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Smallpox From The Past
An anonymous reader submits "Earlier this year, librarian Susanne Caro was looking through an 1888 book on United States Civil War medicine and discovered a small envelope labeled 'scabs from vaccination of W.B. Yarrington's children' and signed by Dr. W.D. Kelly, the author of the book. After a bit of research, she realized they might be smallpox scabs used in early live vaccination methods and contacted various officials including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC was excited by the find, because it gives them an untreated specimen from over a century ago, and a chance to look at the disease's evolution. Although the FBI had concerns that the smallpox may have been planted in the book, most of the researchers believe the scabs are too old to be dangerous, and they fear they may not even be able to yield live smallpox."
Sounds creepily like the beginning of a Robin Cook novel...
Because I would hate to contract small pox just for working during a strike...
Ok, the FBI thinks someone planted smallpox, in an envelope LABELLED with biohazard information, in a 19th century book, in Santa Fe. What the hell is wrong with them? I mean, that's just moronic.
is this a bad thing?? I'd feel better knowing that no remnants of the virus were able to survive that long.
About the only time you will find scabs in a book and be excited about it. Mostly you'd say "Ok, I'm only going to buy NEW from now on".
graspee
It's largepox you should be afraid of.
it is all going according to plan...
::DISCLAIMER::
OK, OK, this is totally just a joke, and I really don't think I should have even posted it. Its a joke, I repeat, A JOKE.
One more reason to have the government tightly control what books you check out.
Libraries are a breeding ground for terrorists, I tell you.
Hey, are these raisins? *munch*
Pelé!
From the article:
the envelope rests in a freezer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, awaiting a battery of tests.
Yes, after lying in a library book for 115 years I can see why is important that it be frozen now.
What a wonderful idea for a time capsule that would be. Create a time capsule to be opened in hundreds or thousands of years and place in it some of the diseases which may have died off by then and which the generations of the future will not have had the chance to enjoy.
Infectious disease: The gift that keeps on giving.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Yep. With all that Arab oil money they are funded with, al Qaida has invented a time machine, gone back to 1888, and planted smallpox in a book they know some woman in the future will pick up and read.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I was just eating lunch when this story came up...and lunch almost came up with it...nice timing...
Virus represent the border between living and dead matter. I thought that it meant that when the virus came across a host cell it could inject its DNA and multiply and that is why it is living , and when it didn't it just lay dormant i.e. it was dead matter. Wasn't the whole premise of Jurrasic Park based on this notion ?
But in the article it says ....
If the virus is nothing but the DNA and a protein coating around it, why are the people wanting it to be live ?
Am I missing something ? What am I missing ?
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Because if you had a sample of Smallpox from 1888 or so you could compare it to the one in the vault and see if there have been any changes in the DNA. Some Virii change over time more than others.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I guess the World Health Organization's crowing about smallpox eradication was a bit too early!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
If the virus is nothing but the DNA and a protein coating around it, why are the people wanting it to be live ?
Am I missing something ? What am I missing ?
They are probably referring to whether or not the DNA information is sufficiently in-tact. If the DNA is too far destroyed, the virus probably won't be able to reproduce itself even after infecting a live cell.
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(^.^)
(")")
*beware the cute-bunny virus
In this context, "live" virus is able to infect and reproduce. "Killed" virus has been damaged to the point that it cannot infect a cell. Hence the concern over using "live" virus vaccines - the vaccines use a damaged or weakened virus that the body can easily defeat - but occasionally a few full strength particles get through and trigger the disease instead of vaccinating against it. "Killed" virus vaccines use fragments of destroyed viruses, ensuring you can't get sick from them, but possibly not as effective as the live kind.
Clear, Dark Skies
If the virus is nothing but the DNA and a protein coating around it, why are the people wanting it to be live ?
Am I missing something ? What am I missing ?
I think they just mean viable, not really "live", since "live" has a weird meaning for a virus. If they couldn't find live virus samples, then either the virus wasn't there, or it was, but is now "dead", in the sense that it can't work anymore.
True, viruses are just dna and protein, or something like that... Collections of complicated chemicals, basically. They can still degrade, given enough time. Heat them up enough, they will "die", by having their molecules scrambled, etc...
But, IANAChemist, nor a biologist, so take my words with a grain of salt.
Just like Nancy Pearl
There's also a slim chance, researchers say, that the scabs could yield live smallpox virus -- believed to reside in only two laboratories in the world
Only the naive believe that live smallpox exists in only two labs in the world. A more accurate statement in the article would have been "only legally allowed in two labs in the world."
There is strong reason to believe that North Korea has the virus. France is also believed to have it. Iraq may have had it up until recently, as it was endemic in the region in the late sixties, and just a few scabs in a refrigerator would have been enough. It used to be common practice for scientists and doctors to keep a bit of smallpox in the fridge when they gathered it from patients. Hence there could be samples, possibly not even labelled or known to the owners, in a number of places in the world.
One reason that the plan to destroy all stocks at the CDC and the official Russian lab was the realization that rogue countries probably had the virus, and hence destroying it would damage future defense attempts.
Furthermore, the USSR and later Russia maintained stockpiles of 20 tons of weaponized smallpox in the eighties (authorized by Gorbachev) and probably to the present, and loaded it into missile warheads. Furthermore, a number of their scientists have since emigrated to other countries. In 1994 a number visited North Korea for unknown reasons. One former Soviet BW officieal entered into a deal with Iraq to sell 5000 liter fermenters.
And then we have accidental discoveries like these scabs. Smallpox can survive in scabs for a long time, although >100 years is stretching it.
The only good weather is bad weather.
But, IANAChemist, nor a biologist, so take my words with a grain of salt
Well, I am a Biologist and your answer is right!
The basic unit of life is the cell. Anything subcellular is not considered "alive" by scientific standards.
-DD
Grow a dangerous desease and see how it affects people... Oops, seems like its spreading everywhere... "my bad"
Tom Ridge will claim that we now need to ban books in order to be more "secure".
The FBI needs to get a life if they were at all concerned about this. How embarassing. Morons. Everything is "terrorism" until proven otherwise. My god.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
I recall a study a while ago that was requesting old pairs of binoculars so that they could measure the air inside for pollutants as it could be used to determine air quality from years past.
Btw: This 'finding' does seem like a need beginning to a bad horror movie.
It's a widely believed fact that bioweapons and extensive use of tactical nuclear weapons will be used in WWIII that is due to begin in 2006-2007.
Russia, China and the Arabs will unite. New York will be devastated by two small nuclear devices and while USA isolates itself to deal with the trauma, China invades Asia and Russia pushes into Western Europe.
Could you pin down the dates a little more, old chap? I need to get my planning in order and know when to go hide.
Thanks!
The only good weather is bad weather.
"most of the researchers believe the scabs are too old to be dangerous, and they fear they may not even be able to yield live smallpox."
;(
Damn! No virus we spent the last century trying to erradicate -- I've pissed myself in fear over the end of this menace
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Don't worry, this is the FBI which has made short shrift of Osama bin Laden, singlehandedly captured Saddam Hussein, cornered the Anthrax Mailer, cleverly foiled the 9/11 planebombings on advance intelligence, have kept Chinese industrial spies away from our tech secrets, has won the drug war, busted the thieves at Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Arthur Anderson, and the rest. They found the malicious Bush leaker who blew CIA agent Plames cover in Niger, discredited the 16 State of the Union words about the imaginary African uranium bound for Iraq, preempted Iranian and North Korean nuclear bombs. They nabbed the 2000 election vote riggers, and are already jailing the criminals at the top of the 2004 eVote insecurity debacles. If they think something is scary, we should all bow our heads in fear, and double their budget again. If it were possible to promote the FBI chief, we would; instead, we'll just have to settle for the Patriot Act, which dissolves that archaic Bill of Rights which was just getting in the way.
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make install -not war
welcome are new FBI overlords.
Seriously, this was probably a routine chit chat thay have when enybody discovers something like this.
I'm sure they new full well it wasn't a real issue. otherwise it would have been VANS of FBI agents.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the FBI had concerns that the smallpox may have been planted in the book
In a related story, the authorities are now scouring libraries coast to coast to find the book entitled, "Where I Am Hiding" by Osama Bin Laden.
I am wondering if a virus is really a separate entity or is really intrinsically a property of the host. Is a cold virus really just that, or is it a piece of human genetic machinery that has the capability of being shared between humans when one human picks their nose?
The reason I got to wondering is that it seems diseases that stick around have some kind of evolutionary purpose. Sickle cell anemia gene confers resistance to malignant malaria, cystic fibrosis gene confers resistance to cholera, and so on. Sexual reproduction was a big evolutionary breakthrough in allowing diversity in the offspring to adapt to environmental pressure.
Do you suppose a virus is a remnant of some other mechanism, such as conjugation where bacteria can swap genetic material? If a virus served no evolutionary purpose, it seems that individuals who were virus resistant would have a slight edge and over many generations viruses would die out. The fact that they are still here suggests that the cell mechanisms that support virus reproduction serve some other purpose than making a person sick.
Also, a biologic agent takes hours if not days to act, allowing for retaliatory strikes, so a biologic ICBM is clearly a kind of Doomsday Machine -- what is to say that the smallbox doesn't spread back to Russia. And you have such a Doomsday Machines, in the words of Peter Sellers, why don't you advertise it to the whole world? What good is a Doomsday Machine that you keep secret?
First, I think if they can get any DNA out of it, that would be nice. If they mostly (at least supposedly) want to study the evolution of the virus, I'm sure they can garner some information just by comparing the DNA sequence of whatever they pull out, vs. the "current" stock. Of course it's always best to get the whole genome, but there will almost always be highly conserved (having a very low mutation rate) DNA regions. In organisms with large genomes, you can often compare those against each other to study the amount of divergence.
...
... I'm slightly confused. If the latest vaccine used was cowpox-based, are they trying to study the similarities between now-cowpox and then-smallpox? I can see them wanting to understand how a virus has evolved, but I don't see what exactly comparing it to cowpox would do. Perhaps they want to study how the two have diverged. Any thoughts?
Second
"This could lead to a greater evolutionary understanding of the smallpox vaccine we're using in the U.S.,"
Hm
The floggings will stop when morale improves.
There is no doubt that Kanatjan Alibekov knows a lkt about bio weapons. It is also clear that the island of Vozrozhdeniye is contaminated to hell and that Biopreperat was involved with the nasties. I think that he is exaggerating though because of his involvement with the bioweapons detection and defense industry.
Jimmy Hoffa's Corpse
Amelia Airheart's Plane
WMD's
OP's Smallpox Strain
Ozzy Osbourne's Balls
The Holy Grail
Nichole Brown Simpson's TRUE Killer
They're all just sitting there waiting to be picked up.... REALLY!
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
I believe I remember from high school biology that scabs from a vaccination would yield cowpox virus, not smallpox. If that's so, then surely this has to be some combination of hoax, urban myth, and/or publicity grab.
1. Check out century old book 2. Plant smallpox scabs 3. Have scabs found by innocent bystander 4. ??? 5. PROFIT!!
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
AIAAD (Actually, I am a doctor). In fact, my specialty is Infectious Diseases.
By 1888 vaccination against smallpox using cowpox or vaccinia virus was a common practice, as opposed to "variolization" (inoculation with actual smallpox virus, aka variola virus), since the former was so much safer. This is touched on only briefly in the Washington Post article. So even if there is viable virus in the scab, it may not be smallpox. For reference see the first part of this chapter.
>K
CDC: Ohh! An envelope full of infectious scabs... This is the best Christmas ever!
-3Suns
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The Revolution will be Slashdotted
Dr: Oh, just put it in a book so 100 years from now someone can find it and get all excited.
Anyone else find this just a tiny bit sick? Saving scabs for later use?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Yes, they explained that. His point, however, was viruses are not living things, so it wouldn't be possible to find a living sample. It's pedantics, mostly. It's generally understood that a "dead" virus is one that is damaged to the point that it can no longer infect a cell.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
I think that you want to be thinking "live" as in ammunition, rather than "live" as in animal.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Thank you. That's exactly what they mean.
My question on this issue: why wouldn't PCR allow the DNA for a smallpox virus to be recreated from such a sample(or for that matter from samples dug up from some graveyard someplace)? I'm not that familiar with virology-pointers to the literature would be welcome.
Hi Doc -
I just want to say Thanks for the intelligent, articulate, and persevering posts. You rock.
-kgj
-kgj
Hm
Well, I think that most likely they'd compare these smallpox samples with the frozen ones. You know, the "last" of the smallpox virus, controlled by the government, in some highly guarded freezer somewhere. Identifying how those samples differ could lead to insights into current cowpox-based vaccines.
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*beware the cute-bunny virus
More than likely these would have been used after the inital nuclear strike. It's probably more cost-effective to have a disease spread over the mid-west US, western Canada, Mexico, and other places any remaining Americans would have fled to.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
If the virus is nothing but the DNA and a protein coating around it, why are the people wanting it to be live?
Am I missing something? What am I missing?
As a card-carrying virologist let me give you a run down on the information you're missing. If you don't consider the type of nucleic acid (RNA or DNA), there are two types of viruses that infect mammalian cells - enveloped and non-enveloped. Enveloped viruses (such as smallpox) have an outer lipid bilayer (the envelope) that is studded with glycoproteins that need to bind specific molecules on the surface of mammalian cells to permit fusion between the viral envelope and the cell membrane. Fusion allows the virus' nucleic acid to enter the cell. The viral envelope is very fragile, and breaks down rapidly when dried. When the envelope breaks down, it spills the contents of the virus out -- i.e. the nucleic acid, which in the absence of the envelope doesn't have a means to specifically enter a cell. This is one reason why wiping surfaces with 100% ethanol (a dehydrating agent) is quite effective against enveloped viruses like HIV.
Even viruses that are not enveloped have protein coats that directly interact with cell surface molecules that act as receptors to mediate the entry of these viruses into cells. The proteins that make up these coats also denature (lose their proper shape) with time, although this is typically a slower process.
Finally, how stable is the viral nucleic acid? Viral nucleic acids are typically not present as naked RNA or DNA, but in a complex of DNA or RNA with proteins that coat them. These coated nucleic acids are quite stable. Nucleic acid from DNA viruses (like smallpox) is likely to be more stable than nucleic acid from RNA viruses, and I'm guessing that they should be able to do phylogenetic studies on the strain of smallpox present in those scabs after amplifying recovered DNA by PCR.
BTW, after many years of Slashdot lurking, a wee bit of horn tooting. My lab works on how the genome of EBV latches on to human chromosomes. Here's a pretty picture from our work that was on the cover of the Journal of Virology last month.
Mmm... figs... .... .....
Meet you after I delve into this jar of fig preserves...
Karma: Good, or bust!
Maybe this is the same virus strain that was used by Colonel Bouquet when he responded to Lord Amherst's request when he wrote: "Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occassion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them".
I forgot that only those that speak/write perfect english are allowed to post to slashdot; poor you having to read what an imperfect human wrote, I understand that it must have been a very painful experience for you.
Do you prefer am. or br. spelling? I just want to know what I should spend the next 2-3 years studying before posting again, so that you don't have to be insulted by my bad english ever again.
perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'
It is either fair or balanced.
Don't forget hookers and beer...
One scab - scab
More than one scab - scabii
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
Several workers were infected with the Bubonic plague as a result
And that is a real nightmare virus.
Sorry to ruin your fun, but...
First. Black Death is a bacteria.
Second. Bubonic form of it is nothing exceptially nightmarish in the civilized countries today, since it can easily be treated with antibiotics.
Pneumonic plague is worse, though it can be treated as well. Uber-resistant strain of either would obviously be bad news.
Third. Y. Pestis bacteria doesn't survive outside of a host more than few hours, so if someone indeed got a plague while boring a tunnel, they got it from the same source original victims did. Rats (their fleas, actually)
Yup, that's right. Plague is still in the wild, there are about 1000-3000 cases of plague in humans each year.
In about 1914, my grandmother's family was hit by smallpox in the farming community of Tallapoosa County, Alabama. It prostrated both parents (in their early 30's) and the eldest daughter, leaving only the five-year-old daughter (later my grandmother) to prepare food for the family and care for her baby sister. All lived, which probably means the virus was variola minor, a new, weaker version of smallpox, which had a 1% mortality rate (in place of the horrible 20% rate for variola major). Variola minor was the most common smallpox by the twentieth century. Yet look at how strongly this weaker form disabled a whole family of healthy people. We must not lose the horror of this disease, especially variola major. It must be kept down. Fortunately, it has no animal hosts holding it in mutating reserve, like influenza or SARS. Stopping it in people stops it. Even a large emergency would be stoppable, eventually.
If you are alone, whose voice is coming from this post? :)
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make install -not war
What is really needed now is a moderation option called "Eeewwwww!"
Table-ized A.I.
Dangit! I must be going to the wrong libraries.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad