James Donald writes:
The original vaccine was based on cowpox, the nearest relative of small pox. However it was insufficiently effective and reliable, and so was furtively replaced by a weakened strain of smallpox, which was grown on cows. The sellers of the vaccine continued to represent it as cowpox, but it was in fact a mild variant of the real thing, smallpox.
One reason for ending routine smallpox vaccinations was fear that the vaccine might re-evolve virulence.
You are full of shit. The smallpox vaccine is not made from cowpox or from smallpox (variola) virus. It is made from the vaccinia virus. Did you ever wonder where the word "vaccine" comes from? The reason routine smallpox vaccinations ended was because some people have a bad reaction to the vaccinia virus, even though a strain is used that is generally benign. Since the vaccination was thought to confer no benefit and does carry some risk, it was discontinued. Do a google search on "smallpox vaccine" next time before you spout off with ignorant garbage like this.
On 27 Sep 2001, at 21:50, Nomen Nescio wrote:
You are full of shit. The smallpox vaccine is not made from cowpox or from smallpox (variola) virus. It is made from the vaccinia virus.
Did you ever wonder where the word "vaccine" comes from?
It comes from the word "vaca", which mean cow. more explicitly, it comes from variolae vaccinae which is latin for cow pox.
Do a google search on "smallpox vaccine" next time before you spout off with ignorant garbage like this.
Good advice! George
-- James Donald writes:
The original vaccine was based on cowpox, the nearest relative of small pox. However it was insufficiently effective and reliable, and so was furtively replaced by a weakened strain of smallpox, which was grown on cows. The sellers of the vaccine continued to represent it as cowpox, but it was in fact a mild variant of the real thing, smallpox.
One reason for ending routine smallpox vaccinations was fear that the vaccine might re-evolve virulence.
On 27 Sep 2001, at 21:50, Nomen Nescio wrote:
You are full of shit. The smallpox vaccine is not made from cowpox or from smallpox (variola) virus. It is made from the vaccinia virus. Did you ever wonder where the word "vaccine" comes from?
From the latin word for cow.
The vaccinia virus is most plausibly a weakened strain of smallpox. The word "vaccine" does not come from "vaccinia". On the contrary, the word "vaccinia" comes from "vaccine". The Vaccinia virus is intermediate between the cowpox and smallpox virus. It may be the result of hybridization between cowpox and smallpox, but is most plausibly the result of the small pox virus devolving back towards the cowpox virus from which it arose, as a result of being cultured in cows. In this sense, the vaccinia virus is most plausibly a weakened strain of smallpox. The word "vaccine" comes from cow, because the original vaccine was cowpox, and the current vaccine is raised in cows. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG xmLTZdHfPaan7hiLpGP6kvXloZVpeWslAvtwgk+J 4gbtIJ3SIp0x8Xj/mS0UM2vOtaTm2CXVbKuE5Onsv
Nomen Nescio wrote:
James Donald writes:
The original vaccine was based on cowpox, the nearest relative of small pox. However it was insufficiently effective and reliable, and so was furtively replaced by a weakened strain of smallpox, which was grown on cows. The sellers of the vaccine continued to represent it as cowpox, but it was in fact a mild variant of the real thing, smallpox.
One reason for ending routine smallpox vaccinations was fear that the vaccine might re-evolve virulence.
You are full of shit. The smallpox vaccine is not made from cowpox or from smallpox (variola) virus. It is made from the vaccinia virus. Did you ever wonder where the word "vaccine" comes from?
The reason routine smallpox vaccinations ended was because some people have a bad reaction to the vaccinia virus, even though a strain is used that is generally benign. Since the vaccination was thought to confer no benefit and does carry some risk, it was discontinued.
Do a google search on "smallpox vaccine" next time before you spout off with ignorant garbage like this.
And google is of course the fount of all wisdom? As I think someone else pointed out, the original vaccine *was* based on cowpox. Inoculation with dried up pustules from smallpox victims had been known about since at least the 10th century in China and by the 18th had spread all over Asia and Europe. However there was apparently a 1-5% chance of causing smallpox, so it was a desperate remedy. Jenner had the idea of using cowpox pustules from milkmaids. They thought that cowpox was caught from cows so called it "vaccination". As you say (& I didn't realise till I looked it up just now) it was later based on vaccinia virus, which is of unknown origin. Just turned up in a lab one day. It is called "vaccinia" because it was first discovered in a vaccine. It probably isn't a recent variation on either smallpox or cowpox because parts of its genetic sequence are less close to either of them than they are to each other. (Which might be a clue that other pox viruses could be used for immunisation as well). Vaccinia is *not* harmless - people have died of it, and it has become endemic in the water buffalo population of India, from where it sometimes infects cows and very rarely infects humans. It might possibly have originated as a bovine disease, maybe introduced by mistake for cowpox Smallpox vaccine is still apparently available to people who work in labs on other poxes, and to medical staff in the (small) part of West Africa where monkey pox is a human health problem. Just out of interest, cowpox is *not* a natural disease of cows, but of rodents, probably originally susliks or gerbils. It seems that cows can catch a mild form of it when in close proximity to rodents (such as in 18th century English barns in winter) as can humans. Similarly monkey pox is originally a disease of squirrels, but was noticed first in monkeys. Smallpox isn't likely to be a war-winning weapon, though it could cause a great deal of terror. It spreads slowly enough so that any country whose pharmaceutical factories haven't been blown up by cruise missiles could probably tool up in time to prevent an epidemic, helped by some sensible quarantines. There are many potential low-tech vaccines. It kills 10-30% of victims, slowly, and many people in Europe and Asia have some hereditary immunity or residual effect from vaccination. If you used it against an army you are likely to end up with very, very, angry enemies, mostly still capable of fighting. There are many other poxviruses such as volepox. There is even one endemic to the USA: skunkpox. You Americans just have to inject yourself with pus from a poxy skunk if you are worried. Personally I'm much more scared by nerve gasses. No time to prepare, no practical precautionary measures anyway. Details not from Google, but from Gilbert &7 Allison (1998) "Vaccination and Immunisation" in Hugo & Russell "Pharmaceutical Microbiology", 6th edition, (Blackwell's Oxford) and also from Fenner (1996) "Poxviruses", chapter 84 of "Field's Virology", 3rd edition (Lippincott, New York). Ken Brown (who is a microbiologist when he has his lab coat on)
At 04:57 PM 9/28/01 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
Smallpox isn't likely to be a war-winning weapon, though it could cause a great deal of terror. It spreads slowly enough so that any country whose pharmaceutical factories haven't been blown up by cruise missiles could probably tool up in time to prevent an epidemic, helped by some sensible quarantines.
Sounds like a cobalt 'doomsday nuke' that you trigger just before your suicide in a bunker.
There are many other poxviruses such as volepox. There is even one endemic to the USA: skunkpox. You Americans just have to inject yourself with pus from a poxy skunk if you are worried.
Sounds like something congressmen are at risk for. Personally I'm much more
scared by nerve gasses. No time to prepare, no practical precautionary measures anyway.
Carry an autoinjector. (Officer, this is *not* 'parephenalia') Start cultivating Jimsonweed. Raise canaries outdoors. Carry bleach in a perfume bottle. Stay away from concentrations of people. And upwind of them. (Shit now I sound like Payne from N.M.)
Ken Brown (who is a microbiologist when he has his lab coat on)
You know about the researchers who put two mild mouse bugs together (working on a fertility project I think) and got a hybrid that killed a large number quickly? What a jokester, the Author of the Genome.
On Friday, September 28, 2001, at 10:48 AM, David Honig wrote:
At 04:57 PM 9/28/01 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
Smallpox isn't likely to be a war-winning weapon, though it could cause a great deal of terror. It spreads slowly enough so that any country whose pharmaceutical factories haven't been blown up by cruise missiles could probably tool up in time to prevent an epidemic, helped by some sensible quarantines.
Sounds like a cobalt 'doomsday nuke' that you trigger just before your suicide in a bunker.
I was reading Tucker's new book "Scourge" yesterday, and he outlined the reasons for militarizing smallpox. The Sov rationale was for a laydown _after_ an all-out nuclear war, to clean up any remnants. Those on the Soviet side, also nuked, would be in bunkers and would have ample opportunity to be vaccinated. Also, smallpox is not airborne in any widespread sense, that is, it is not carried aloft in the jetstream. Thus, it would not drift from the U.S. or even Europe into Russia. Tucker's book is too heavy on the drama of "chasing down the last smallpox in the wild" and announcing the Official Eradication and is too light on the Biopreparat/Vector/India-1967 stuff. Alibek's book is maybe more germane (cough cough). I haven't yet seen Judith Miller's new "Germs" book. A piece of triva. Tucker is part of the Monterey Instititue for International Studies, though he located on the east coast. I expect ties to the anti-terrorism program at the adjacent Naval Postgraduate School (where infrequent list contributor Kristin Tsolis is based, involved in AUM cult and bioterrorism issues....I assume she's in overdrive right now). Another piece of trivia. Author Laurie Garrett, who wrote "The Coming Plague," is a UCSC graduate.
Personally I'm much more
scared by nerve gasses. No time to prepare, no practical precautionary measures anyway.
Tucker's book has an interesting description of how the U.S. helped the U.S.S.R. "spin their wheels" on "worthless" biological and chemical warfare work, to distract them from nuclear work. Some U.S. agents, the subjects of recent books (don't recall the names, but I glanced at them a couple of years ago, and Tucker cites them as sources), dropped hints to the Soviets that the U.S. had made major strides in CBW. This was designed to distract the Soviets, to get them to spend money on dead ends. Well, besides spending a lot of money on smallpox and nerve gases, the Soviets apparently had a breakthrough: the developed a nerve gas much more potent than VX (which kills quickly with just a microscopic droplet). We hadn't counted on that.
Stay away from concentrations of people. And upwind of them. (Shit now I sound like Payne from N.M.)
I've got this one covered. Nothing but the Pacific Ocean west of me. Some back roads, some beach houses, but nothing that's in the top 10,000 target list. South of me is the aforementioned complex of Defense Language Institute, Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Undersea Warfare Center branch office, Monterey Institute, and the main West Coast satellite downlink site in a radio-quiet zone back in the hills behind Big Sur. Given the prevailing winds, no real risk to me. Moving and panicked crowds would be a bigger risk, but I expect most of them would think to head north out of the SF Bay Area, or maybe east into the Sierras. Not a lot would try to make it over a mountain pass to my section, unless they had a specific place to go. If this be paranoia, let us make the most of it. And paranoia can be so much _fun_. On a completely serious note, experience from many past scourges and plagues has shown the wisdom of "going to the country." Or at least not hanging out in schools, shopping centers, and, worst of all, "relocation centers." Sleeping in a gymnasium with 300 other refugees is just about the worst possible scenario. Though I think such an attack is only slightly likely (and then probably semi-botched and "only" killing a few hundred or a few thousand), it takes little effort to "think about the unthinkable" and make minimum preparations. For example, think about a relative in the country you could visit, have a "bug out bag" in the garage or car, have enough cash and stored food to last a few weeks, and so on. There is much written about this topic. --Tim May
participants (6)
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David Honig -
georgemw＠speakeasy.net -
jamesd＠echeque.com -
Ken Brown -
Nomen Nescio -
Tim May