This is still a lot of big-brother-knows-best cr*p. Read the details. There is enough vaccine available to start using it now, but they will not release it to the American public for voluntary vaccinations by their doctors until
2004. Are they planning to tell Saddam and al Qaeda that they mustn't try to start a smallpox epidemic until 2004?
This is still a typically clintonoid approach, reluctantly backing away from bureaucratic control one step at a time, just as slowly as possible.
We are very likely to be going to war with Iraq in a month or two. Why the big wait? Can't Bush weed some of these left-wing bureaucrats out of the health bureaucracy?
CDC's organization in Atlanta has been favoring the "go slow" and "only we do the diagnosis" approach (which is a one way ticket to mass casulties if it were implemented). I'm full of respect for CDC, but the reality is that CDC is not on the front line of this biowar. The individual physician offices across the United States is the front line. Supplies need to be delivered to the troops in the trenches...that is the primary care office. Right now, the supplies (the vaccines) don't arrive at all. It's high time for CDC to wake up and smell the coffee. CDC needs to remove itself from being in the middle of our national vaccine shortages and return itself to the research and scientific program which made it stronger prior to the Clinton era.