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Did US scientists kill Amazon Indians with vaccine?
SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
NEWS Did US scientists kill Amazon Indians with vaccine? measles occurring from an outbreak S scientists working in the among Yanomami in neighbouring Amazon may have worsened a Brazil, Tierney suggests that measles epidemic in the 1960s by researchers were actually more interadministering a live-virus vaccine to ested in studying the immune “immune-depressed” Indians causing responses of these tribal hundreds of deaths, people, many of whom according to a controRights were not had never been exposed versial article in the Oct to European diseases. 9 issue of US magazine granted to According to Tierney, The New Yorker. include this after Neel and Chagnon In the article, Patrick image in gave the vaccine to 40 Tierney, a journalist electronic media. Yanomami at a mission who describes himself a Please refer to on the Ocamo river “the “human rights activist worst epidemic in the on behalf of the the printed Yanomami’s history Yanomami and other journal. broke out”. Tierney Amazon tribes”, charges claims the course of the that a measles epidemic epidemic “closely exploded among Yanomami: link to our past tracked the movements Yanomami Indians livof Neel’s team” and killed 15–20% of ing in the remote jungles of Venezuela those infected. after two noted US scientists, genetiIn a rebuttal (www.anth.ucsb.edu/ cist James Neel, who died earlier this chagnon.html), Chagnon describes year, and anthropologist Napoleon Tierney’s article as part of a “long Chagnon, gave the live-virus vendetta against me” conducted by Edmunston B vaccine to villagers Tierney and a group of anthropolowithout permission from local health gists who have been highly critical of officials. The Edmonston B vaccine Chagnon, charging that his research had been shown to be dangerous to methods disrupted Yanomami culture severely immune-suppressed people and that he unfairly portrayed the and to cause more severe reactions tribespeople as violent, bloodthirsty such as high fever when given to peosavages. Chagnon says the vaccinaple with malnutrition. tions were an attempt to “vaccinate a Although Neel and Chagnon, who circle” around an epidemic that had is now an emeritus professor at already begun and no one who was University of California, Santa vaccinated contracted measles or died. Barbara, have written that they gave Samuel Katz, professor of the vaccine to prevent the spread of
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paediatrics at Duke University (Durham, NC, USA) who with John F Enders developed the Edmonston B vaccine and who reviewed Neel and Chagnon’s 1970 report on the outbreak (Am J Epidemiol 1970; 91: 418–29) says it appears that the outbreak among the Yanomami was already well underway when Chagnon and Neel appeared on scene. “Administering the vaccine to try to interrupt the epidemic was a perfectly legitimate thing to do”, Katz said. And while the vaccine has caused deaths in children with severe immunodeficiency, such as those wtih AIDS, Katz said, the vaccine has been tested and shown to be safe for children in developing nations with “malnutrition, protein depletion, malaria and other underlying problems”. After 37 years of use there is no evidence that the vaccine virus is shed and can be spread to others. On Oct 4, Ryk Ward, professor of biological anthropology at Oxford University, UK, and a member of Neel’s team, rejected allegations that they had triggered a measles epidemic. In the UK Guardian newspaper Ward said that the team actually saved tribespeople infected with measles when they arrived. “I felt then, and still feel now, that the decision to vaccinate was the correct and ethically responsible thing to do.” Michael McCarthy
Measles eradication may be near in the Americas
T
he western hemisphere is very close to eradicating measles, according to experts attending the IXth Meeting of Pan American Health Organisation’s (PAHO) Technical Advisory Group on Vaccine Preventable Diseases in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, on Oct 2–5. Just 3 years ago, the eradication of indigenous measles in the Americas seemed a long way off when in 1997, after years of steady decline, outbreaks occurred in 11 member countries and more than 53 000 people were infected. Those outbreaks, says PAHO’s director of vaccines, Ciro de Quadros, prompted aggres-
THE LANCET • Vol 356 • October 7, 2000
sive vaccination programmes that have interrupted transmission of the virus in North and Central America, Cuba, the English-speaking Caribbean, and the majority of South American countries. In these countries, all new cases appear to be caused by imported virus, he said. Of the fewer than 1000 cases reported in the western hemisphere this year, more than half have occurred in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Anne Marie Desormeaux of Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population blamed her country’s outbreak on low vaccination rates. A house-to-
house vaccination programme is now underway. The effects of the programme are already evident, Desormeaux told the conference. “We still have cases, but it is not an acute epidemic,” she said. PAHO’s De Quadros said Brazil and Bolivia appear to have contained their outbreaks and he expects that once programmes in Haiti and Dominican Republic are complete, “it is possible that indigenous measles will be truly eradicated in the hemisphere by the end of the year”. Michael McCarthy
1247
For personal use only. Not to be reproduced without permission of The Lancet.
NEWS Did US scientists kill Amazon Indians with vaccine? measles occurring from an outbreak S scientists working in the among Yanomami in neighbouring Amazon may have worsened a Brazil, Tierney suggests that measles epidemic in the 1960s by researchers were actually more interadministering a live-virus vaccine to ested in studying the immune “immune-depressed” Indians causing responses of these tribal hundreds of deaths, people, many of whom according to a controRights were not had never been exposed versial article in the Oct to European diseases. 9 issue of US magazine granted to According to Tierney, The New Yorker. include this after Neel and Chagnon In the article, Patrick image in gave the vaccine to 40 Tierney, a journalist electronic media. Yanomami at a mission who describes himself a Please refer to on the Ocamo river “the “human rights activist worst epidemic in the on behalf of the the printed Yanomami’s history Yanomami and other journal. broke out”. Tierney Amazon tribes”, charges claims the course of the that a measles epidemic epidemic “closely exploded among Yanomami: link to our past tracked the movements Yanomami Indians livof Neel’s team” and killed 15–20% of ing in the remote jungles of Venezuela those infected. after two noted US scientists, genetiIn a rebuttal (www.anth.ucsb.edu/ cist James Neel, who died earlier this chagnon.html), Chagnon describes year, and anthropologist Napoleon Tierney’s article as part of a “long Chagnon, gave the live-virus vendetta against me” conducted by Edmunston B vaccine to villagers Tierney and a group of anthropolowithout permission from local health gists who have been highly critical of officials. The Edmonston B vaccine Chagnon, charging that his research had been shown to be dangerous to methods disrupted Yanomami culture severely immune-suppressed people and that he unfairly portrayed the and to cause more severe reactions tribespeople as violent, bloodthirsty such as high fever when given to peosavages. Chagnon says the vaccinaple with malnutrition. tions were an attempt to “vaccinate a Although Neel and Chagnon, who circle” around an epidemic that had is now an emeritus professor at already begun and no one who was University of California, Santa vaccinated contracted measles or died. Barbara, have written that they gave Samuel Katz, professor of the vaccine to prevent the spread of
U
paediatrics at Duke University (Durham, NC, USA) who with John F Enders developed the Edmonston B vaccine and who reviewed Neel and Chagnon’s 1970 report on the outbreak (Am J Epidemiol 1970; 91: 418–29) says it appears that the outbreak among the Yanomami was already well underway when Chagnon and Neel appeared on scene. “Administering the vaccine to try to interrupt the epidemic was a perfectly legitimate thing to do”, Katz said. And while the vaccine has caused deaths in children with severe immunodeficiency, such as those wtih AIDS, Katz said, the vaccine has been tested and shown to be safe for children in developing nations with “malnutrition, protein depletion, malaria and other underlying problems”. After 37 years of use there is no evidence that the vaccine virus is shed and can be spread to others. On Oct 4, Ryk Ward, professor of biological anthropology at Oxford University, UK, and a member of Neel’s team, rejected allegations that they had triggered a measles epidemic. In the UK Guardian newspaper Ward said that the team actually saved tribespeople infected with measles when they arrived. “I felt then, and still feel now, that the decision to vaccinate was the correct and ethically responsible thing to do.” Michael McCarthy
Measles eradication may be near in the Americas
T
he western hemisphere is very close to eradicating measles, according to experts attending the IXth Meeting of Pan American Health Organisation’s (PAHO) Technical Advisory Group on Vaccine Preventable Diseases in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, on Oct 2–5. Just 3 years ago, the eradication of indigenous measles in the Americas seemed a long way off when in 1997, after years of steady decline, outbreaks occurred in 11 member countries and more than 53 000 people were infected. Those outbreaks, says PAHO’s director of vaccines, Ciro de Quadros, prompted aggres-
THE LANCET • Vol 356 • October 7, 2000
sive vaccination programmes that have interrupted transmission of the virus in North and Central America, Cuba, the English-speaking Caribbean, and the majority of South American countries. In these countries, all new cases appear to be caused by imported virus, he said. Of the fewer than 1000 cases reported in the western hemisphere this year, more than half have occurred in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Anne Marie Desormeaux of Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population blamed her country’s outbreak on low vaccination rates. A house-to-
house vaccination programme is now underway. The effects of the programme are already evident, Desormeaux told the conference. “We still have cases, but it is not an acute epidemic,” she said. PAHO’s De Quadros said Brazil and Bolivia appear to have contained their outbreaks and he expects that once programmes in Haiti and Dominican Republic are complete, “it is possible that indigenous measles will be truly eradicated in the hemisphere by the end of the year”. Michael McCarthy
1247
For personal use only. Not to be reproduced without permission of The Lancet.