US CDC says finds smallpox vials from 1950s in FDA storage room

[IDemo]

Source: Reuters

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday they found smallpox vials from 1950s in an FDA storage building and have transferred them to the CDC's high-containment laboratory in Atlanta on July 7.

The CDC said it has notified the World Health Organization about the discovery. The United States is one of two official WHO designated repositories for smallpox, sharing that responsibility with Russia.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/08/usa-health-smallpox-idUSL2N0PJ1JM20140708

[mainer]

1. Holy crap. I wonder if they have other vials in some broom closet.

We don't need bioterrorists to kill us. We can do it all by ourselves.

[herding cats]

2. Why would they have ever been in a FDA storage room?

That seems a rather odd place for them to have ended up.

[haele]

4. Someone was working on a drug or vaccine and was late for lunch.

Put the samples in the corner of his desk drawer or in the book case for "safekeeping", got sidetracked and never returned to that project, and the samples were forgotten until they were boxed up with his research notes in the '60's or '70's when he retired.

That's how they ended up in storage.

For example, I found Y2K -compliant certification files with artifacts for the entire government agency in the back of a large file cabinent I had inherited from someone who had retired in 2007, along with FOUO (for official use only) labled 5" floppies from an old DoD Satcom program test data from 1992 - and even then, I only found them last month when I was looking for more file space. Someone put them back at the bottom drawer for safekeeping, and they were ignored for years instead of disposed of.

Haele

[herding cats]

6. I'm sure it was something like that.

It just seems the person would at some point be going, "wait, where did those vials of smallpox go I had?" Because it's bloody smallpox after all. But then, for all we know they could be dead virus samples and the people who managed them weren't overly concerned what became of them.

[happyslug]

8. Reminds me of the story of bidders on "20 year boxes" for the Department of Defense

These boxes were used by various maintenance personnel and had all types of small parts in them that some maintenance chief kept for his duration in the service (Which can include Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corp and even the Coast Guard). Some of these "20 yea boxes" were "inherited" when one chief replaced another. Finally after 20-30 years they were taken away from the unit for some reason or another (no one wanted it, the unit moved, the ship was scrapped, the based was closed etc) and was then put up for sale as scrap. People would bid on them, sight unseen and generally find parts for long retired planes and vehicles, and ever so often an airplane engines, 50 caliber machine guns etc. No one knew what they came off of, not one had any record of them, but sold for scrap.

I do NOT know the truth to the above stories but knowing what can be in a 20 year box, none of what was reported found in some would surprise me. In many cases no one knew what to do with these 20 year boxes when they had one of these 20 year box and just left what was in them in the 20 year box in case they may need what was in the 20 year box.

It was often easier to leave what was in the box in the box then to disposed on them. Disposal involved finding out HOW they were in the 20 year box, and often the person who had the box had no idea of how most of the things in the box ended up in the box (and other times did not what to admit how those items ended up in the box). Thus it was easier to leave whatever was in the box unless you needed, then you used it. On the other hand if you took whatever was in the box off the base you might be charge with thrift.

Thus the alternatives to ignoring what was in the box was worse (Being charged with Thrift) and took more time (explaining HOW you ended up with something you should NOT have) then ignoring what was in the box unless you needed it. Thus all types of things were located in such boxes. most of which were kept locked even when being used by whoever had possession of the box.

These boxes were often sold based on weight, no one ever opened them, even when they were sold as surplus. Thus you hear of all types of stories of what was in such boxes, but as I said above, I just heard stories never a first hand account.

[Marrah_G]

3. Holy shit- That is terrifying

[Javaman]

5. FDA employee interviewed about the find...

"we were just goofing around when Sam, he's a riot, picks these old vile things and starts juggling them. And he's like, whoa, what if I drop them! Ha ha ha! oh that Sam"

[bluedigger]

7. Oopsie.

My Much Less Terrifying Anecdote:

In the '80's I was serving in the Army in Germany. One day I was rooting through a footlocker in our section's storage closet looking for something, and I came across a 35mm film canister. Naturally, I shook it first, and when it rattled a little, I assumed I had found someone's stash. So I popped the lid off. In a 4'x 6' closet, mind you. Well, it wasn't a stash exactly, unless you count the NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) NCO's leftover powdered CS agent. Poof! Right in my face. Man, I was pissed! He could have labeled it, the SOB.