From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative,sci.med,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension
Subject: Re: Drug knowledge
Date: 28 Apr 1998 04:14:59 GMT

In <3544D796.135B@enterprise.net> John Scudamore <whale@enterprise.net>
writes:

>If you look at smallpox you will find the vaccine didn't work.  But,
the rich people write the history books.<

    If you think that history and medical texts and filled with lies,
it relieves you of any responsibility for knowing what's in them, I
suppose.  That attitude must've stood you in great stead (in your own
mind, at any rate) during your student days.

     There is no such thing as "a" smallpox vaccines, but a long and
complicated series of them.  The last series was quite effective, and
succeeded in wiping out the disease completely in 1976.  It hasn't been
seen or heard from since.   Twenty years is a long time for a virus to
hide, especially one that requires fresh hosts every few weeks.


                                   Steve Harris, M.D.



Mo.ron (mo^r' on) n.  1. Person exhibiting the mildest degree of mental
deficiency, permitting adequacy in simple life activities.  2. Loosely,
a very foolish person.  3.  A person believing that smallpox, a viral
disease infecting only humans and incapable of chronic infection,
disappeared completely from the Earth spontaneously in many remote and
undeveloped countries where it had historically always been epidemic,
simultaneously with the coordinated vaccination campaign by the World
Health Organization in the late 1970's, by complete coincidence.
---Syn.  see IDIOT. [Gk. moron, neut. of moros, stupid].

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: Re: SMALLPOX
Date: 21 Feb 1999 17:44:08 GMT

In <7am36f$292$1@news8.svr.pol.co.uk> "John"
<Edward@elucas.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

>Great Myths 1:  Vaccines rid the world of smallpox
>
>It is pathetic and ludicrous to say we ever vanquished smallpox with
>vaccines, when only 10% of the population was ever vaccinated." Dr Glen
>Dettman.



    Dr. Dettman must think smallpox germs have little wings, or travel
in the air easily like flu, or infect animals, or infect people without
symptoms.

   But since none of this is true, it was relatively easy to contain
smallpox.  You knew who was sick.   Sick people were sick enough to
stay home, and weren't very contagous, and never infected more than a
few family memebers and visitors anyway.  That was the natural course
of the disease.  Once this was known, it was relatively easy to isolate
people with smallpox until the disease was gone and their immunity had
developed (or they had died), and vaccinate all contacts, which where
few since the incubation period was short.  There is no smallpox
carrier state.

   And that was how it happened.

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: misc.kids.health,sci.med
Subject: Re: Smallpox and medical men (Merz)
Date: 25 Aug 2000 04:58:30 GMT

In <39A5DDFE.C7C29304@lumbercartel.com> "D. C. & M. V. Sessions"
<dcs@lumbercartel.com> writes:
>
>"Steven B. Harris" wrote:
>> In <8o3fid$pg2$1@news8.svr.pol.co.uk> "John"
>> <whale@whaleto.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>
>> >And you should know about lies--the smallpox one is one of your best.
>> >Funny how smallpox vanished in some countries without vaccination.
>>
>>    Not that funny.  Smallpox is not very contageous-- in fact it's hard
>> enough to transmit that people like you can claim that it's not
>> infectious at all.  This fact means that once the case rate falls below
>> a certain level in a country in which there is good public health
>> vigilance, quaranteen, and nursing, the disease will be isolated and
>> gradually die out.
>
>How long does smallpox virus survive outside of a host?


  That depends on how dry it is.  Hours to days, much like TB.  And the
only host is people.

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: misc.kids.health,sci.med
Subject: Re: Smallpox and medical men (Merz)
Date: 25 Aug 2000 20:08:32 GMT

In <8o576n$lkt$1@news7.svr.pol.co.uk> "John"
<whale@whaleto.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

>While I have such an esteemed medical man on tap--I am curious as to the
>definition of contagious--are their various levels of contagious?

  Nothing formal, but some diseases are certainly more contagious than
others. An infected person in an airplane or even walking though a tent
caughing, can give many people in the enclosure the flu. Other
diseases, like TB and hepatitis B and C, are much harder to transmit
(such diseases were said to be communicable as opposed to contageous,
but there is no bright line). AIDS and leprosy are more difficult
still.


> Smallpox strikes me as not very.  If you can work alongside smallpox
>patients for months on end and not get the disease it doesn't strike
>me as contagious.

  It is not as contageous as some diseases, but it's more than others.
It's contageous enough to cause epidemics in poor and uneducated
countries. But then, so are TB and HIV.

  A hundred years ago, spitting in public in this country was common
and accepted. Nobody covered their mouths when caughing or sneezing.
There were horse-watering traughs in many streets, and no public
fountains. In many places, people got water on the street by drinking
from the public dipper, a single metal dipper on a chain, into which
poured a stream of water from the untreated well or a tap. Sewage
wasn't processed, water wasn't chlorinated. It was an entirely
different world, and one that still exists in many poor countries.

  One of the more striking modern blindnesses of thought involves the
inability of "natural hygeine" enthusiasts to understand basic public
hygeine! Which is to say, their failure to fathom how the same disease
that caused epidemics in the West centuries ago, no longer do so; and
at the same time, how such diseases continue to do so in Africa, even
today. Truly, as Einstein said, only the universe and human stupidity
are thought to be infinite, and there is some question about the
universe.

From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.bio.misc,sci.med,sci.med.pharmacy,uk.people.health,
	uk.sci.med.pharmacy
Subject: Re: SMALLPOX TERROR ALERT: - (smallpox bioterror attack: alert and 
	procedures for smallpox virus outbreak)
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 22:18:12 -0600
Message-ID: <a9lhes$ra1$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>

"Lilly" <boikle@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:33c9e7bf.0204171806.2e5f7b41@posting.google.com...
> Don't you think you are being a bit extreme??????  Smallpox only has a
> 30% death rate if there was an outbreak.  You are causing panic over
> what "might" happen!


It is pretty humorous.


> > SMALLPOX TERROR ALERT:
> >
> > The Acheson Intelligence Group has issued smallpox terror alerts
> > before. But compelling new intelligence is now available.
> >
> > The AIG urges you to prepare for biological terrorism and share this
> > alert with others urgently. This is a genuine warning.


As opposed to those other sarcastic warnings.


> >
> > Your government should now be issuing survival information for
> > biological terrorism and particularly a smallpox outbreak. Since they
> > are not we reccomend you use internet sources like this one:
> >
> > http://bioterror.hpage.net/


Where somebody will surely try to sell you something. For your personal
benefit, of course!

The idea of deliberately infected suicide smallpox index cases is
particularly funny.  One can imagine this Arab guy, who isn't infective
until he has red bloches all over him and can hardly walk, trying to make it
through customs. "Mosquito bites. Gurgggle. Horrrible fishing trrrip, by
Allah!"

Hmmm.

Alternately, one can imagine this guy making it though customs before his
symptoms appear, and then staggering around shopping malls in the few hours
he can still walk, with these oozing pustules on every square inch, trying
to touch people and cough on them.  Why, he might expose dozens of people
before getting picked up and diagnosed!  Who will then get vaccinated, and
that will be that.

Alas for terrorists, smallpox doesn't spread well, and the carrier has to
look like hell, by the time he can do it.  That won't work in this day and
age.

But it's a thought.  C+ for thinking, Johnny.

SBH

From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,sci.med,sci.med.pharmacy
Subject: Re: Drugmakers not following up speedy approval-US study
Date: 1 Jun 2005 20:41:39 -0700
Message-ID: <1117683699.401291.287260@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>

> I suppose vaccines don't count. You have to get sick first?

>>That's right. And even Smallpox has returned. We didn't cure. We postponed.


Nonsense. Smallpox was eradicated from the wild in 1980 and has never
returned. If it still exists, it's in a dewar somewhere as a germ
warfare agent, and would be used by terrorists. So far, it hasn't been.
It's a WMD. You know, the ones we keep looking for, and not finding?
Right now it's a Boogeyman.

If it ever does get out, it will be some work to isolate and vaccinate
around the cases, but it's doable (it was done in Africa under far
worse conditions than we'll ever have in the US). There's enough
vaccine on hand at the CDC to vaccinate everybody. But they won't need
to. Smallpox is only mildly contageous. It's not transmitted by people
who aren't already very ill, and one can vaccinate all contacts of ill
people for several days after contact, and prevent it. Too bad we can't
do that with the flu-- but the flu doesn't behave like smallpox, and is
a much harder disease to contain, than smallpox would be.

SBH