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Rumsfeld says he will get smallpox vaccination

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joining President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday he would be vaccinated against smallpox along with about a half-million troops.

"I certainly intend to" get the vaccination, Rumsfeld said on CNN's Larry King Live. "It's hard to ask people to do something that you're not willing to do yourself."

Bush on Friday ordered about 500,000 U.S. troops in "high-risk parts of the world" to be vaccinated against smallpox, a deadly disease that had been declared eradicated. U.S. officials fear hostile countries like Iraq and North Korea are harboring secret stashes of the virus and could use it as a weapon or pass it to terrorists.

AFP Rumsfeld

The president said he would be vaccinated as well, sharing Rumsfeld's view that a commander should be willing to take the shots he orders for his troops.

The military has not gotten any reports of soldiers refusing the smallpox vaccinations, which began Friday with about a dozen personnel. In the years before last fall's anthrax mail attacks, hundreds of pilots and other military members left the service because they had refused to receive inoculations against anthrax.

The smallpox vaccination is much more dangerous than the anthrax shots. One or two out of every 1 million vaccinated against smallpox will be killed by the vaccine, and 15 will face life-threatening complications.

"A smallpox epidemic is so vicious and kills so many people so rapidly ... that after a great deal of thought, I concluded that the U.S. military people who have potential vulnerability ought to take it," Rumsfeld said. "And unless a person has some weakened immune system, the statistics are such that I think that the balance is appropriate."