U.S. Troops to get Smallpox Vaccine

U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration is edging closer to a plan to inoculate as many as 500,000 military personnel against smallpox, as soon as the vaccine is licensed in mid-November. Pentagon officials want those soldiers who might eventually be deployed in the Middle East protected against the deadly virus.

Although some biological weapons experts say the chances that Iraq has obtained stocks of smallpox are low, the virus is so easy to produce and maintain that officials are rightfully concerned. And some experts even claim that rogue nations like Iraq may also possess new “super” strains of smallpox that could be immune to today’s vaccine.

Decades ago, the United States and the Soviet Union began efforts to weaponize smallpox. The United States produced a powdered substance capable of floating through the air and infecting thousands of people. The Soviets created a liquid form of smallpox equally dangerous. In 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a global treaty along with more than 100 other nations, including Iraq, banning all biological weapons. Nevertheless, clandestine development of germ warfare continued.

Smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. The only official remaining stocks of the virus are kept at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, and in Russia, at the Vector laboratory in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

It is feared, however, that Russia lacks the security to prevent samples of the virus, or the expertise on how to develop it, from being sold on the world market. In fact, according to a 1994 report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, both Iraq and North Korea sought and received smallpox technology from the Russians in the early 1990s.

Yet if Iraq does indeed possess smallpox, Russia is not necessarily at fault. A natural outbreak of smallpox occurred in Iraq in 1971, and again in 1972. It is possible the Iraqis isolated the virus then and kept a sample.

According to biologists, growing and maintaining the smallpox virus would not be difficult for Iraq, a country that admitted in 1995 to pursuing a clandestine biological weapons program. A year earlier, UN inspectors examining Iraqi medical facilities uncovered an industrial-sized freeze dryer, the type used by microbiologists to extend the life of germ samples. It was labeled in Arabic “smallpox machine.” Iraqi officials claimed the freeze dryer was meant for the smallpox vaccine, not the virus.

Nevertheless, many former UN biological weapons inspectors in Iraq, including Richard Butler, are seriously concerned about the likelihood that Iraq has smallpox, possibly in weaponized form.

Although the recommendation to vaccinate troops headed to the Gulf has not yet been given White House approval, the Department of Health and Human Services has already set aside one million doses for U.S. military personnel.

Administration officials say they won’t allow a single person to be vaccinated prior to a smallpox outbreak, unless the vaccine is fully licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The license for the old vaccine, last administered to U.S. civilians in 1972, expired years ago. It is now classified as an “investigational” drug. The FDA is expected to license the first million doses by mid-November, and another million by month’s end.

Yet, the vaccine may not be enough. According to some experts, the United States would be protecting its troops only against the natural form of the smallpox virus. These experts warn there may be new strains of the virus biologically engineered to be immune to the existing vaccine. They cite recent work by a team of Australian researchers who were able to create a strain of mousepox (similar to smallpox but only affecting mice) that could kill naturally immune mice and some vaccinated mice. Pox viruses are apparently quite easy to engineer because they readily accept foreign genes. Experts say it is possible Iraqi microbiologists have tried their hand at creating “super” strains of the smallpox virus.

American scientists are currently trying to develop a new vaccine that would be effective against versions of a “super” smallpox, but results are not expected anytime soon. Meanwhile, the United States must provide some measure of protection for its Middle East-bound troops against a virus that can kill as many as one third of its victims. And it makes sense to get these inoculations underway now, before any fighting starts. Waiting until the end of the one- to two-week incubation period when smallpox symptoms would begin to show on the battlefield before taking any preventative action just isn’t feasible.

 
Sources:

Judith Miller and Eric Schmitt, “Pentagon Plans Smallpox Shots for Up to 500,000,” The New York Times, Oct. 12, 2002.

William J. Broad, “White House Debate on Smallpox Slows Plan for Wide Vaccination,” The New York Times, Oct. 13, 2002.

Richard Preston, “The Specter Of A New And Deadlier Smallpox,” The New York Times, Oct. 14, 2002.

 

Anthony Keats CDI Research Assisant akeats@cdi.org

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