News & Perspective

Dec 31, 2002 (CIDRAP News) – Individuals receiving smallpox vaccine should wait 3 weeks before donating blood, according to guidance issued yesterday by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The recommendations are being issued as a precautionary measure to reduce the "very slight risk" of bloodborne exposure to vaccinia virus in certain patient populations, according to the agency.

(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced details of how the compensation program for civilians who are injured by the smallpox vaccine will work.

(CIDRAP News) – A combination of vaccines that included smallpox and anthrax might have contributed to the death of a young Army reservist last April, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – Recent figures from the US Department of Defense (DoD) indicate a higher rate of myopericarditis (heart inflammation) cases among military personnel following smallpox vaccination than previously reported, though the complication remains relatively rare.

(CIDRAP News) – A team of researchers in St. Louis has retooled a mousepox virus so it can defeat a vaccine that normally protects mice—but has also found ways to beat the customized virus, according to the group's leader.

(CIDRAP News) – To bring coherence to a poorly coordinated national effort, the United States should focus its current bioterrorism preparedness program on four specific threat scenarios involving anthrax, smallpox, botulinum toxin, and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), according to a report by defense consultant and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig.

(CIDRAP News) – Some of the world's leading experts on biological weapons and public health will meet in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct 21 and 22 for an international conference on the threat of a bioterrorist attack involving smallpox.

(CIDRAP News) – New York City health records show no increase in cardiac deaths after a citywide smallpox vaccination campaign in 1947, which supports the view that cardiac events in 16 people vaccinated recently were unrelated to the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – The consensus of a group of veteran health workers who helped eradicate smallpox in developing countries is that vaccination within 3 days after exposure to smallpox would protect most people from the disease, according to a report in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials yesterday released a 37-page report that they say demonstrates "tremendous progress" in developing countermeasures for bioterrorism through federally funded research since early 2002.