Free Republic

Alaska health officials confirmed the state’s first fatal case of Alaskapox — a recently discovered viral disease. An elderly immunocompromised man from the Kenai peninsula, south of Anchorage, died while undergoing treatment in late January, the Anchorage Daily News reported. He is one of only seven reported Alaskapox infections, the Alaska Department of Public Health said in an announcement on Friday. “People should not necessarily be concerned but more aware,” said Julia Rogers, a state epidemiologist. “So we’re hoping to make clinicians more aware of what Alaskapox virus is, so that they can identify signs and symptoms.” The double-stranded-DNA virus,...

According to a press release from the FDA, a company, StemImmune Inc. in San Diego, California, has had five vials seized from the by U.S. Marshalls under instruction that contain the Vaccinia Virus Vaccine (Live). According to the FDA, this vaccine “is reserved only for people at high risk for smallpox.” The vaccine apparently has no other uses other than treating people who against smallpox. As per International Law, only small quantities of smallpox virus officially still exist in two research laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia, and in Russia. So what on earth are StemImmune doing with the vaccine (remember that...

With a vaccine at least a year away, the past may hold the answer to getting the world back in order. Variolation is a six-hundred-year-old predecessor to the smallpox vaccination. It was also an essential part of creating the United States of America. It may be time to visit it once again.Variolation worked by introducing a minute dose of the smallpox virus into the human body to trigger a mild infection that stimulates the immune system. Unfortunately, some people reacted strongly even to a small dose, and about 2% of people died. The variolation mortality rate, though, was still better...

Smallpox: The Triumph over the Most Terrible of the Ministers of Death Smallpox has been one of humankind's greatest scourges since time immemorial. Even illnesses as terrible as the plague, cholera, and yellow fever have not had such a universal and persistent impact. Smallpox is believed to have appeared at the time of the first agricultural settlements in northeastern Africa, around 10 000 BC (2). It probably spread from Africa to India by means of Egyptian merchants in the last millennium BC (3). The earliest evidence of skin lesions resembling those of smallpox is found on the faces of mummies...