters

WASHINGTON, Mar 28 - A French pharmaceutical company has discovered as
many as 90 million long-forgotten doses of smallpox vaccine in its
freezers, in a find that ensures the United States an adequate supply
in the event of a bioterrorist attack, The Washington Post reported
Thursday.


above: from Smithsonian, smallpox sculpture presented to D.A.
Henderson, credited as having eradicated smallpox globally, late 1970s
Citing government sources familiar with the find, the newspaper said
the discovery could instantly increase six-fold the known US inventory
of the vaccine. The discovery buys time for the federal government and
its pharmaceutical contractors, which together have been racing to
produce tens of millions of smallpox vaccine doses as part of the new
biodefense initiative, the newspaper said.

"It's a great insurance policy," D.A. Henderson, director of the newly
created federal Office of Health Preparedness, told the paper. The
newly discovered liquid vaccine doses were produced by Aventis Pasteur
of Lyon, France, which has its US operations in Swiftwater,
Pennsylvania, the report said. The newspaper quoted sources as saying
the vaccine had been stored in freezers since it was made decades ago.
It was not clear why its existence had gone undiscovered for so long
and exactly when or by whom it was discovered, the paper said.

A government scientist familiar with the work told the newspaper that
studies suggest the Aventis product is fully potent. It's likely that
the Aventis product can itself be diluted if necessary, creating far
more doses than would be needed in the United States even in the face
of a full-blown bioterrorist attack, the official was quoted as
saying.

Sources told the Post Aventis was negotiating with the US Department
of Health and Human Services with the goal of giving the US government
access to the supply. The newspaper said calls to Aventis were
referred to the Department of Health and Human Services, which
provided few details but said there were still legal issues that
needed to be resolved. Among the issues to be worked out are how much
money, if any, would change hands in the transaction, and the extent
to which the company may be relieved of liability should problems with
the vaccine arise, the report said.

Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, was eradicated more than two
decades ago. The United States and Russia keep the only official
supplies of the smallpox virus, but experts fear countries or groups
secretly holding samples could unleash the virus in a biological
attack. The virus spreads quickly and kills 30% of the people it
infects.

The United States has 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine and tests
are under way to see if these can be stretched out by diluting them.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergies and
Infectious Diseases, said in February the government will report on
the results soon.

Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited.
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Neurological Complications of Vaccinations
By Charles M. Poser MD FRCP
www.geocities.com

excerpt -"The extent of pathological involvement of nervous tissue
also varies greatly, as seen in vaccination against measles, mumps and
varicella. In infants, brain swelling, also known as congestive
edematous encephalopathy, may be the only complication, a condition
that often responds dramatically to treatment with corticosteroids. It
occurs most commonly in vaccination against smallpox."

Disclaimer / Investigate: The intent of this website is to raise
awareness about the controversial aspects of vaccination. Many
vaccines still contain thimerosal (49.6% ethylmercury by weight.)
While mercury is a highly toxic element second only to radioactive
plutonium, when combined with other ingredients, specifically aluminum
and formaldehyde, the synergistic effects increase 10,000-fold.
Individuals who suffer from chronic mercury exposure will have a
unique expression of symptoms. This presentation is not to be
construed as medical or legal advice: locate and confer with a trusted
physician and lawyer.

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www.informedchoice.info

Ouais, ben regarde un peu par quelles lettres commencent les duex derniers
forums où tu as posté... T'as le droit de poster des conneries, mais au
moins, fais le en charte...

Fred

You can be the last to take the bird flu vaccine and the rest of us will see
if it's save or not.