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Home › Expert Q&A › Health Concerns › Why is the smallpox vaccination not required anymore with today's threat of a biological attack?

Expert Q&A

 

By Dr. Vincent J. Kopp
Pediatrician Pediatric Anesthesiologist

Why is the smallpox vaccination not required anymore with today's threat of a biological attack?

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was detected and confined in about 1976. This was achieved using a "confine and vaccinate" population-based method of control whereby regions in which a case was detected were quarantined and mandatory vaccination of the surrounding populace was initiated. Such methods were unnecessary in western countries and would likely meet with resistance today though this is the most effective way known to contain epidemics of many sorts.

Since the world has been free of this disease sources of smallpox causing virus have been kept by governments for possible use as biological weapons. Treaties among sovereign states have kept these weapons from being used. Rogue governments and terrorists were thought -- until now -- to lack the motivations and the means to use smallpox as a weapon.

Once smallpox was eradicated the risk of vaccination became greater than the benefit of vaccination. Persons vaccinated before the 1970s were thought o have an unclear level of protection. No consensus exists as to what to do now thought it was recently concluded that dilution of existing smallpox vaccine stocks could extend the amount of readily available vaccine if the need arose to initiate a "confine and vaccinate" response to a biological warfare smallpox attack in the United States.

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