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medpundit |
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Sunday, October 19, 2003It is worrying that the smallpox program is slipping away. At the same time an article in the current American Journal of Epidemiology presents evidence that immunity from smallpox vaccination may last a lot longer than people think. The paper examines data from the 1950-1970 recurrence of smallpox in England and finds that individuals who had been vaccinated around the turn of the century and without intervening re-immunization were significantly less likely to have a severe case and were very significantly less likely to die. I also have to say that, as an outsider, this seems all to common a problem with the Bush administration (and maybe with previous presidencies) in that its attention span for issues seems even shorter than that of a classic ADD case. Port security seems to have vanished as an issue without being solved, Afghanistan seems no longer of much concern (except to us Canadians now who seem to be carrying the ball there, at least in Kabul), the failure to locate bin Laden dead or alive appears to no longer be noticed, etc. Not that I think Canadian politicians are very good at keeping thoughts active for very long either, but I think the Bush administration is probably an outlier in the bad direction on this. The study of Brits who were immunized at the turn of the century is reassuring, but you have to remember that they were also constantly exposed to community cases of smallpox which essentially gave them constant little boosters. Our politicians do seem to have short attention spans, but the smallpox program was deluged from the beginning by political opponents - much as the war on terror has been in general. Healthcare worker unions opposed it and the public health establishment opposed it. These opponents came across as neutral critics in the media, but in reality they're both political opponents of the current adminstration. The unions are affiliates of the AFLCIO, and many of the comments by members of the public health establishment betrayed their true motivations in opposing the program. The Bush Adminstration may simply have felt that of all the political battles they have to fight in the war against terror, this was the least important. After all, they offered us the chance to protect ourselves. It was we the people -or at least the medical profession - who declined to take advantage of it. posted by Sydney on 10/19/2003 05:59:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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