| INTELLIGENCER JOURNAL (LANCASTER, PA.) Friday, July 16, 1999 Section: HEADLINE Front Page: A-1 Byline: Thomas L. Flannery Intelligencer Journal Staff Writer |
| No one in his right mind would think to awaken mankind's most prolific killing machine, which is stored in two repositories worlds apart. |
| But should someone try to unleash the deadly smallpox virus, one of the largest stockpiles of the vaccine rest nearby in a secret vault in Marietta. |
| Perched along the Susquehanna River in western Lancaster County, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of New Jersey-based American Home Products, is caretaker of the glass vials holding 15 million doses of the vaccine owned by the U.S. government. |
| No media gets inside the plant, and no media sees the vials, a Wyeth spokesman said. |
| The Marietta complex traces its history to the Lancaster County Vaccine Farm, once the world's largest producer of smallpox vaccine. The vaccine " farm " was founded by Dr. H.M. Alexander, a Marietta physician, in the late 1880s. |
| Rumor has it the vials have deteriorated and the vaccine no longer has enough punch to be effective, but those mutterings are just rumors, said Barbara Reynolds of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. |
| " The ( green ) color ( of the vaccine ) has changed over time, but our periodic tests consistently have shown that the vaccine has not lost its potency and will work if, God forbid, it is ever needed, " Reynolds said. |
| In fact, she said, the vaccine's concentration is such that it could be diluted to yield 150 million doses and still be effective. |
| What has given rise to some concern, Reynolds said, is the pinkish hue the vaccine's sister drug, used to treat adverse reactions to the vaccine, has taken on, and its unknown potency. |
| Because federal law says this antidote must be on hand and effective when anyone is vaccinated, the Food and Drug Administration has banned any further vaccinations, which were declared unnecessary in 1972. |
| The CDC owns the vaccine, the antidote and some of the 400 remaining glass ampules of the live virus, now frozen in time. |
| These biologic time bombs are kept in a secret spot in Atlanta and at the Institute for Viral Preparations in Moscow, both under the watchful eye of the World Health Organization of Geneva, Reynolds said. |
| Twice there has been a proposal to destroy the last remaining stockpiles of the virus, but in both instances, the WHO's executive board nixed the plans. |
| Destroying the samples, the WHO says, would make it all but impossible to make a larger supply of vaccine if the virus ever falls into the wrong hands and becomes a military weapon. |
| No one is really sure how smallpox began, but everyone who has chronicled its impact on man is in agreement: we have never known a more efficient biological killing machine, including plague, cholera and yellow fever. |
| Smallpox is thought to have started in early agricultural areas of northeastern Africa 10,000 years before the birth of Christ. |
| From there, historians say, the virus, which causes a fever, rash and scab-covered sores and permanent scars, probably traveled to India as unknown portage of Egyptian merchants. |
| The trademark skin lesions have been found on the faces of Egyptian mummies dating to the 18th and 20th Egyptian dynasties from 1570 to 1085 B.C., including Ramses V, who died in 1157 B.C. |
| The first known smallpox epidemic was in 1350 B.C. during the Egyptian-Hittite War. |
| But it wasn't until 910 A.D. that anyone figured out the virus was transmitted from person to person. |
| It wasn't long before the virus showed its killing powers by wiping out 400,000 Europeans each year during the 18th century, including four monarchs. A third of those who managed to survive were blinded. |
| Smallpox is thought to have piggybacked to the New World with Portuguese and Spanish conquistadors, contributing to the eradication of the Aztecs and Incas. |
| In 1518, when the Spanish were ravaging Mexico, the country had a population of 25 million; by 1620, Mexico had only 1.6 million people, according to W.H. McNeill, who wrote the 1976 book " Plagues and People. " |
| During the 18th century, doctors made their first major breakthrough on eradicating smallpox when they noticed milkmaids exposed to a sister virus, cowpox, never acquired the disease. |
| In 1796, British physician Edward Jenner used a crude vaccine made from pus taken from a sore on the hand of milkmaid Sarah Nelmes to vaccinate 8-year-old James Phipps, according an 1817 article " The History and Practice of Vaccination. " |
| When Jenner tried to infect the boy with smallpox six weeks later, he was, thankfully, unsuccessful. |
| The news spread rapidly, and by 1800, about 100,000 people had been vaccinated worldwide, including President Jefferson, his family and the last Mohican, Chief Little Turtle. |
| Some saw the smallpox virus as an ideal biological weapon. |
| Military strategists considered offering Native Americans blankets with smallpox scabs embedded in the fibers as a way to clear the West for settlement, but the plan was abandoned. |
| In 1949, the last case of smallpox was reported in the United States, and by 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated worldwide. |
| But no one has discounted the possible use of smallpox in modern warfare. |
| " Bio-terrorism is still a threat, " the CDC's Reynolds said. And if anyone acts on that threat, the little borough of Marietta could play a key role in eradicating " The Speckled Monster. " |
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has the Nation's ONLY Stockpile of Smallpox Vaccine " |
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