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US Soldier Dies Days
After Smallpox Shot

By Paul Simao
3-28-3

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who was recently vaccinated against smallpox has died from a heart attack, the third death among those participating in the federal campaign to inoculate hundreds of thousands of military personnel and health care workers.
 
A Department of Defense official said on Friday that the 55-year-old National Guardsman had died in an unidentified U.S. military hospital on March 26, six days after receiving his smallpox vaccination.
 
Two female health care workers who were recently vaccinated against smallpox have died in the past week of heart attacks.
 
Col. John Grabenstein, scientific director for the Pentagon's smallpox vaccination program, said the deceased soldier was being treated for high cholesterol and was a smoker at the time he received his smallpox jab.
 
"We are categorizing this event at the moment as unlikely to be due to smallpox vaccination," Grabenstein said during a conference call with other smallpox vaccination experts and government immunization experts.
 
"We are not finished with our evaluation," said Grabenstein, who noted that more than 350,000 soldiers had received smallpox shots since late last year when President Bush authorized the vaccination program.
 
The soldier's death, however, occurred amid growing scrutiny of the campaign. There have been more than a dozen other cases of heart-related complications in U.S. soldiers and health care workers who received the vaccine.
 
The possibility of a link between the deaths and the vaccine prompted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend this week that people with heart disease not be vaccinated until further notice.
 
Earlier this month, top U.S. health officials had said that reports of side-effects linked to the current smallpox program were overblown. Smallpox kills about 30 percent of its victims and scars the remainder for life. It was eradicated in 1979.
 
The United States stopped routine smallpox vaccinations in 1972, but decided to resume them for select groups last year as fears grew that the virus could be used as a weapon by radical groups or countries like Iraq.
 
When administered in the past the vaccine killed between one to two out of every million people inoculated and caused others to suffer brain damage. But it has never before been linked to heart problems.


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