http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011105/hl/vaccination_1.html
Monday November 5 5:25 PM ET
By Todd Zwillich
WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - Public health officials must have the
authority to quarantine and forcibly vaccinate the entire population--with the
help of the military if needed--in the event of a smallpox attack on the US, a
bioterrorism expert said Monday.
Massachusetts and other states have laws allowing authorities to force mass
vaccination to stem outbreaks of smallpox or some other highly contagious
disease. But the federal government has no enforceable way of guaranteeing
widespread vaccination, even as it prepares to spend billions of dollars to
increase vaccine stockpiles and beef up the public health infrastructure.
``You can't have a patchy response. There has to be compulsion'' to
vaccinate in the event of the attack, said Dr. Stephen D. Prior, the research
director at the National Security Health Policy Center.
``Each state has different laws and that's one of the problems,'' he said.
The government is in the process of procuring 300 million smallpox vaccine
doses, enough for every person living in the US. Officials from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (news
- web
sites) (CDC) say that they have no plans to institute mass vaccination
because there is currently no identifiable threat of a smallpox attack.
Smallpox vaccination used to be routine, but regular inoculations were
stopped in 1972. About 40% of the US population has never been vaccinated and
lacks immunity to the disease, which is fatal in about one third of cases.
Authorities currently plan to deal with any possible smallpox outbreak by
vaccinating in a widening circle around a newly discovered case. Such a
practice is useful with a relatively fixed population, but would essentially be
useless as unsuspecting citizens carry the virus onto planes traveling across
the country, Prior said.
Dr. Anita Barry, the communicable disease control director for the Boston
Public (news
- Y!
TV) Health Commission in Massachusetts, told a Senate subcommittee last
Friday that states needed the authority to confine infected persons to their
homes for quarantine.
Federal law gives the US Surgeon General the authority to vaccinate and
quarantine individuals to protect the public health. ``But he has no means of
enforcing it,'' Prior said.
A spokesman for Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
Chair Edward Kennedy (D-MA) said that federal law on mass vaccination is not
part of the bioterrorism bill lawmakers are expected to consider soon.
``We've heard the issue but we've done nothing with it,'' said spokesman
James Manley.
Military planners are currently mulling whether or not they should have a
role in enforcing mandatory mass vaccinations or quarantines in the event of a
highly contagious biological attack, said Edgar H. Brenner, the co-director of
the Inter-University Center for Legal Studies in Washington.
Brenner told reporters that he had discussed the potential plans with
high-ranking military officials. ``They had no answer yet,'' he said. But
Pentagon (news
- web
sites) spokesman James Turner could not confirm the conversations Brenner
mentioned or that officials are discussing such plans.
Prior acknowledged that the potential for federally enforced mandatory
vaccinations could arouse anti-government sentiments in some sectors of the
American public. Any mass-vaccination policy would also have to take into
account the vaccine's side effects. Historically, the smallpox vaccine caused
serious reactions in about 1 in every 4,000 persons and death in about 4 per 1
million.
``The debate has to take place, and the public has to be involved,'' he
said.
ALL
INFORMATION, DATA, AND MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR
GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS REFLECTING THE
KNOWLEDGE OR OPINIONS OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED
AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO
VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU
ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.