Doctor: Smallpox Not a Bio-terror Threat

WXIA-TV (Atlanta) ^ | 09/26/02 | Keith Whitney

[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."

[Rocksalt]

"The Bush Administration is getting ready to produce tens of millions of doses of smallpox vaccine and make it widely available to the public."

This would tell me something.It must be cause for concern.