Heard a news report last night that they are working on it now. Will take some time I'm sure to get enough for our whole country. Very scarry isn't it?

I heard just the opposite. They are stockpiling the vaccine. They said the vaccine is almost as reliable getting it shortly after exposure than it is to get it before hand. The reason they don't want to just start vaccinating people again is because of the nasty side-effects that have been associated with this vaccine.

Now there's a controversial issue....vaccines!!!

They discontinued the vaccine because it was causing more casses of smallpox than were happening naturally. Let's hope that they just stockpile it, and not make it part of the giganto-list of shots already mandated.

smallpox vaccine was stopped because smallpox had been wiped out thanks to Jonas Salk.
I heard they might be forced to
"water down" the vaccine we have 10:1 until more is made.
Now, THAT scares me.

Salk was the man behind the polio vaccine, not smallpox.
And yes, it was because wild smallpox had been wiped out - the vaccine was causing illness where none was occurring naturally.

Speaking of Salk, though - the same thing has happened with the polio vaccine. Wild polio has been totally wiped out in our country - the only cases that have been reported for the past 20 years or so have been caused by the vaccine. Makes you wonder why *it* hasn't beed discontinued.

I'm pretty skeptical about vaccines, and don't do them for DS unless I'm convinced by my own research first ...

But the polio -- having been wiped out in "our country" doesn't do a bit of good in a global sense. If you, your child, or anyone they come into contact with, has traveled to a place where polio hasn't been eradicated, then they face the chance of contracting it. Maybe small, but for our family not worth the risk.

There are two polio vaccines, one derived from a live virus, and the other from a killed virus (I don't remember at the moment which of those two was Salk's). The benefit of the live virus vaccine is that it can serve to vaccinate a community because the live virus can replicate and spread to non-vaccinated people. The killed virus vaccine only protects the person who received the injection. The live virus vaccine (which was taken orally) was so successful at controlling the wild polio virus that more people were getting polio from the vaccine itself than from wild polio. That is why they have switched to the killed virus, injected vaccine only.

It is my understanding that polio has not been wiped out, the way smallpox has (i.e. kept under lock and key), requiring the continued vaccination.

As for the smallpox vaccineÂI understand that the risk of having a fatal reaction to that vaccine is about 2%. That means that if the entire population of the US were vaccinated we would be killing about 600 people. Until the threat of a smallpox attack is more than just theoretical, with fatalities exceeding 600, it would be self-defeating to encourage widespread smallpox vaccination.

Oops, I meant to say 0.0002% chance of a fatal reaction to the vaccine, resulting in the 600 potential deaths.

I was wondering about that- Thanks! Susan