"Sex Positive"

This is a documentary opening March 20th about America's reaction to AIDS in the 1980's with regard to the gay community. It follows the story of activists who preached safe sex early on.

Dr. William Foege and Smallpox

One of the key doctors that contributed to the eradication of smallpox in 1979 was Dr. William Foege, a medical missionary. In 1966, Foege was involved in a certain incident in eastern Nigeria in which there was not enough vaccine shipped in time to inoculate the entire region. After verifying that an isolated village did in fact have a few cases of smallpox, Foege realized that they would have to use a different strategy involving military tactics. They created a network of medical missionaries in an effort to establish surveillance across the region. With this intelligence, they were able to contain the disease by following the people connected to the known infected. Foege’s “surveillance/containment” strategy only vaccinated less than fifty percent of the population rather than the expected eighty to one hundred percent. However, Foege’s strategy was not immediately accepted by the CDC. Many doctors remained skeptical, including Donald Hopkins, who tried the strategy in Sierra Leone. Hopkins was able to eliminate smallpox from the disease-rich region by inoculating less than seventy percent of the population. With Foege’s help, the WHO declared smallpox eliminated from the world. Foege has worked in many sectors of public health, including the Carter Center, which aims to eradicate Guinea worm.

Details can be found here:
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/top10/calling_the_shots.html

Won't somebody think of the ferrets?

Of relevance to both last week and next week is news this week that scientists in Hong Kong and the United States have developed an experimental H5N1 bird flu vaccine for people by inserting five key components of the H5N1 virus into the smallpox vaccine. Why smallpox?

The smallpox vaccine is very cheap, has a long shelf-life of several years and does not require highly sophisticated laboratories, making it easier for poorer countries to produce.

"Smallpox production capacity has gone down but many countries have the technology and the expertise to do it, and if necessary, it can be very quickly scaled up."
"But for other strategies (of producing H5N1 vaccines), it is not possible to rapidly set up manufacturing plants all over the world as they require very specialised plants."

However, it will take at least a few more years before the vaccine would be ready for the market. It must be tested next in ferrets, then monkeys, before human clinical trials can be carried out.

Global Smallpox Eradication

This video shows the work of American physician and epidemiologist D.A. Henderson. He basically led the campaign to eradicate smallpox throughout the whole world. He also opened the Center for Biosecurity and was the head of this organization for many years. He came up with a plan to monitor the disease and if there were any outbreaks. He would then go to this area and vaccinate all of the people in the area, therefore building a wall to block the disease from spreading. He says what motivated him and his teams was knowing that they were "saving people's lives." Watch this video to hear the fascinating story from the man who saved the world from smallpox.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtQ5JSW2eNk&feature=PlayList&p=B033C2506F0B76EE&index=8

Lost and found

There are things you want to find in a library book, and things you don't. I am an avid reader of books, both library books and used books, and usually come across fairly mundane items - I'd say boarding passes are the most common in used books and grocery store receipts are the most common in library books. However I have come across photographs, letters, and currency.

I don't know how many of you remember this story from a few years back about a librarian in Santa Fe who came across the least popular item ever to be inserted into a book - a small envelope of smallpox scabs. Eeeuww and Arggh!

Smallpox as a Weapon

A disease we took a great effort in eradicating, may be used against us. The use of Smallpox as biological warfare is not unheard of. In fact, Smallpox has been used as a weapon since the 1700s, when the British fought with France for the control of Canada. And as a result, many Native Americans fell victim to the disease and perished.

At the time of the Pontiac rebellion in 1763, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the Commander-in Chief of the British forces in North America, wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet: 'Could it not be contrived to send smallpox among these disaffected tribes of Indians? We must use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.' The colonel replied: 'I will try to inoculate the [Native American tribe] with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.' (Silent Weapon: Small Pox and Biological Warfare)

A little over 10 years later, in 1775, during the Revolutionary War, the British, once again, used this disease as a weapon, this time in an effort to prevent Americans from taking over Quebec. Apparently, one of the British commanders had civilians, who were immunized against Smallpox, infect American troops, who had no immunity. This resulted in a Smallpox epidemic, infecting about half of the 10,000 American troops.

Nearly 200 years later, during WWII, British and American scientists considered using this infectious agent as a biological weapon. However, this proved impractical, as there were vaccines readily available.

Now that Smallpox vaccinations are no longer distributed, and there is not a numerous supply of vaccinations ready at hand, the use of Smallpox as a biological warfare agent is a scary, but possible thing that can happen in our terror-filled world.

Global Polio Eradication

Keep track of the battle against Polio at polioeradication.org. This is where you can find a weekly update, maps, and numerous interesting reports and documents. I found this report interesting because it really brought home the magnitude of the task:

In the teeming streets of Uttar Pradesh, ensuring each of the estimated 38 million children in India's most populous state is immunized remains one of the global polio eradication initiative's greatest challenges. Here, more than 400,000 children are born every month and until recently, up to half those names were not making it onto the official government registry.

Week by week, mobile polio immunization teams, which literally walk from house to house throughout Uttar Pradesh to ensure blanket immunization coverage, continue to find unregistered, unimmunized newborns. These infants are not only susceptible to contracting polio; they also act as a reservoir for the virus to survive in the community and make for inaccurate immunization coverage figures.