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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...
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
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.
Actually, they were worried the story was
a hoax by someone who wanted to create fear
and panic.
As you might recall, after the US was hit with
a bioweapons attack (resulting in numerous
deaths, and the shut down of the U.S. Senate
offices), it become popular for people to
"copy cat" the weapon. Soon, people were
sending packets of white talc power in the
mail with threatening notes, all in hopes of
causing a panic and shutting down a business
for a few days.
As we've gotten used to this sort of ruse,
and developed technologies to detect anthrax
spores, the people trying to spread panic have
gotten more clever.
Consider, for example, how hard it would be to
create panic by sending a note through the mail
claiming that the envelope contained small
pox. Since small pox is tightly controlled,
and highly infectious, it's unlikely a group
(other than a government) has a sample of the
virus. So the hoax would quickly unravel.
A clever person who wanted to create a plausible
story about how a small pox virus came to be
found in a public space might have to work
harder. For example, they could make up a
story about old medical samples, museum equipment,
etc.
And so in this case, it's entirely reasonable
for the FBI to question the origin of this
envelope. No, I don't think they started
out by saying "This was planted by Al Queda."
Instead, they started with a skeptical
line of questions: who had the book? was it
ever check out before? where was it kept?
who had access to this text? is the person
claiming to make the find a real librarian?
etc.
I think in this case, you, my friend, are the
one who jumped to conclusions about the
conduct of the FBI. Indeed, it would seem
that your post exhibits the sort of haste
and rush-to-judgement that you seek to
condemn.
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.
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