Smallpox vials just found in U.S. government storage room, no big deal

[villager]

Breaking smallpox news this afternoon: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just announced that National Institutes of Health staff have discovered vials containing smallpox "sitting in a laboratory storage room in Bethesda." The vials were labeled “variola,” which is “the severe and most common form of smallpox” according to CDC.

Here's the text of today's CDC announcement:

On July 1, 2014, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) notified the appropriate regulatory agency, the Division of Select Agents and Toxins (DSAT) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that employees discovered vials labeled ”variola,” commonly known as smallpox, in an unused portion of a storage room in a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laboratory located on the NIH Bethesda campus.

The laboratory was among those transferred from NIH to FDA in 1972, along with the responsibility for regulating biologic products. The FDA has operated laboratories located on the NIH campus since that time. Scientists discovered the vials while preparing for the laboratory’s move to the FDA’s main campus.

<snip>


Authorities said there was no indication that anyone had been exposed to smallpox, and they said no risk to workers or the public has been found. The vials originated in the 1950s, according to the CDC. (The last smallpox case in the United States occurred in 1949.)

<snip>

http://boingboing.net/2014/07/08/smallpox-vials-just-hanging-ou.html

[Autumn]

1. This would never have happened had they made some one, any one power

on their lap top or cell phone.

[villager]

3. The only solution is roll back more of the 4th Amendment

come to think, my header hilariously assumes there's any 4th Amendment left!

[MohRokTah]

2. Smallpox, (not completely) gone, but not forgotten, and could still make a comeback. eom

[Marrah_G]

8. It's gone from the population

But ....both the US and Russia have this stuff stored in freezers. Both sides are afraid the other will weaponize it. It was supposed to be destroyed but we kept delaying it. Scary stuff on so many different levels.

[MohRokTah]

11. Yup.

Had the stockpiles been destroyed, we could rest easy.

They weren't, so we can't.

Some of the final victims of smallpox were in Pakistan. There could still be some live virus under the ground there in some specific graves, though not likely due to the amount of time that has passed.

[Marrah_G]

12. They story on the erradication of it is amazing

It shows what humans can do when we really put our minds to something. It took every country to cooperate.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. Imagine being THAT employee.

"Hey, Phil! What's in this box marked var-EE-oh-lah?"

*holds box to ear and shakes*

[villager]

6. Makes you wonder just how "safe" that new super-flu they're engineering will be...

"I've been sneezing since clearing out that storage shed this morning..."

[lpbk2713]

9. "I dunno. Chuck it in the Dumpster and let's go get some coffee."

I'm glad it turned out the way it did.

[Marrah_G]

5. Now this is scary stuff

So easily transmitted, no one has immunity anymore and even if you live you are usually scared for life.

[villager]

7. And only us old-timers have that particular immunization scar...

n/t

[Marrah_G]

10. Yup

But you also aren't immune anymore. That's what makes it so scary. No one is immune to it anymore.

[notadmblnd]

13. more info on small pox. should help to quell any hysteria that results from the discovery

Charles A.R. Campbell The second doctor, Charles A. R. Campbell, discovered the cause and cure of smallpox. Through a series of carefully controlled experiments (even using himself as a subject) Dr. Campbell, along with Dr. J. A. Watts, discovered that smallpox, like yellow fever and malaria, was transmitted by an insect, cimex lectularius (Latin for bedbug). They also discovered that the disease was neither contagious nor infectious and that vaccinations did not prevent it.

Even more importantly, Dr. Campbell discovered that the severity of the disease was directly proportional to the general ill health and malnutrition of the patient. He spoke of "scorbutic cachexia" and related it to scurvy, the "disease caused by lack of green food." He said, "the removal of this perversion of nutrition will so mitigate the virulence of this malady as to positively prevent the pitting or pocking of smallpox." (Bacteria, Inc., Cash Asher, Bruce Humphries, Inc., Boston, MA, 1949).

http://www.vaclib.org/news/bedbugs.htm

Dr. A.R. Campbell, M.D. - Discoverer of the cause of Smallpox.
www.reformation.org/campbell.html
Dr. A.R. Campbell (1865 --1931). Dr. A.R. Campbell (another Great Scot) was a Texas doctor who discovered that smallpox was only spread by the bite of the ...
Campbell: Bats. Part 3 - Soil and Health Library
www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/.../030212campbell/campbell%203-1.htm
PART III. Résumé of Experiments on Variola. By CHARLES A. R. CAMPBELL, M. D.. San Antonio, Texas. My Observations on Bedbugs. By CHARLES A. R. ...
Charles Campbell MD - Whale
www.whale.to/a/campbell2.html
Dr. A.R. Campbell (another Great Scot) was a Texas doctor who discovered that smallpox was only spread by the bite of the bloodsucking insect called the ...
Bats, Mosquitoes and Dollars By Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell
www.whale.to/a/camppref.html
a book by Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell. (The smallpox section of the book first appeared online here and in its entirety at the Soil and Health Library, an important ...
Résumé of Experiments on Variola. By CHARLES A. R. ...
www.whale.to/a/campbell1.html
Résumé of Experiments on Variola By CHARLES A. R. CAMPBELL, M. D.

[Marrah_G]

14. I don't believe that is accurate.

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/overview/disease-facts.asp

In fact I know it is not.

[notadmblnd]

15. whatever, I'm sure you're the expert

[Marrah_G]

16. How about the CDC or the WHO?

Smallpox is spread through close contact like talking to someone close by. It is not spread by insects or animals. It is only found in humans. There is a vaccine. In fact there have been forms of vaccines for this since the 1700's through inoculation of smallpox pus or cow pox pus into a cut on the upper arm. The current vaccine is made from a close relative of the virus.

I'm sorry if you feel insulted but your information was from the early twentieth century and was completely wrong.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/en/

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/overview/disease-facts.asp

[Jim Lane]

17. Your reassurance is based on rejecting all of modern medical knowledge

From your link: "History has conveniently forgotten Bechamp who proved that dis-ease causes germs while deifying Pasteur, the father of the pharmaceutical age, for errantly convincing the world that germs cause disease."

Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I'm going to stick with the prevailing scientific consensus that germs cause disease. That site you linked to makes the global-warming deniers look reasonable by comparison (but, I hasten to add, only by comparison).

[Hekate]

18. What? I'm sure the claim that smallpox is "neither contagious nor infectious" would come as a shock

... to the millions throughout history who perished or were permanently scarred in its great epidemics.