As physical specimens, the Baylor University students were fit and healthy, the “crème de la crème,” in the words of researcher Kathy Edwards. Yet when she inoculated them with smallpox vaccine, arms swelled, temperatures spiked and panic spread.
It was the same at clinics in Iowa, Tennessee and California. Of 200 young adults who received the vaccine as part of a recent government study, one-third missed at least one day of work or school, 75 had high fevers, and several were put on antibiotics because physicians worried that their blisters signaled a bacterial infection.
Even for experts such as Edwards, the Vanderbilt University physician overseeing the study, the side effects were startling. “I can read all day about it, but seeing it is quite impressive,” she said. “The reactions we saw were really quite remarkable.”
President Bush is poised to announce plans, perhaps as early as this...
