UW Experts Reflect on Bioterror Threat

	Hall Health Primary Care Center occupational health nurse Sally Abbott demonstrates a smallpox innoculation with administrator Barbara Howe.

In autumn of 2001, several University of Washington faculty members were regularly asked to share their expertise on the prospect of a bioterrorist attack. Dr. James Whorton, professor of medical history and ethics, offered a historical reminder: biological agents have in the past been used to disastrous effect in North America.

In 1763, a British army captain gave two blankets and a handkerchief from a smallpox hospital to emissaries of the Native American tribes then besieging Fort Pitt, on the site of present day Pittsburgh. Smallpox soon raged among all the Ohio Valley tribes.

“The intent was to kill them,” said Whorton, “and it was very effective.”

Only a few cases of the deliberate spread of smallpox are documented. For the most part, the disease needed no assistance. With no pre-Colombian history of exposure, an estimated two million Aztecs died of smallpox during the Spanish conquest. Millions more Native Americans died in North America after contact with white settlers.

The current U.S. population is not as vulnerable as were Native Americans when whites arrived. Older adults who were vaccinated in childhood may have some residual immunological resistance. However, this protection wanes with time and most people must be considered susceptible. Routine smallpox vaccinations were discontinued in the United States in 1972.

“In people under age thirty,” said Dr. Henry Rosen, professor and associate chair of medicine, “the virus would have a full measure of virulence.”

Despite the risk of severe complications from the smallpox vaccine, Dr. John Sherris, professor emeritus of microbiology, suggested that everyone, except people with specific immune deficiencies or other contraindications, should consider taking the vaccination when advised, because the disease causes immense suffering and fatalities.

“Any parents who are told that smallpox has been released as a weapon would almost certainly want to immunize their children,” said Sherris.