Talk:Smallpox vaccine

message: i am looking for info on a vaccination campaign in the phillipines in 1905. is there any info on how many people died and why the vaccine caused the deaths? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.45.85.174 (talk) 23:50, 11 December 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: It is likely the war caused the deaths. It was quite a notable one.  Genocide is a word that has been used.  Midgley 02:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Info on vaccination campaign

message: I just chopped the following from this article:
The vaccine that eventually eradicated smallpox, developed by Edward Jenner in 1796, consists of the virus which causes the related, yet far milder, cowpox disease; this virus is appropriately named vaccinia, from the Latin 'vaca' which means cow. 
This vaccine has functional virus in it which improves its effectiveness but, unfortunately, causes serious complications for people with impaired immune systems (for example chemotherapy and AIDS patients, and people with eczema) and is not yet considered safe for pregnant women. A small, yet significant, percentage of healthy individuals also suffer adverse side-effects which, in rare  cases, include permanent neurological damage. Vaccines that only contain attenuated ("killed") vaccinia virus have been proposed but some researchers have questioned the possible effectiveness of such a vaccine. Others point out that mass vaccinations would probably not be needed to counter a bioterrorist attack if many millions of doses of the current (possibly improved) vaccine could be delivered to victims within several days of exposure (the vaccine is effective to that point). This, along with vaccinations of so-called first-responders, is the current plan of action being devised by the US Department of Homeland Defense and FEMA in the United States (the DHD was formed as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks).
The vaccine can cause complications for those around those who are vaccinated. People who get the vaccine will shed virus particles through vesicles on their skin and possibly through their respiratory tract. Infections in close and not-so-close contacts can ensue. The current plan to vaccinate first responders has the potential to cause infection in the most vulnerable section of the population, the hospitalized ill. Family contacts are also susceptible, although they are less vulnerable because their immune systems are presumably intact. Secondary infection can cause skin disease, pulmonary disease and rarely, neurologic disease. 
As of June 21, 2003, a scientific advisory panel had issued a recommendation against further vaccination of first responders because a significant number of those vaccinated suffered heart problems, notably pericarditis and myocarditis.
The main problem with developing a new, supposedly safer vaccine, is that, barring a bioterrorist attack on immunized individuals, its effectiveness cannot be tested on humans, and other animals do not naturally contract smallpox. Monkeys at USAMIID research facilities have been infected, but tests on animals that are artificially infected with a human disease are notorious for giving false or misleading results. To demonstrate safety and effectiveness, human trials always have to confirm data obtained from animal testing.
I will be the first to say that there is indeed genuinely encyclopedic material in here, but frankly I don't have the time to weed it out.  I just spent two hours weeding similar crap out the vaccine article.*Kat* 07:47, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
I've returned it. It's not appropriate to cut such a large amount of material simply because you object to it in some (unspecified) way, but don't want to deal with it yourself. I myself don't see anything unencyclopedic there, and certainly not anything requiring immediate deletion. - Nunh-huh 18:59, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. But I'm also very interested to know what specific issues *Kat* has so this article can be improved. --mav 14:37, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: "Historical records show that a vaccination method was already known"
This doesn't quite work, does it.  11:06, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Before smallpox vaccine 

message: That section doesn't look right.
Neither does the one full of Whale links - even though they are to a clone site.  There was an RFC abut that IIRC, and there is as we all know an article suitable for putting anti-vaccination stuff into, it should not be scattered over WP.  This chap has been telling the same lies about doctors, since at least 1997 on newsgroups and anywhere else that is open, there is only one clear mention of a diagnosis and it is not substantiated. Midgley 02:23, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Before 

message: Strictly.  SO best not to say it does.  Midgley 02:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vaccinia != Cowpox 

message: This article could use a big overhaul.  For an article about the smallpox vaccine, it skips a lot of important information.  It starts with Before Vaccination, then proceeds to Early Vaccination and then skips straight to Eradication of Smallpox.  It would benefit from the contribution of information about:
* Edward Jenner and the development of the vaccine
* The components/structure of the vaccine
* The application of the vaccine during the 18th/19th centuries
* Worldwide efforts to eradicate smallpox in the 20th century
dpotter 16:39, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article about vaccine  

message: Three known repositories of the virus were left, one in Birmingham, England which was later destroyed after an accidental escape from containment caused many deaths
I fail to see any justification for this statement.
http://www.freewebs.com/scientific_anti_vivisectionism17/smallpoxvaccine.htm describes an outbreak in 1966 originating in Birmingham plus three other unrelated outbreaks that infected a total of 62 (+9 retrospectively) resulting in zero deaths.
There was a single death Janet Parker from the escape at Birmingham in 1978. M100 20:31, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eradication of smallpox 

message: Is the vaccination good for? -Crimson30 14:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, could an expert add the answer to the article?  The word on the street is that the vaccinations that everyone received in their childhoods wouldn't protect most people if there were an outbreak today.  Tempshill (talk) 04:48, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  How long... 

message: Could a knowledgeable person add the answer to the following question to the article:  Why was the mortality rate so low of people who were inoculated before the vaccine?  (i.e. getting a pustule bound to a cut, or getting scabs blown up the nose.)  Such inoculation presumably would infect the subject just as surely as the ordinary method of infection would, and with more virus; I'd like to understand why this didn't act as simply another way to get infected with the same high mortality rate you'd expect from an ordinary smallpox infection.  Tempshill (talk) 16:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The answer is a long time in coming, but better late than never. There are two strains of Smallpox, Variola Major and Variola Minor.  The former has a mortality rate of 30%, while the latter is only 2%. Thus people would be purposefully infected with Variola Minor, which would produce an immunity against both strains.  Determining which donors to retrieve pustules from was simple - the milder the symptoms, the better for use in inoculation. The Inoculation article has the information you seek. I'll see about bringing some of that to this article. --Dan East (talk) 17:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Why the low mortality rate "before"?

message: I am reading in a German Novel (Die Inoculation der Liebe Leipzig: Weidmann, 1771) of a treatment against smallpox offered by a certain man named Dimsdal, wo advertised his services in the news papers at that time. Is there any detail about that treatment? It precedes the given chronology. --Olaf Simons (talk) 12:45, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Smalpox "Inoculation" c.1770 

message: This source (footnote 12) Grizzard FE, Washington G, Chase PD, Twohig D (1985). George Washington to Major General Horatio Gates, 5–6 February 1777. In: The papers of George Washington. 8. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. , has GW writing about the possible inoculation of the Continential Army. Does it also tell us that he actually carried out the program? --S. Rich (talk) 21:31, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did Washington order massive inoculation? 

message: This article may contain content identical or similar to another topic.  
Please see Talk:History of smallpox
Mathglot (talk) 22:42, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundant articles on variolation/inoculation 

message: My apologies for my ignorance of Wikipedia etiquette, but, the picture of the Smallpox vaccination bottle from India is actually labelled "Ruh Kewra", which is essentially an extract of the screw-pine flower used for adding a floral scent and flavour to desserts.  What can be done to rectify this error?  I'm a native Urdu speaker, and just noticed this while perusing the article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.159.97.82 (talk) 05:51, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you very much for letting us know about the error. I will endeavor to get it deleted from the Wikimedia Commons (the site that hosts many of Wikipedia's images, including this one) and am emailing the CDC (the source for this image) as we speak. Graham87 07:57, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: As can be gleaned from the , the image has been renamed, removed from all the smallpox articles, and deleted from the CDC website. Graham87 13:27, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem with image

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Smallpox vaccine. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
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Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 17:07, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: At present this article states — as does almost every other source that mentions John Fewster — that:  Another early account was Dr John Fewster's 1765 paper on "Cowpox and its ability to prevent smallpox" read to the London Medical Society.  This statement is false.
Problem:  The Medical Society of London was founded in 1773.  Therefore Fewster could not have read his paper to the Society 8 years before it came into existence.
 
Sources:  
*  History of the Medical Society of London
*  Wikipedia's article:  "Medical Society of London"
According to this source — L. Thurston and G. Williams (2015) "An examination of John Fewster’s role in the discovery of smallpox vaccination," Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 45 : 173-179 ; see p. 174. — the "medical society" to which Fewster belonged, was the "Convivio-Medical Society":  "Fewster was also an active member of the Convivio-Medical Society, a group of doctors who met once a month to discuss medical cases over a meal and drink." 
This source states that Fewster's paper wasn't published:  Ian & Jenifer Glynn, The Life and Death of Smallpox (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100.
Fewster's "paper" on smallpox wasn't published because he never wrote such a paper.
Note that according to Thurston and Williams, p. 177 (above), the earliest insinuation that Fewster had written a paper titled "Cow pox and its ability to prevent smallpox" appeared in 1886.
Fewster's own account appears here:  George Pearson, ed., An inquiry concerning the history of the cowpox, principally with a view to supersede and extinguish the smallpox (London, England:  J. Johnson, 1798), pp. 102-104.
According to Fewster himself (above), he merely "communicated this fact [that prior infection with cowpox provides immunity to smallpox] to a society, of which I was then a member, … " (p. 102).
Furthermore, note that according to Fewster's own account, he made his discovery in 1768 or later, not in 1765.
VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 19:30, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fewster's "paper" of 1765 ? 

message: A school textbook, History Alive! talks about chinese developing the vaccination much earlier.   This site seems to sort of support the claim: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/chinese-smallpox-inoculation.  And this one definitely says the Chinese practiced smallpox innoculation by AD 1000: http://www.medicaldaily.com/history-vaccines-variolation-378738 Can any-one check this out?Kdammers (talk) 16:34, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese 

message: In the New England Journal of Medicine (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1715349) dated Feb 1 2018, Dr  Arthur Boylston (of the Nuffield Division of Clinical Laboratory Sciences–Radcliffe Department of Medicine, University of Oxford) published an article called "The Myth of the Milkmaid" that refutes the milkmaid story. The article also outlines the role of John Fewster.
I don't have access to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), but this webpage (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/02/01/582370199/whats-the-real-story-about-the-milkmaid-and-the-smallpox-vaccine) outlines the article. It seems clear to me that the milkmaid story and the John Fewster connection as described in this Wikipedia article should be reworked.
Boylston has also published a book: https://www.amazon.com/Defying-Providence-Smallpox-forgotten-Revolution/dp/1478232455#customerReviews
I'd like to suggest that someone with access to the NEJM go through the article written by Boylston and make suitable edits to Wikipedia. Or if someone can somehow get me a copy, I'll offer to do the editing.
Guyburns (talk) 09:05, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: You can ask for someone to get you a copy of it at the resource exchange page. Graham87 14:57, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Milkmaid story is not backed up by the evidence 

message: Wikipedia now says:
MVA-BN (also known as: Imvanex in the European Union; Imvamune in Canada; and Jynneos) is a vaccine manufactured by Bavarian Nordic by growing MVA in cell culture. Unlike replicating vaccines, MVA-BN is administered by injection via the subcutaneous route and does not result in a vaccine "take."
Please clarify, what do the sections I underlined mean? Could the Wikipedia text be written more clearly?
Is this is a live vaccine, although this does not replicate?
ee1518 (talk) 09:23, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Imvanex (EU) = Imvamune (Canada) = Jynneos. Does not result in a vaccine "take"? 

message: “…it was estimated that a total of 9.8 people in the Netherlands and 46.2 people in Germany would die…”
The Netherlands having a population of 17.53M people and Germany with 83.13M people…a predicted mortality of 9.8 and 42.2 (respectively) people doesn't sound so bad. Although I am quite concerned about that 0.8 Dutchman & 0.2 German. Jason M. Smith 15:54, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mortality stats?