Word: viruses
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...remember a couple of summers ago when the big news around New York was encephalitis. There were apparently these mosquitoes spreading West Nile virus all over New York, and random people started dropping dead. Then the city started spraying the various neighborhoods with insecticides at night to get rid of the mosquitoes, and everyone feared that the spraying was more dangerous than the bugs...
...concern: About 20,000 Americans die each year from the flu and 114,000 are hospitalized. The majority of those cases, however, occur in the elderly or people with weakened immune systems - people whose bodies, in other words, are not prepared to deal with the onslaught of a powerful virus...
...tool of destruction, the smallpox virus is ideal. Simply exposing people to the bug in its natural state, without significantly manipulating or processing it, is sufficient to seed an epidemic. Unlike anthrax, smallpox is highly contagious (just one infected person could cause the virus to radiate from a family to a neighborhood to a city in a matter of months), and smallpox cannot be treated effectively once symptoms begin (30% of those infected will die). The vaccine is 100% effective, but only in protecting against the disease before exposure. Although studies show that inoculation can prevent infection if given...
...world's two remaining samples of smallpox virus are stored at secure facilities in the U.S. and Russia. But there is evidence that Iraq, North Korea and Russia researched ways to grow and deliver smallpox in large quantities and still retain undeclared stores. With that in mind, and with the threat of bioterrorism now more palpable, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have discussed, for the first time in two decades, the possibility of inoculating the public again. As a precaution, the government has accelerated the delivery of a pre-existing order for 40 million more doses...
...good idea for the U.S. to begin vaccinating all Americans again? Though it could neutralize one major bioterrorist weapon, there are strong arguments against it. The shots themselves carry risks. Historically, for about two out of every 1 million people inoculated, the vaccine's weak virus strain caused brain infection and death; others developed a mild but still unpleasant poxlike viral infection. More worrisome is the fact that the number of people most vulnerable to these adverse effects--those with compromised immune systems, such as patients in chemotherapy or with AIDS--has increased considerably since the last mass inoculations. Most...