Sunday July 07 10:17 PM EDT

Kaiser To Participate in Study on Forgotten Smallpox Vaccine

By KCBS-AM

(KCBS)-Beginning tomorrow, Kaiser Permanente will be one of four facilities in the country to participate in an upcoming study on the smallpox vaccine.

The study will be conducted partly to address recent fears about bioterrorism. Officials will experiment with different potencies of the vaccine, and at Kaiser, 50 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 32 in good health will be given small doses.

One aim of the project is to find out how long the vaccine, which has been in a freezer for decades, can be stored and still be effective. Health officials thought the disease was eradicated in the 1960s. 85 million doses of the vaccine were forgotten about until last spring, when they discovered in a warehouse freezer.

Smallpox causes flu-like symptoms and can cause death if left untreated.

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