The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has convened its vaccine advisory committee and assembled a team of cardiologists to review the cases of seven smallpox immunization volunteers who suffered heart problems, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 26).

The vaccine has not been linked to heart problems, but a 56-year-old woman died after a heart attack Sunday — five days after taking the vaccine — and an unidentified immunized woman is on life support after suffering a heart attack.  Five others have suffered lesser cardiac ailments and 10 members of the U.S. military’s 350,000 immunized personnel have experienced heart problems.

“My gut feeling is they are probably coincidental,” said Walter Orenstein, director of the CDC’s National Immunization Program.  “We want to err on the side of caution and investigate further,” he added.

While the investigation begins, the CDC is warning volunteers with heart disease to delay getting immunized.

“That’s nice if you know you have heart disease,” said Richard Wenzel, chief of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond.  “It doesn’t help if you don’t know,” he added.

Meanwhile, Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern expressed concerns over the vaccine.

“The grave dangers associated with the smallpox vaccine may no longer be a remote possibility for seven American civilians … We expect full disclosure of the conclusive evidence before another frontline worker is put at unnecessary risk, before another family faces indescribable grief,” he said in a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, argued over Bush’s proposed compensation for workers sickened by the vaccine.  The White House has put forward a plan to pay $262,000 in death or permanent disability awards and up to $50,000 for lost wages.

“I am deeply disappointed that the compensation scheme the administration has proposed is so inadequate and unfair that it may not jump-start this faltering program,” Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said (Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, March 27).

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