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."

Interesting

[shawnywany]

Sounds creepily like the beginning of a Robin Cook novel...

Re:Interesting

[fastidious edward]

Don't worry, sounds like no one else read it for ~130 years... probably wasn't a compulsive read.

Re:Interesting

[AndroidCat]

I doubt there are envelopes full of scabs even in the signed copies.

I am glad I am alive today...

[Azadre]

Because I would hate to contract small pox just for working during a strike...

uhh

[nomadic]

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.

Re:uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Better safe from psychos than sorry?

Seriously, I'm glad they consider it a possibility, and hopefully prove it wrong.

Re:uhh

[kfg]

Better safe from psychos than sorry?

The FBI are psychos with badges though, it's tough to be safe from them.

KFG

Re:uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Three cheers for the USA's foreign policy.

Re:uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:uhh

[mabu]

Actually, they were worried the story was
a hoax by someone who wanted to create fear
and panic.

In addition to "Fair and Balanced", I believe Fox News has "Fear and Panic" copyrighted. Watch yourself or you could get sued.

Re:uhh

[nomadic]

You're missing the point entirely. Their first act was to ask who had the book. They then put the envelope in a PAPER BAG and MAILED it to a laboratory? What kind of idiocy is that? The first thing they should have done, is quarantine the envelope. Then they should have asked who came into contact with it in order to make sure nobody was infected. Asking whether a borrower could have planted it is just kind of dumb. They should use common sense, just like every other damn law enforcement agency out t

Re:uhh

[niko9]

They are just trying to rule out all the possibilites, and it doesn't hurt to just ask. And if it was found that there was some funny buisness going on you would be the first Monday morning quaterback.

Never assume anything, stranger things have happened.

And you comment was modded up +5? This place shold be called the Neverdot Ranch for christs sake.

Re:uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the reason they wanted to investigate who might have had the book before is to trace down the possibility of an infection. Consider these scenarios:

1. A library patron becomes infected after borrowing the book, without their knowledge, and causes a plague.
2. Al Queda sends out sympathizers to libraries, medical museums, and other storage facilities to find possible specimens, just like this book contained.
3. A person with a little medical training and a lot of bills to pay decided to collect a few sp

From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

What is it with the government ass-covering smokescreen responses on Slashdot? They're overwhelmingly from Anonymous Cowards. Every FBI failure I specified in the post is within the FBI's jurisdiction. Including the foreign components of investigations on which they're working, especially because so much of that jurisdiction is new, either Patriot Act or even extralegal. And they're bungling every one of them. As for the CIA, the FBI is supposed to investigate the CIA's screwups when they violate US law dom

Re:From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

I expect to be among those voting in 2004 to fire the heads of government. Where I own shares, I will vote them to improve the governance of my property. Meanwhile, I will continue to engage public discussion of their incompetence (and worse). Drop the pigeonholes and say something constructive that helps us out of this mess.

Re:From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

With the Democratic primaries yet to get underway, there's no way to be sure which of the Democrat/Republican candidates will more likely "clean house". It's a pretty safe bet that it won't be Bush, who offers the worst governance here since George III (ironic). I already detailed some obvious, compelling government incompetence in my original post [slashdot.org]. I leave it to the candidates to pitch their vision of better governance, and the voters to decide which candidate to take up on their offer. As we write these words, you and I are engaging a fraction of the voters, however small. That kind of citizen activity is our privilege and duty. Shirking it is a luxury we cannot afford, exceeding it is not necessary when widely applied. This is the peer-to-peer model of unity that revolutionized government when installed in the late 1700s, and has kept us going for centuries since

If we were to upgrade the US government, I'd keep the entire basic framework, of course. The problems we have now are mainly the result of the last few generations gaming the system, perverting small holes in the execution of the system into giant power abuses. If you're really listening, I'll hit a few highlights of my patches.

Proportional voting. Or "instant runoffs" - instead of choosing only one candidate, and valuing the rest equally as "loser", we sort the candidates by preference. The one whose combined total is highest is the one best representing the voters. Lazy voters can just choose their top 2, 3 or 5. When proportional voting is underway, we can open the ballots to anyone meeting a minimum petition requirement for seriousness, like 5% of the registered voters in the voting district.

Immediately drop the electoral college in favor of total popular vote percentage across the country, as it's an implementation artifact from centuries ago, when travel and communication was much cruder. Likewise the single Election Day, giving a floating day off work to anyone claiming it in an election November. Hell, if that isn't enough, let's study the cost/benefits of requiring best 2 out of 3 elections, across a month or two, with all results kept secret until the third was complete. Just to get a meaningful sample into the statistical model of "the will of the people", that we call an election.

While we're at it, set the income of every elected official at the *median* (50/50% of population) salary in their constituency. With a pension at the upper 10% of that constituency. And no other income allowed, with annual audits. Encourage politicians to do it for more than the money, while guaranteeing them financial rewards, and an incentive to retire. With an additional incentive to long-range plan for the incomes of that constituency, to which their income will be directly tied.

Still talking about auditing politicians, make the Office of Special Prosecutor *permanent*, hired/fired by the Supreme Court, with jurisdiction over the other two bodies. Let's give Congress a permanent Judicial Reform committee with Supreme Court oversight. Enough of this crap where President appoints whichever selfserving Attorney General he wants to run the Justice Department, usurping the Judicial Branch. That con should have died with Nixon's Saturday Night massacre, when a succession of AGs resigned rather than supress Watergate, until a compliant Robert Bork sucked up the sleaze (and was almost installed on the Supreme Court for life by Reagan 10 years later).

Getting really "libertarian", let's require every candidate to submit their "promises" in writing, before the election. Every candidate seeking a possibly budget-proposing office would have to submit their budget *before* the election. Let's give Tax Day and Election Day (or Month) the same deadline. With tax forms & guides published in the same volumes as the candidates' proposals and sample ballots, submitted at the same time by citizens. Class action suits against lying politicians would be much easi

Thanks

[handy_vandal]

Hi Doc -

I just want to say Thanks for the intelligent, articulate, and persevering posts. You rock.

-kgj

Re:Thanks

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks for the positive feedback. It's fun thinking through my ideas in writing, validating against an imagined geek audience. Grinding deniers who can't put their minds where their mouths are is another reward. But the occasional fellow reader who chimes gives the best feeling of all. We are not alone ;).

Re:From strength to strength

[AJWM]

Immediately drop the electoral college in favor of total popular vote percentage across the country, as it's an implementation artifact from centuries ago,

Hell no it isn't, it's a design decision.

Think "republic", not "democracy".

Sure, the system could use some tweaking (or more likely, some undoing of previous tweaks), but don't even start until you grasp that fundamental.

Re:From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

Of all the changes I proposed, dropping the Electoral College is the most "radical", as in the dictionary definition "going to the root". The difference between a republic and a democracy, at least according to Plato, is the difference betwen the people setting the laws directly, and the people setting representatives who set the laws for them. Analogous to a value, and a pointer to a value. Or a libertarian society out of Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, with exclusively citizen's arrests, and im

Re:From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

Politics is for every citizen; "pros" are its main problem. We still have state-by-state Presidential elections, with the Secretary of State overseeing the assignment of Electoral ballots as per their state laws. This ancient workaround is getting in the way of the will of the people, as antidemocratic fixers rig elections by disproportionately working marginal rules.

Your disingenous treatment of the gamed political system, dropping the "states rights" buzzword, your recent coining of a "Master-Slave" user

Re:From strength to strength

[Rich0]

Pretty good ideas. However, you might want to do some searching on approval voting and Condorcet as they both address some major flaws with instant runoff voting.

Instant runoffs sound good when you listen to them, but if you actually work out the numbers in a closely contested election involving more than two parties, you'll find that all kinds of strange situations can come up. It really only works when you have a de-facto two-party system and a minority of one party wants to vote for somebody else in p

Re:From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

That's an interesting scenario. How does an electoral college fix that? Look at the Nevada nuclear dump. The Feds are forcing Nevada to accept the waste from around the US. The Nevada resistance, fairly successful so far, gets no help from the Electoral College. Nevada state laws prohibit the dumping, as determined by the locals. Nevada congressmembers work to negotiate federal laws and policies that would dump in their state.

As I noted in another post [slashdot.org], the US republic, as per the classical model, works wi

Re:From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

I've repeated this several times in the current thread, but it doesn't seem to be clearly received: the Electoral College does not create our republic; our election of representatives creates our republic. The middle level of electing electors merely made it more convenient to count a widely dispersed, large population. That convenience is now superfluous, and its overhead is getting in the way. The redundancy of the Electoral College is even more obvious when we consider that the electors, once chosen, are

Re:From strength to strength

[Doc Ruby]

Hear here. The strategy for getting my "platform" ;) implemented is an open question, and your proposal is a very good way to start. How about every vote requires a recorded ballot, but that ballot can be sent using a secure line, like an encrypted phone followed by certified letter - no more copping out on committee hearings "because I have to go vote". And every "abstain" vote requires a written explanation of the rep's "none of the above" position. How about a maximum number of abstentions per session, a

Re:Sad that I agree with you. :(

[Doc Ruby]

If you are alone, whose voice is coming from this post? :)

Re:uhh

[catbutt]

They didn't "think" it, they simply asked. And if they hadn't asked, they should have been fired for incompetency. Geez, it's friggin smallpox, not exactly your everyday thing.

Re:uhh

[fastidious edward]

It is because most mods, like most readers, browse at +2, therfore missing posts that need to be modded up and acting like sheep on posts that already have been.

So? I'm too lazy to change my prefs every 2 weeks

[caveat]

I don't know how frequently it happens to the rest of you, but I score mod points every couple of weeks - I hate having to change from threaded to nested, Not to mention that I dont really have the time to process 2-500 comments per story. I look at high-modded comments that appeal to me and have spawned threads, and then just read and mod the thread. Maybe /. should be more selective with moderators, and offer to pay them say $100 for 24 hours with 5 points, so they can have the time to peruse every commen

fear?

[Anonymous Coward]

they fear they may not even be able to yield live smallpox

is this a bad thing?? I'd feel better knowing that no remnants of the virus were able to survive that long.

Re:fear?

[Slur]

They'll likely try to culture some smallpox to get more material for the comparison. If they can't culture any of the old stuff they may still be able to cross the genetic material of the antiquated and modern strains - perhaps creating a super mutant strain - mua-ha-ha-hahaha!

Re:Useful discovery for future prevention reasons

[juhaz]

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 hou

scabs

[Graspee_Leemoor]

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

Re:scabs

[MadBiologist]

Hello... Amazon? I found a scab in my book...

Re:scabs

[musingmelpomene]

Shhhh! Be quiet, or everyone else will want one, too.

Re:scabs

[svanstrom]

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".

Anthrax in envelopes you didn't expect is one thing, although not easily avoided you can minimize the risks in such situations; but picture terrorists selling things with anthrax in them on sites such as ebay and amazon.com.

They might not be able to target the people they want, but they could reach 1'000's of people and completely ruin the business of selling used things

Re:scabs

[timepilot]

Yeah but they would get some hairy negative feedback.

Re:scabs

[Anonymous Coward]

"Horrible eBayer, gave my whole family smallpox, DO NOT RECOMMEND!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Re:scabs

[svanstrom]

maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but I don't find it to be funny that a user gets a bad review for killing the buyers of his goods.

Re:scabs

[bonzomcgrue]

It could be worse...

• You're at Pizza Hut, dining from their all-you-can-eat salad bar, singlehandedly trying to put them out of business with your furious consumption of iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, and (low fat) ranch dressing. You're almost looking at the bottom of your bowl after your fourth trip, when you notice something in mired in the dressing below. Still chewing, you fish an envelope from the bowl and using the side of your fork you scrape the dressing off the paper. In runny ink, you r

Forget smallpox

[Anonymous Coward]

It's largepox you should be afraid of.

Re:Forget smallpox

[geoswan]

It's largepox you should be afraid of.

It is called "smallpox" to distinguish it from the important one -- the one just called "pox". Otherwise known as syphillis.

In the movie "Dangerous Liaisons" Glenn Close's character is ostracized because she is a heartless troublemaker. In the original book she is stricken with "pox", aka syphillis, which was more virulent in those days, and caused horrible sores, and, eventually, general paralysis of the insane. [mdx.ac.uk]

yes, yes, YES

[Boo5000.]

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.

Watch those libraries!!

[Fruny]

One more reason to have the government tightly control what books you check out.
Libraries are a breeding ground for terrorists, I tell you.

What Could Happen

[hao2lian]

Hey, are these raisins? *munch*

In a freezer?

[InfiniteWisdom]

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.

It's like a time capsule

[mcc]

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.

clever al Qaida

[tuxette]

Within days, two FBI agents visited the Santa Fe library to pick up the scabs. They questioned a surprised Caro for half an hour, asking who had last used the book and whether she felt the borrower may have "planted" the scabs inside

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.

Re:clever al Qaida

[Walt Dismal]

Didn't I see that in a movie? The Arabinator. Big guy, said "I'll be back -- with my camel!"

Yuk!

[nicku]

I was just eating lunch when this story came up...and lunch almost came up with it...nice timing...

Re:Yuk!

[InfiniteWisdom]

Oh thanks for putting that image in my head. Now I need to go change my tshirt and get a new keyboard.

Re:Yuk!

[Ignis Flatus]

Ugh, you stole my subject line. I couldn't help but think that by 2103, some librarian will find a collection of old cigar boxes from Mrs. Pennington's 1973 first grade class full of chewed crayons and uneaten boogers. Imagine the excitement of 22nd century cootie researchers.

Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter ...

[leoaugust]

1. virus -- [princeton.edu] ((virology) ultramicroscopic infectious agent that replicates itself only within cells of living hosts; many are pathogenic; a piece of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) wrapped in a thin coat of protein)

In viruses, which represent the border between living and dead matter, [nobel.se]there are simpler aggregates between nucleic acids and proteins. A virus can be said to be genetic material without a cell of its own, and the structure of viruses can provide clues to the more complicated organisation of the hereditary material in higher organisms.

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 [imdb.com]based on this notion ?

But in the article it says ....

Several years ago in Kentucky, she said, a construction crew unearthed a metal coffin containing the mummified corpse of an apparent smallpox victim that researchers traced to the mid-1800s. The CDC checked the tissue for live virus and came up empty.

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 -- and provide valuable information on the deadly plague.

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 ?

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[Zachary Kessin]

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.

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[canajin56]

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.

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[Uma Thurman]

One scab - scab
More than one scab - scabii

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[Slowping]

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.

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[Yunalesca]

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 s

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[Slowping]

Hm ... 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?


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 governme

"Live" virus

[porkchop_d_clown]

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.

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[dustman]

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, bas

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[DocDendrite]

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

Is a virus an independent living organism?

[Latent Heat]

OK, a virus is subcellular so it is biological but not really life, or perhaps it is a peculiar kind of parasite of symbiont.

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

Re:Is a virus an independent living organism?

[exhilaration]

This is what I was taught: The definition of life is anything that has a metabolic system. In other words, to be called alive, it must convert food to energy or energy to food (photosynthesis).

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[Tim C]

I think that you want to be thinking "live" as in ammunition, rather than "live" as in animal.

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[exhilaration]

Thank you. That's exactly what they mean.

Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .

[a-aiyar]

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 [northwestern.edu] 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 glycopr

WHO Spoke too Soon?

[Mikkeles]

I guess the World Health Organization's [who.int] crowing about smallpox eradication [who.int] was a bit too early!

Re:WHO Spoke too Soon?

[jon787]

Anyone who thinks that the CDC (and their equivalents around the globe) don't have a small frozen supply, seriously needs to take a moment and think. There are plenty of reasons to keep a small amount of any disease causing agent around.

I would expect them to have a small supply of every disease causing agent they can get their hands on. It only seems prudent.

They should make an action figure out of her

[rumpledstiltskin]

Just like Nancy Pearl [mcphee.com]

Misleading statement in article

[mesocyclone]

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 [miis.edu] 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.

Kubrick's Doomsday Device

[Latent Heat]

Why is the heck would the Russians want smallpox or any other bioweapon on an ICBM (I heard Ken Alibek on TV suggesting that it was for ICBM's)? I can understand a nuke because besides killing people, a nuke can take out fortified sites and infrastructure and impair the ability to fight back. Also, a modern ICBM has a high speed pointy-end forward reentry vehicle, unlike the blunt RV's of early RV's. The blunt body RV has less of a heat shield requirement, but its rapid deceleration and slow entry hurts

Re:Kubrick's Doomsday Device

[mesocyclone]

At many times, the Russians have felt that they could win a nuclear war against the US.

And as far as what good is it? The population after a nuclear attack is especially vulnerable (reduced resistance due to stress or radiation sickness, medical facilities overflowed, lots of movement to spread the disease).

The Russians could simply have a vast supply of vaccine ready to distribute.

As far as how you dispense the agent, you use a different RV.

There is no doubt that the USSR had a vast bioweapons program.

Re:Kubrick's Doomsday Device

[Reziac]

Considering the delivered virus particles would likely get fried to oblivion along with whatever else the ICBM hits, this sounds to me more like Rube Goldberg's Doomsday Device!!

Not for First Strike

[Bios_Hakr]

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.

Ken Alibek is not 100% reliable

[Slashamatic]

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.

Re:Bioweapons will be used in WWIII (2006-)

[mesocyclone]

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!

Yes lets all

[TheKidWho]

Grow a dangerous desease and see how it affects people... Oops, seems like its spreading everywhere... "my bad"

Re:Yes lets all

[Kymermosst]

Grow a dangerous desease and see how it affects people... Oops, seems like its spreading everywhere... "my bad"

At first glance, I thought your post was going to read:

1. Grow a dangerous disease and see how it affects people...
2. ???
3. PROFIT!

Homeland Security Issues Alert

[moehoward]

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.

Re:Homeland Security Issues Alert

[SpacePunk]

It's called "job security"

Re:Homeland Security Issues Alert

[myowntrueself]

In the UK, they already have!

As I understand it, their latest attempt at an 'anti terrorism' law makes it an offense to possess information which may be useful to a terrorist.

See? The Brits have banned *all* knowledge.

Beat that Mr.Ridge!!! :-P

Studying undisturbed specimines.

[HockeyPuck]

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.

Re: Studying undisturbed specimines.

[bezuwork's friend]

I also recall this idea coming up when several lead coffins were discovered. Unfortunately, in the case I recall, either there had been contamination, or the results were inconclusive.

Seems like a strange thing to fear.

[Inoshiro]

"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 ;(

I, For one

[geekoid]

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.

Re:I, For one

[Scrameustache]

welcome are new FBI overlords.

New?

Captain Obvious strikes again!

[mabu]

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.

Re: Captain Obvious strikes again!

[Black Parrot]

> 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.

Easy; he's hiding in Iraq's WMD storage facility.

Re:Captain Obvious strikes again!

[sharkey]

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.

A source close to the FBI stated that they would be questioning Waldo, as "soon as we've found him. He's a slippery sucker, tho, so it may take some time."

Probably not smallpox virus anyway

[KFW]

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 [nih.gov].

>K

Christmas present

[3Suns]

CDC: Ohh! An envelope full of infectious scabs... This is the best Christmas ever!

"Doc, what should i do with these scabs?"

[iamhassi]

Nurse: Dr, what should I do with these smallpox scabs?
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?

Re:"Doc, what should i do with these scabs?"

[tgd]

Smallpox scabs were used widely to provide immunity for hundreds of years outside of Europe before there was the concept of vaccination.

Risk Analysis and a question

[randall_burns]

Current odds of smallpox remerging by 2010 is currently a bit less than 30 percent [ideosphere.com] according to Ideosphere's risk analysis.

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.

missing category

[Tablizer]

What is really needed now is a moderation option called "Eeewwwww!"

Re:Why this may not be for real (sheesh!)

[Bitsy Boffin]

If a heretofore undiscovered store of smallpox (say, in a library book) is discovered and starts killing people, we would have no source material from which to develop a vaccine.

Except of course the source material that happens to be out in the wild killing people.

Re:Memory of smallpox

[chiph]

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.

The quaratine period for smallpox is 17 days [admin.ch], so I assume the relatives or local health officials would leave food on the doorstep for them (brave people!)

Given today that most people in the US don't have relatives living nearby to perform such a service, how many /. readers have 17 day's worth of food in th

Re:One more reason to close all the libraries

[uberdave]

Dangit! I must be going to the wrong libraries.