Reports of smallpox vials found at Merck plant outside Philadelphia

[drcoastline]

Smallpox was declared eradicated *in 1980 by the World Health Organization, after an effort to vaccinate the globe. But several vials labeled as the disease were found at a Pennsylvania vaccine research facility belonging to Merck, when a laboratory worker was cleaning out a freezer.

There’s no indication that anyone was exposed to the vials, the CDC told CNN in an email. The lab worker was wearing gloves and a face mask, and the FBI is now investigating.

The incident is similar to one in 2014, when employees of the National Institutes of Health found six vials of smallpox in an unused storage room while packing up a lab in Bethesda, MD. Two of those vials had viable doses of the virus, but there was no evidence, at the time, that anyone had been exposed to it.

There’s been an ongoing debate among scientists whether or not to keep around samples of the virus. Routine vaccinations against the virus stopped in 1972, CNN said, but some military personnel still get the jab. Meanwhile, boosters are recommended every 3 to 5 years by the CDC.

“Because of concern that variola virus might be used as an agent of bioterrorism, the US government has stockpiled enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate everyone who would need it if a smallpox outbreak were to occur,” the CDC says on its website. “When there is NO smallpox outbreak, you should get the smallpox vaccine if you are … a lab worker who works with virus that causes smallpox or other viruses that are similar to it.

“When there*is*a smallpox outbreak, you should get the smallpox vaccine if you are directly exposed to smallpox virus.”

The smallpox vaccine is not administered in a shot, like other vaccines, but rather, given with a two-pronged needle that is dipped into the vaccine solution, then pricks the skin several times. That is not deep but will cause a sore spot, and lead to a red lesion developing in three or four days.

Right now, there are only two labs in the world that are authorized to store the virus, a CDC site in Atlanta and another in Russia.

Neither Merck, nor the CDC responded to requests for comment by Endpoints News as of publication.

Smallpox’s history dates as far back as the 6th century, when an increase in trade between China and Korea brought the virus to Japan. On average, three of every 10 people who contracted the virus died, and those who survived often were left with severe scarring.

In 1959, the WHO started a plan to rid the world of the virus, and cases were eliminated in North America and Europe by 1953. The last person to have active smallpox was a 3-year-old from Bangladesh in 1975, and the last person to die of smallpox was a medical photographer at Birmingham University Medical School. She died in 1978.


https://endpts.com/reports-of-smallpox-vials-found-at-merck-plant-outside-philadelphia/

[PorscheGAL]

I would be willing to bet every lab in the world has some vial of some disease, they legally should not.

[Joe Bob]

The pics I saw were VACCINE vials. Not the actual virus. But then again the news media coulda just pulled up a stock picture and were too stupid to read the label.

[Chocaholic]

Originally Posted by Joe Bob

The pics I saw were VACCINE vials. Not the actual virus. But then again the news media coulda just pulled up a stock picture and were too stupid to read the label.

Nah....they would never do that! What with today’s top tier reporting integrity and all.

[Sooner or later]

This picture?

[tadd]

Stuff is constantly found.

When I was an undergrad, an emiterous professor passed away. They went back into his 'closet lab' and there was stuff that had been there so long, it had crystalized... and that material wasn't known to do that! The crystallographer was beside himself as he was young and now he had material for papers till he retired.

I myself in grad school used to 'raid' retiring profs labs for chemicals, supplies, and fixable equipment. Ended up rolling an older Hitachi TEM across campus on a pallet jack. Found plenty of containers of picric acid that had crystalized over time.

Things used to be much more lax and stuff gets lost on shelves or in freezers. Nothing nefarious.

[GH85Carrera]

I would guess the majority of Pelicans have the small pox vaccination scar on their arms as do I.

In 1971 we were living in Hawaii, and the Air Force was sending us to Alabama. Dad had filled up three vaccination books, but he traveled all over the world as an Air Force pilot. The Air Force decided that we as dependents living in Hawaii had to get a small pox vaccination to go back to the mainland. So we went through the razor scratching and vaccination. It did not "take" on any of us as were were still immune from getting the vaccine long ago.

[Joe Bob]

Funny thing, I couldn't find my Small Pox vax scar in the usual place. The middle of the deltoid muscle. I ended up locating it on the top of my shoulder where collar bone meets the Humerus socket assembly.

[mjohnson]

Originally Posted by tadd

Stuff is constantly found.... Found plenty of containers of picric acid that had crystalized over time.

Aaahhh picric. Beautiful stuff until it blows your face off. Even in the '90s we used it as an etchant/colorant for metallography at school. That lab bench was soaked with half a century of the stuff (and metal picrates are even more sensitive). I always wondered what a good whack with a hammer would do.

(We also used a lot of HF with little training or PPE, but that's another story. As well as my wife's experiences with hydrazine and that one time they cooked off a selenium PVD target)

Prepping for a renovation I had a summer job cleaning out the 1930s-era chemistry building at a mining school. It was interesting but thankfully not "exciting". Got to see the Golden CO bomb-squad more than a few times, crusty rusty-lidded jars of picric acid being the cause of many of them. Then there was the yellowcake. So much uranium!

Good times, I'll keep sticking to the less-squishy side of science. Viruses and bugs are no friend of mine.

[GH85Carrera]

I saw a news story that it has been determined that it was indeed just a vaccine, not the actual virus.