Faculty Bibliography

The network will also be used to determine who will get the scarce and dangerous drugs needed to treat complications of the smallpox vaccine, and when, said Dr. Gina Mootrey, another official at the centers, in announcing the monitoring plan to a panel advising the government on smallpox vaccinations. The panel also recommended not giving smallpox vaccine to anyone who has a family or household member with either skin condition because the virus in the vaccine could be transmitted to them. The other is cidofovir, a drug that experts hope might be effective against vaccinia, the virus in the vaccine that protects against smallpox. Cidofovir must be injected, is dangerous and its only approved use is for a different virus

The decision on how many people to vaccinate has been complicated and contentious because the vaccine is dangerous, smallpox was eradicated in 1980 and the threat of a bioterrorism attack that releases that smallpox virus is unknown. The panel also said workers should be asked whether they are pregnant or infected with the AIDS virus, H.I.V., before receiving the vaccine. Both conditions can increase the risk of adverse reactions to the smallpox vaccine, which experts consider the most dangerous of all immunizations. In June, the panel rejected a proposal to offer smallpox vaccine to every American at this time. But earlier this month top Health and Human Service officials said that they had not yet ruled out offering smallpox vaccine to all Americans; however, they said they would prefer to do so after a newer version of the vaccine is licensed, which cannot occur before 2003

A panel of specialists advising the government on smallpox vaccinations recommended on Wednesday offering the immunization to an estimated 500,000 emergency room workers and other hospital employees because of the possibility of a bioterrorist attack. The government usually follows vaccine recommendations from the panel, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, headquartered here where the panel met on Wednesday and will continue to meet today

The new analysis of the 60's data was prepared by Dr. [John M. Neff] and three other experts in infectious disease and smallpox vaccination. Its purpose was to help clarify the issues as the United States, fearing a bioterror attack, prepares to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of soldiers and health care workers, and considers whether to offer the vaccine to the public. Routine smallpox vaccination ended in this country in 1972, as the disease was being wiped out. Now, as public health experts consider resuming vaccination, a major concern is the possibility that newly vaccinated people might inadvertently infect others, particularly people with a high risk of being harmed by vaccinia. Dr. Neff noted that the risks of vaccination were real, whereas the threat of a smallpox attack was theoretical -- no one knows whether Iraq, another country or a terrorist group has the smallpox virus. He said his greatest concern was the threat of progressive vaccinia in immunocompromised people, either those vaccinated when they should not be or contacts of vaccinated people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 300,000 Americans have H.I.V. and do not know it. In addition, more than 23,000 health care workers have AIDS. Dr. Neff and other researchers said they knew of only one case in which a person with H.I.V. was given a smallpox vaccination. The patient was a 19-year-old soldier who did not know he had H.I.V. when the military vaccinated him in 1984. He developed progressive vaccinia and AIDS, and died

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Soviet smallpox experts found themselves impoverished, leading Western experts to fear they might be tempted to sell the virus or their knowledge of how to weaponize it, or both. In 1994, the Defense Intelligence Agency cited an unidentified source as saying Russia had shared smallpox technology with Iraq and North Korea in the early 1990's. As worries about germ terrorism grew in the late 1990's, Washington began a low-profile program to rebuild national stocks of smallpox vaccine and update vaccination plans. When routine smallpox vaccination ended in the United States in 1972, only 15.4 million doses were left. In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contracted with Acambis of Cambridge, Mass., for 40 million more, at a cost of $343 million. Crowds for smallpox vaccinations at the New York City Health Department in 1947. (The New York Times); [Richard O. Spertzel] says Iraq was probably ''messing around with smallpox.'' (Getty Images); [Ken Alibek], a germ warfare expert, says Iraq could turn smallpox into a weapon. (Carol T. Powers for The New York Times); A hospital worker receiving a smallpox vaccination last month in Tel Aviv. In August, Israel became the first nation known to have started vaccinating emergency workers. (Associated Press)

The countries -- China, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Russia -- have 40 percent of the world's population and by 2010 will have more H.I.V.-infected people than any other five countries, an agency official said H.I.V., the AIDS virus, could harm the economic, social, political and military structure in each of the five countries, a C.I.A. official said in releasing the declassified parts of the council's report The report is the latest in a series of papers by the National Intelligence Council on AIDS since the late 1980's. It expands on one the group issued in December 1999 on the global threat of infectious diseases, including H.I.V., on the United States. The United States has declared the global epidemic of AIDS a national security threat

'W.H.O. has no knowledge of how these news reports originated,' said the organization, an agency of the United Nations based in Geneva, 'but would like to stress that we have no opinion of the future existence of blonds.' On Good Morning America, Charles Gibson began a conversation with his co-anchor, Diane Sawyer, by saying: 'There's a study from the World Health Organization, this is for real, that blonds are an endangered species. Women and men with blond hair, eyebrows and blue eyes, natural blonds, they say will vanish from the face of the earth within 200 years, because it is not as strong a gene as brunets.' 'We didn't do that story because we made an inquiry to the World Health Organization first,' she said. 'They told us that report was two years old, and had been covered at the time. They said it had been picked up again that day by a German news agency.'

Mr. [Tommy G. Thompson] oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which has acknowledged its failure to prepare adequately to communicate during the anthrax outbreak. In the first days of the outbreak, C.D.C. did not take the leadership in providing vital medical and epidemiologic facts to state health departments, practicing physicians and the public. Spokesmen for the centers said the information was supposed to come from Mr. Thompson's office. Much of Friday's briefing centered on clarifying the options and what officials had recommended to Mr. Thompson and President Bush. But before reporters could question Dr. [Julie L. Gerberding] about this unexpected news development, she suddenly left the stage, leaving two participants, Jerome M. Hauer, an assistant secretary of health and human services and director of the department's Office of Public Health Preparedness, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to field the questions. Also, reporters entering the auditorium at Mr. Thompson's headquarters on Friday afternoon passed packets about smallpox stacked on a table. The reporters were not allowed to take them until they were distributed after the news briefing began. So reporters were deprived of an opportunity to inform themselves before asking questions. But, as it turned out, the packets contained little new information and no summary of the messages the top officials were trying to make in the briefing

These findings led him to the important discovery that specific cells in the cell lineage always die through programmed cell death and that this process could be monitored in the living organism. Dr. [John E. Sulston] described the visible steps in the cellular death process and demonstrated the first mutations of genes participating in programmed cell death, including a gene known as nuc-1. Dr. Sulston also showed that the protein whose production is governed by the nuc-1 gene is required for degradation of the DNA of the dead cell. In a series of experiments beginning in the 1970's, Dr. [H. Robert Horvitz] used C. elegans to determine the existence of a genetic program controlling cell death. In 1986 he published what the Nobel committee called pioneering research that identified the first two bona fide ''death genes,'' known as ced-3 and ced-4. Dr. Horvitz showed that functional ced-3 and ced-4 genes were essential for cell death. Later, Dr. Horvitz showed that another gene, ced-9, protects against cell death by interacting with ced-4 and ced-3. Dr. Horvitz also identified a number of genes that direct how a dead cell is eliminated. Further, Dr. Horvitz showed that the human genome contains a ced-3-like gene