Smallpox: Balancing Prevention and Risk

Faced with the threat of bioterrorism, the federal government has stockpiled more than 400 million doses of the smallpox vaccine. Its challenge now is to prepare the public for the deaths that could result from widespread vaccination, an estimated 1.1 per million, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"We need to understand the toxicity of (widespread vaccination) so that people can understand that," said Fauci, who showed slides of people whose bodies were covered with painful and disfiguring smallpox lesions. "This is what you will see on the nightly news."

For more information on the topics addressed at the seminar, "Human Health Frontiers," see the links below:

Stem Cells
Addiction and Mental Illness
Nutrition and Disease Prevention
Microbes

—Coimbra Sirica

16 October 2002

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