Once again the CDC and the FDA are doing the vaccination dance, but this time the stakes seem a lot higher. Always battling for vaccinating for every disease possible, taking parents to court who do not believe in vaccinations and struggling against documentation that many vaccination are dangerous, the public health officials this country have relied on for years have reassured us time and time again that vaccines are safe. Despite injuries of children that have caused individual and class action law suits due to vaccine damage, the questions surrounding autism and the MMR and the questions about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the HepB vaccine, the push for vaccinations continues. But now the story is different because now the issue that is being discussed is smallpox. And smallpox is a whole different game.
The issue of smallpox seemed to be a moot point just over three months ago. It had been eradicated in the world in the late 1970's and was known to only exist in laboratories in Russia and the United States. Even these laboratories had discussed destroying it to eliminate any risk of a terrorist group acquiring the virus. That never happened though and scientists continued to study it with the rest of the world pretty much oblivious to its existence.
Then September 11th happened. Shortly after that anthrax happened. After that, anything seemed possible.
The inevitable happened with people in government discussing at first quietly and then all over the media the problem with biological warfare. Somehow to all of us watching the news it seemed more than just a problem. It seemed a major crisis. Anthrax was bad enough but we found with a few horrifying exceptions, it wasn't as bad as we thought it could be. But when the word smallpox came up, that was a horror that we couldn't just ignore. Smallpox all of a sudden became a distinct possibility in the minds of many people. Public health officials began scrambling for facts and information, working to round up models of what could happen, what would likely happen, disagreeing with each other and finding that they really didn't have the base of knowledge necessary to make any conclusions of fact that could be trusted. The next natural step seemed to be to return to the old standard used before 1972 and vaccinate against smallpox. It seemed natural but it isn't panning out that way. And so the dance has begun.
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