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medpundit |
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Tuesday, April 08, 2003The CDC's March 25 decision to temporarily defer smallpox vaccination of persons with a history of heart disease while investigating recent cardiac-related deaths of vaccinees doesn't go far enough, said the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. What's needed, said ACIP in a March 28 recommendation to the CDC, is a ban on smallpox vaccination of adults with three or more major risk factors for heart disease. Such factors include high cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking and diabetes. The current CDC recommendation applies only to those with a known history of cardiac disease -- such as cardiomyopathy, previous heart attack, history of angina, or other evidence of coronary artery disease. If the CDC adopts the ACIP proposal, an estimated 6 percent of health care workers and 10 percent of the overall U.S. population would be ineligible to receive the vaccine. The members of the ACIP have been against pre-attack smallpox vaccination since the beginning, you may recall. Their arguments back then - that ring vaccination would work to control an epidemic, that there wasn't any evidence of a credible smallpox threat, that the vaccine had too many side effects - although misguided, were at least credible. This, however, is simply incredible. Three people out of over 100,000 vaccine recipients have had heart attacks. Two of these three people had known coronary artery disease. The other was a middle-aged man who smoked and had high cholesterol - all characteristics which increase the risk of heart disease. What was most likely responsible for the heart attacks - heart disease or vaccination? You don't need a medical degree to figure that out. posted by Sydney on 4/08/2003 07:35:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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