Science Explores End of Smallpox Vaccine | Rise of AIDS

Gates Foundation polio vaccines distributed in NigeriaGlobeTracker| As educated parents in Portland, Oregon and other American cities move to stop vaccinating their children against diseases, researchers have thrown us a curve ball, establishing a solid link between the global expansion of the AIDS epidemic and the stopping of smallpox vaccinations.

Smallpox immunization was gradually withdrawn from the 1950s to the 1970s following the worldwide eradication of the disease, and HIV has been spreading exponentially since approximately the same time period.

Raymond Weinstein, a family doctor turned laboratory scientist at George Mason University, Manassas, Virginia,  and his colleagues propose that vaccination may confer protection against HIV by producing long term alterations in the immune system, possibly including the expression of a certain receptor, CCR5, on the surface of a person’s white blood cells which is exploited by both viruses.

No one is suggesting using the smallpox vaccine against AIDS yet, but the results of this comparative analysis of smallpox and AIDS has potentially huge implications.

More reading: to understand what happened in Nigeria, after imams told villagers that the Gates Foundation polio vaccine would make women sterile, read The Gates Foundation Reboots Health Initiative in Face of Bad News on Polio.