More Anti-Science: Trump Asks Anti-Vaxxer to Head New Panel on Vaccine Safety

You’re looking at a child who has smallpox. The disease has a 30% mortality rate. Those who survive have hideous health problems for the rest of their lives. 

The disease was eradicated in the 1970s by a worldwide vaccination program. Older readers of this post will likely have had a smallpox vaccine, and a small scar to show for it.

I researched the legalities of requiring first responders to be vaccinated for smallpox in my 2005 Emory Law Journal article, “Pox Americana? Vaccinating More Emergency Doctors for Smallpox: A Law and Economics Approach to Work Conditions.”

I was prompted to do this research because Al-Qaida had tried to acquire smallpox from a lab. There are only two labs in the world that keep the smallpox virus alive. One is in the U.S. off Long Isalnd.

The other … is located in Russia, “our friend,” according to Donald Trump.

The U.S. no longer allows for smallpox vaccination—and that’s the point of my research, to make the case at least for limited use of the vaccine to ensure that if there is a bio-terror attack, we have a first line of defense.

The U.S. will soon have a task force to recommend fewer vaccines (For Trump's outreach to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an anti-vaxxer, click here). And we have a complicated and tense relationship with Russia. The world is not becoming safer.

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We also an incoming president who disregards the intelligence community.

Here is an excerpt from Dark Winter, a simulated smallpox attack conducted by our military and intelligence communities after 9/11. 

It could take days, or even weeks, for the symptoms of a biological agent to begin to manifest themselves. In the case of a BW [bio-weapon] attack, the first responder, the very tip of the spear, is likely to be a primary care physician, healthcare provider. . . . Given the unheralded nature of these silent killers, it would fall upon the public health and medical communities to detect the attack, contain the incident, and treat the victims. The delayed onset of symptoms, coupled with the fact that it is difficult to discern a deliberate BW attack like small pox from a naturally occurring infectious disease outbreak, makes attribution and identification of the perpetrators exceedingly difficult. Moreover, this type of attack can wreak havoc with the public, which must confront fear of the unknown.