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American Morning
Old Small Pox Vaccinations May Still Work
Aired August 29, 2002 - 08:38 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: There's been a lot of talk lately about the need to protect all Americans from small pox. It turns out, though, many of us might still be protected by the vaccines we received as children. Also, there is another health story out there. As a series of ads claiming to educate young people about infertility, those ads are having a little bit of trouble finding an outlet.
We are going to talk about both of those with our CNN medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is here with us -- good morning.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
KAGAN: First, small pox.
GUPTA: We've been hearing a lot about small pox, and surprisingly so. We haven't seen a case of it since 1980. It was officially eradicated from the world at that point, and vaccinations stopped in 1970, but the reason we have been hearing so much about it, it is a potential biological weapon threat, and that's why the United States government has been stockpiling vaccines, 150 million doses. The goal possibly may be to vaccinate every single person in the country. Couple of concerns about this particular vaccine, Daryn, you and I have talked about that. It's a live vaccine, and that is an important point because this potential vaccine could actually injure people. Its 30 percent side effect rate. Some people could even die from the vaccine. The numbers are harder to say -- Daryn.
KAGAN: But new news that maybe you don't need it. Maybe that vaccine they thought wore out a long time ago is perhaps still working.
GUPTA: Right. So the conventional wisdom -- a lot of people are asking me this. They say, So I got immunized back in '69, '70. Am I still protected? And the conventional wisdom was the immunizations probably lasted about 7-10. Well, some researchers out of North Carolina, I spoke to them yesterday, actually decided to check this out. And what they found, in fact -- take a look at this graphic here. The bar on the left -- that is somebody who never got vaccinated, and they are measuring their level of protection. Now, the next graph, one to five years, that is a recent vaccination. You can see they had the most protection. But look at the graph all the way on the right. These are people that haven't been vaccinated for 35 years, and they still have about two-thirds of the protection of someone who has been fully vaccinated. That is sort of surprising news. Hard to say what that means, but the experts certainly predicted that far graph on the right would be zero, would be no protection. So, a lot more protection, even in people who had been vaccinated a long time ago than we had previously thought.
KAGAN: But while this talk goes on, as just the average consumer, average patient, you really can't do anything, right? You can't go to your doctor and demand a booster shot?
GUPTA: Booster shot, that is an interesting point, because there is a lot of decision-making going on, who should get these shots, and I should say that the study we are looking at was based on 20 people, so there's going to need to be further studies as well to see how many people actually do have immunity still against small pox, but it might mean booster shots for people who did get vaccinated a while ago, as opposed to getting a brand new vaccine. You might just need to get a little booster shot to bring up your immunity.
One of the experts brought up an interesting point as well, is that if there was a small pox release, it would make it a weaponized form of small pox, which would make it very hard to say who would be protected, because these would be really, really tough strains to try and protect against.
KAGAN: And that kind of vaccination would be so strong, that would bring on a whole other...
GUPTA: That's right. You can see the debate, that is exactly right. A lot of people thinking about this right now.
KAGAN: All right. A lot of people thinking about fertility too, and some people trying to put the word out there, how you could, in the future, have a safe baby and get the word out to young people, but apparently not having an easy time doing this.
GUPTA: Well, you know, it is an interesting thing. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a very legitimate medical organization, wants to target people of reproductive age. There's about 60 million of them in this country today. About 6.1 million of them are infertile. Take a look at these ads here.
Some of these ads targeting such things as advancing age, practicing safe sex, smoking, unhealthy body weights. These are some of the things that people are concerned about. The first one here, age. Advancing age decreases the ability to have children. Practicing safe sex. This is the one that has been so controversial. Why? It says "sexual" in the title. It shows a condom in the picture.
KAGAN: With a baby bottle.
GUPTA: With the -- all of these have baby bottles. Take a look as they go by. They all have baby bottles in them in some way. That one has been particularly controversial. Malls don't want to run it, movie theaters don't want to run it. They used to be on buses. The only place you are going to see these ads is today on this show and on the Web site.
The next one actually shows a cigarette -- I am sorry, this one actually shows unhealthy body weight. If you are too heavy, you produce too much estrogen, that makes it hard to have a baby. Too light, not enough estrogen to have a baby. And the last one actually shows someone putting out a cigarette into a baby bottle. So pretty risque ads, and pretty controversial.
KAGAN: So this organization has tried to get it out, like you said, in movie theaters and malls and places where young people hang out to make them think about some of their behavior and some of their choices, and what are they being told, about why it is not being accepted?
GUPTA: Well, the one with the condom, for example, they just say it has the word "sexually transmitted infection" in it. They don't want that. They want to promote mall-friendly environments, they want to target consumers towards products. This isn't really targeting those goals, and there has been a lot of back and forth on this, but the bottom line is, you are really not going to see these anywhere in a large venue.
KAGAN: But you saw them here, on American morning.
GUPTA: That's right. And it is important to remember these things, those four things.
KAGAN: Yes, they are good points. You might not want to think about them, but they are important points.
GUPTA: Right. People who are thinking about having babies down the road, smoking, the healthy body weight, all those things are important to them.
KAGAN: I'll remember them. Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Thank you.
GUPTA: Good to see you.
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