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November 15, 2002
U.S. IMMUNIZATION NEWS
"Targeted Smallpox Vaccination Could be Effective"
Reuters Health Information Services (www.reutershealth.com) (11/14/02); Norton, Amy
Emory University researcher Dr. Ira M. Longini, Jr. and colleagues report that small-scale or targeted smallpox vaccination undertaken following a bioterror attack could contain the disease almost as effectively as mass vaccination of the U.S. public. Longini notes that this theory assumes that Americans who received the smallpox vaccination before 1972 still have some immunity to the virus. The new study, which used a computer model to simulate how deliberately released smallpox could spread under a number of scenarios, is published in the current issue of Science.
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