Janet Parker

Janet Parker (1938–1978) was the last known person to die from smallpox. [http://www.qmul.ac.uk/news/newsrelease.php?news_id=18 Twenty five years on: Smallpox revisted Queen Mary, University of London] She was a medical photographer and worked in the Anatomy department of University of Birmingham Medical School. Parker died after being exposed to the smallpox virus which was grown in a research laboratory, on the floor below the Anatomy department. The tragedy led to the suicide of Professor Henry Bedson, the head of the microbiology department. An official government enquiry into Parker's death was led by Professor R. A. Shooter, whose report was debated in the British Parliament. Government discussions on Shooter's report have recently been declassified. Parker's death triggered radical changes in how dangerous pathogens are studied in the UK.cite journal
author=Hawkes N
title=Smallpox death in Britain challenges presumption of laboratory safety
journal=Science
volume=203
issue=4383
pages=855–6
year=1979
pmid=419409
doi=
url=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=419409] [ [http://www.advisorybodies.doh.gov.uk/acdp/CodePractice.htm] ,] The University was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive for breaking Health and Safety laws, but the University was cleared in court.

Background

Smallpox is an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants named "Variola major" and "Variola minor".cite book | author = Ryan KJ, Ray CG (editors) | title = Sherris Medical Microbiology | edition = 4th ed. | pages = 525–7 | publisher = McGraw Hill | year = 2004 | pages = 525–8 |isbn = 0838585299 ] The disease is also known by the Latin names "Variola" or "Variola vera", which is a derivative of the Latin "varius", meaning spotted, or "varus", meaning "pimple". The term "smallpox" was first used in Europe in the 15th century to distinguish variola from the great pox (syphilis).cite journal |author=Barquet N, Domingo P |title=Smallpox: the triumph over the most terrible of the ministers of death |url= http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/127/8_Part_1/635|journal=Ann. Intern. Med. |volume=127 |issue=8 Pt 1 |pages=635–42 |year=1997 |pmid=9341063 |doi=]

Death

At the time of her death, Parker lived in Burford Park Road, Kings Norton, Birmingham, UK, and was employed at the University of Birmingham Medical School, Birmingham, England. She often worked in a darkroom above a laboratory where research on live smallpox virus was being conducted. On August 11, 1978, Parker, (who was vaccinated against smallpox in 1966), fell ill; she had a headache and pains in her muscles. She developed spots that were thought to be a benign rash. Ms Parker was admitted to East Birmingham (now Heartlands) Hospital on August 24 and diagnosed (by Professor Alasdair Geddes and Dr.Thomas Henry Flewett) as being infected with "Variola major", the most lethal strain of smallpox. The next day, smallpox virus was confirmed by electron microscopy on fluid from her rash. Janet Parker was transferred to Catherine-de-Barnes, (then an isolation hospital) where she died of smallpox on September 11, 1978. Many people had close contact with Parker before she was admitted, but only her mother contracted the disease. Parker's mother, Hilda Whitcomb, survived, but her father, Frederick Witcomb, died aged 77 following a cardiac arrest when visiting Parker in the hospital.

On September 6, Professor Henry Bedson, the son of Sir Samuel Phillips [Sir Samuel Phillips Bedson, Fellow of the Royal Society,(1886-1969), [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4606(197011)16%3C14%3ASPB1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4|Biography] ] and the head of the medical microbiology department, committed suicide. At his home, in the garden shed, he cut his throat and he died at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Birmingham few days later. His suicide note read "I am sorry to have misplaced the trust which so many of my friends and colleagues have placed in me and my work." [Stockton]

In 1977, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had told Henry Bedson that his application for his laboratory to become a Smallpox Collaborating Centre had been rejected. This was partly because of safety concerns; the WHO wanted as few laboratories as possible handling the virus. [ [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n17/penn01_.html LRB · Hugh Pennington: Smallpox Scares ] ]

hooter report

The recently declassified official report on the incident noted that Bedson failed to inform the authorities of changes in his research that could have affected safety. Shooter discovered that the Dangerous Pathogens Advisory Group inspected the laboratory on two occasions and each time recommended the smallpox research be continued there, despite the fact that the facilities at the laboratory fell far short of those required by law. Several of the staff at the laboratory had received no special training. Bedson even allowed a schoolleaver to work with smallpox after only 9 months as a trainee technician. Inspectors from the World Health Organisation had told Bedson that the physical facilities at the laboratory did not meet WHO standards, but had nonetheless only recommended a few changes in laboratory procedure. Bedson lied to the WHO about the volume of work handled by the laboratory, telling them that it had progressively declined since 1973, when in fact it had risen dramatically as Bedson desperately tried to finish his work before the laboratory closed. Janet Parker had not been vaccinated recently enough to protect her against smallpox.

The report concluded that Mrs Parker had probably been infected by a strain of smallpox called Abid (named after one of its earlier victims, a three-year-old Pakistani boy), which was being handled in the smallpox laboratory on 24 and 25 July. The virus had travelled in air currents up a service duct from the laboratory below, to a room in the Anatomy Department which was used for telephone calls; on 25 July Parker had spent much more time there than usual ordering photographic materials because the financial year was about to end [ Shooter]

mallpox eradication

In 1979, smallpox was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization. WHO recommended the cessation of vaccinations, and also recommended that stockpiles of the virus be limited. All known stocks of smallpox were destroyed except for the stocks at the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Vector Institute in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk in Siberia. However, other countries are rumored to have kept stockpiles, and Russia and America are rumored to maintain them in multiple laboratories.

In popular fiction

The Parker case provides a major plot element in the Patricia Cornwell novel Unnatural Exposure. The killer, an apparently respectable microbiologist, turns out to have been a junior researcher at the medical school at the time of Parker's death, and to have been scapegoated for the accident after Professor Bedson's suicide. Nursing a grudge over her blighted career, she develops a new strain of poxvirus from material stolen from the Birmingham lab, and attempts to start an epidemic.

See also

* Rahima Banu
* Ali Maow Maalin
* List of unusual deaths

Notes

References

*Altman, Lawrence. "Criticism is leveled in aftermath of fatal British smallpox outbreak" New York Times, February 11, 1979, p. 34
*Shooter, R. A. Report of the investigation into the cause of the 1978 Birmingham smallpox occurrence. London: H. M. Stationery Office (1980)
*Stockton, William. "Smallpox is not dead" New York Times Magazine, February 4, 1979, p. 36
*Tucker, Jonathan. "Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox". Grove Press, New York, 2002, ISBN 0 8021 3939 6

External links

* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64645-2004May28_3.html Washington Post article with some information on Parker's death]
* [http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9968/9968.ch01.html Book Chapter on Smallpox]
*1978 TIME magazine [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916394,00.html?promoid=googlep article]
*London Review of Books [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n17/penn01_.html article]