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Smallpox: Panel Supports 500,000 Pre-Emptive Vaccinations A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel recommended yesterday that 500,000 health care workers be immunized with the smallpox vaccine, revising a stance it took earlier this year (see GSN, Oct. 16). In June, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices supported the pre-emptive vaccination of only 20,000 health care and emergency workers (see GSN, June 21). The committee has been at odds with the CDC and U.S. health officials, who want a farther-reaching inoculation plan. The final decision rests with the White House, and that should come “in the next couple weeks,” according to D.A. Henderson, the Bush administration’s senior biological terrorism expert (M.A.J. McKenna, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 17). Some officials had supported a plan that would inoculate up to 10 million people, including paramedics, firefighters and police (Anita Manning, USA Today, Oct. 17). The 500,000-person plan would include lab workers, security guards and cleaning staff at hospitals. Several members of the panel opposed the new plan, including Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who said the panel members were avoiding their responsibilities by changing their recommendation. “We shirk our responsibility by throwing it back onto the public to make a decision that we should help make,” Offit said (McKenna, Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Meanwhile, Harvard scientists have produced antibodies that could attack the smallpox germ, the Journal-Constitution reported today. The antibodies are designed to attack the surface of the smallpox virus and destroy it, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The antibodies — developed by Ellis Reinherz, an immunologist at Harvard — would be given to a patient after they contracted the disease. In addition to their use on smallpox outbreaks, the antibodies might be effective on illnesses caused by the smallpox vaccine, Fauci said (Jeff Nesmith, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 17).
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