Was Smallpox Overhyped?

By Massimo Calabresi; Melissa August Sunday, July 18, 2004
    • Did faulty intelligence lead to an overblown scare over smallpox? The Administration said the possibility of a smallpox attack by Iraq strengthened its case for war — and necessitated a major inoculation campaign. By mid-June, some 627,000 military employees and nearly 40,000 civilian first responders and health-care workers had been vaccinated. But this month's Senate report on prewar intelligence has concluded that the CIA's 2002 estimate that there was "an even chance" Saddam had weaponized smallpox was "not supported" by the evidence and says the agency now admits it has "no evidence that Iraq ever weaponized smallpox." David Kay, who ran the postwar hunt for Iraq's illegal weapons, says, "We spent a lot of effort on the smallpox threat, but by December [2003] we had come to the conclusion that there was just a dead end there."

    That news comes too late for some. The civilian program has reported close to 900 "adverse events" occurring within days of inoculation, including one confirmed death from the vaccine. The military has reported one death and 75 cases of heart inflammation caused by the vaccine. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last December launched a $42 million compensation program for those hurt by the vaccine; 54 requests for compensation have so far been filed with HHS, and one $262,000 payment for death has been made.

    Supporters of the inoculation program say the danger of a smallpox attack is still real. The CIA stands by its 2002 assertion that North Korea may have the smallpox pathogen — though U.S. officials tell TIME that intelligence is even less reliable than what the CIA had on Iraq's smallpox program. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz last month ordered an expansion of the Pentagon's smallpox-inoculation program. And HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson vowed as recently as January to continue pushing civilian smallpox vaccinations. But that may not last. A senior Thompson adviser, Donald Henderson — who ran the World Health Organization program that eradicated smallpox worldwide in the 1970s — told TIME last week that civilian inoculations are no longer necessary. "We don't need to vaccinate the first responders," he said. Top-level dissent could be the beginning of the end for the controversial program.