By Rosenblatt, Susannah
Los Angeles Times P. A9
06/25/03

A study of the smallpox vaccination program enacted within the U.S. military indicated that the vaccine, administered to 450,293 personnel, did not cause any deaths whatsoever and resulted in just 37 cases of myopericarditis, an inflammation of the heart or heart membrane, with all of those patients expected to return to full duties. Despite the study's findings, however, critics of the smallpox vaccination program say that they will still be against the program because there appears to be such a low risk of a bioterrorist attack using smallpox. Overall, the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, will probably not change civilian healthcare workers' reticence toward the vaccine, which has derailed the federal program by reducing the number of vaccine volunteers from a planned 450,000 to just 37,608 in the first six months of the plan. The government has created a compensation system for those harmed or killed by the vaccine, but few opinions of the vaccine among healthcare workers have been changed as a result.