Posted on 09/27/2002 11:39:48 AM PDT by Heartlander2
One of the doctors who helped eradicate smallpox said Thursday he did not believe it was a viable weapon of bio-terrorism.
Dr. Daniel Blumenthal, a professor and department chair at the Morehouse School of Medicine, was literally one of the last doctors to see a case of smallpox.
When in India, in the early 1970s, during a smallpox outbreak, thought the disease was too difficult to control. "I said this is hopeless we can't eradicate this disease there's too much of it,” he recalled.
A few years later, however, the disease was eradicated except for the known samples that remain in the U.S. and Russian labs. "I was a small player in a very large operation but it was very gratifying at the time," he said.
Blumenthal added he does not think it is a likely weapon of bio-terrorism. "I don't think that smallpox virus is something that al-Qaeda can keep in a cave in Afghanistan without it getting loose. There would be cases of smallpox,” he said.
He added that smallpox is also a slower-moving contagion than the flu or measles. He also does not support inoculating the nation against a threat that may not even exist.
"There's no reason to believe that any of our enemies has smallpox virus. Nobody has any evidence that any of our enemies has smallpox virus as contrasted with 1972 when we knew our enemy did have smallpox virus," he said.
Blumenthal believes that doctors today must also be detectives because they are on the front-line of any kind of bio-terror attack. "If there is an attack, another attack with anthrax, tularemia, plague or one of the other agents that might be used, it's likely to be an emergency room technician who sees the first case or a primary care physician in his office who sees the first case."
For smallpox as it existed in his time, perhaps. Remember that it took decades of effort to slowly box in smallpox with widespread vaccinations - and not only have many of those vaccinations worn off, but there are millions upon millions of children and young adults who have never been vaccinated - so any re-eradication process could take months or years.
However, if some idiot genetically engineers new traits into smallpox, then it could be a really nasty bioweapon.
How does he know?
But he's right about the spreading. Naturally humans lived with it for millienia without flu-like spreading. However, unnatural means of spread might be a problem.
No, actually he doesn't.
Ken Alibek, who directed bioweapons research for the Soviets, claims that at one point they were manufacturing over 10 tons of weaponized smallpox per year.
"There's no reason to believe that any of our enemies has smallpox virus. Nobody has any evidence that any of our enemies has smallpox virus as contrasted with 1972 when we knew our enemy did have smallpox virus," he said.
The good doctor would do well to familiarize himself with the story of the demon in the freezer.
The Bush Administration is getting ready to produce tens of millions of doses of smallpox vaccine and make it widely available to the public.
Now why do you suppose they would want to do that?
KEN ALIBEK, who was once Kanatjan Alibekov, a leading Soviet bioweaponeer and the inventor of the world's most powerful anthrax, shocked the American intelligence community when he defected, in 1992, and revealed how far the Soviet Union had gone with bioweapons. In a new book of his, entitled "Biohazard," Alibek says that there were twenty tons of liquid smallpox kept on hand at Soviet military bases; it was kept ready for loading on biowarheads on missiles targeted on American cities.
Sorry, make that 20 tons...
The terrorist smallpox threat comes from xSoviet bioengineered smallpox. They made hundreds of tons of the stuff and several tons are still around. There are only a few vials of natural smallpox left.
Natural smallpox. 40-60% morbidity. 7-15 day incubation period. 10-30% lethality.
xSoviet biowar smallpox. 60-90% morbidity. 1-5 day incubation period! 30-50% lethality.
Check the chapter titled "The Soviet Betrayal" in the book Sourge.
Smallpox was not eradicated with widespread vaccinations. It was eradicated by a very small team that traveled from village to village, vaccinating only those who had been exposed. Once this policy was adopted it took about three years, worldwide.
the mass vaccination policy was a failure.
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