Now this would have made for an interesting tort suit, but the surgical-booted thugs from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) have spoiled it. After Dr. Paul Levengood of the Virginia Historical Society put on display a small pox scab from 1831, CDC officials covered in surgical garb rushed to the museum, seized the scab, irradiated it and threw it into a “medium security area.” It is not clear if the scab has counsel.
The CDC notably was not concerned about the canker sores spreading from the captured cigar of Confederate president Jefferson Davis or lice from a wreath made of human hair. It was the scab sent by a son to his father with a note reading “Dear Pa … the piece I inclose is perfectly fresh and was taken from an infant’s arm yesterday. Dr. Harris says the inclosed scab will vaccinate 12 persons, but if you want more, you must send for it. I will pin this to the letter so that you cannot lose it as you did before.”
All my wife and kids gave me this month for my birthday was a heart monitor for walking (a chilling gift for a guy who turns 50 to be sure). What have they run out of smallpox scabs or are kids just not as caring as they were in the nineteenth century?
As for the scab, conditions have improved after it was moved from a high-security, BSL-4 lab, to a medium-securing lab. I assume that includes access to weight sets and possible conjugal visits.
Source: WSJ
You sure they didn’t really find Jimmy Hoffa….he’s been missing for a while….
Stamford Liberal,
Because I like the guitar work, I give you The Scabs:
Blouise,
Stamford Liberal
1, May 19, 2011 at 12:20 pm
I agree with rafflaw (Buddha?) … ewwww. Just … ewww.
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Prudes!
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I’m sorry I’m not as progressive as you are when it comes to scabs … sigh.
Now that you’ve successfully humiliated me, I guess I’ll just have to pick up “Scabs for Dummies” this weekend and learn to appreciate them for all their old, dried blood and potentially disease-loaded glory 😀
Buddha Is Laughing
1, May 19, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Ewwwww.
Blouise, some things are left out of that book for good reason.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stamford Liberal
1, May 19, 2011 at 12:20 pm
I agree with rafflaw (Buddha?) … ewwww. Just … ewww.
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Prudes!
anon nurse
1, May 19, 2011 at 12:25 pm
anon 1, May 19, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Re: “Don’t take another step or the president gets it between the eyes.”
Secret Service agents on their way… Let us know when they get there. 😉
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We will come armed with scabs and the Secret Service, who run anytime a mother shows up, will fall all over each other trying to find the closest exit … yeah, that’s right … we’re a bunch of mothers and waaay past the age of thirteen. (I’m still pissed about yesterday’s article, “Secret Service Interrogates Seventh Grader About Facebook Comment”)
Anon, 🙂 My first grin of the day, thanks!
anon 1, May 19, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Re: “Don’t take another step or the president gets it between the eyes.”
Secret Service agents on their way… Let us know when they get there. 😉
I agree with rafflaw … ewwww. Just … ewww.
Ewwwww.
Blouise, some things are left out of that book for good reason.
Sex with a scab … gotta add that to my Porn for Dummies book
We’re here to see the nose. I hear it was running.
…
Don’t take another step or the president gets it between the eyes.
Since nobody is vaccinated for smallpox anymore that thing could be quite deadly. Smallpox is a horrific disease with a fairly high mortality rate. It is highly contagious & would sweep through unprotected populations rapidly.
Aggressive vaccination has wiped it out in the wild although several governments keep live versions for ‘research’ it is known the Soviet Union had weaponized it & assumed the US and possibly others did too.
I suppose if that happened we could always send the used blankets to the Indian reservations & complete the job Andy Jackson(spit) started.
From the WSJ link:
“The CDC plans to return the scab to the VHS.”
excerpt:
Scabs—pieces of dessicated skin, white blood cells, virus and other material—were used in the 19th century to vaccinate people against smallpox. They were inserted into small breaks in the skin, prompting the body to build an immune response.
Museum officials say they weren’t worried about infection. A medical historian had told them years ago that old scabs degrade. “Our strong assumption was that it was not a danger,” Dr. Levengood says. Staff members, wearing gloves, encased the scab in mylar and placed it in a plexiglass display case for the exhibit, which opened in June 2010.
But Nick Radonic, an electrical engineer from Derwood, Md., was alarmed when he read a newspaper review in February that mentioned the scab. He emailed the museum, which assured him the item was contained. Unconvinced, he next emailed a neighbor, a doctor and mathematician at the National Institutes of Health, asking what to do.
“If it really contained smallpox virus that happened to be viable, the downside of release would have been enormous,” Mr. Radonic says.
The neighbor, John Spouge, consulted virologists. “I’d put it in the autoclave myself. Who needs the chance?” one responded, citing a standard method of inactivating viruses with heat and pressure.
Finally, Dr. Spouge reached Dr. Jahrling, who put him in touch with the CDC.
Scabs can remain infectious for decades if kept under the right conditions, but the CDC says that most of those it has found have deteriorated.
When they retrieved the scab, Dr. McCollum and a CDC colleague, both immunized against smallpox, assured VHS staff that the chances of infection appeared low.
The two locked the scab in the trunk of their car and drove straight to Atlanta, a nine-hour trip.
Clad in pressurized moonsuits in the high-security, BSL-4 lab, CDC microbiologists determined within a few hours that the scab contains virus from the smallpox vaccine but didn’t contain the deadly disease virus itself. They have since moved the scab, which they have irradiated, to a medium-security lab.
Still, the CDC researchers aren’t disappointed. No one knows precisely which viruses were used in vaccines historically in the U.S., and the scab, with relatively well preserved DNA, could help shed light on that, Dr. Damon says.
The CDC plans to return the scab to the VHS. It’s probably not the last such artifact that will emerge, given the number of old medicine chests and other medical relics that abound, says Lee Shepard, the museum’s vice president for collections. “There are probably a good number of these things out there,” he says. (end excerpt)
All joking aside, if this scab still had any active smallpox virus within it this would be an extraordinary biohazard. The CDC did the right thing here.
“Wait ’til the union goons rough it up.” jim miles
🙂
“I assume that includes access to weight sets and possible conjugal visits.” -Jonathan Turley
Yes. But it’s on suicide watch, sleeps naked and must bare itself for inspections…
“SCAB” is a union term for a bad guy isn’t it?
I remember stories of the Army shooting “scabs” in the early days of unions …
Evidently the medical term comes from “Middle English, from Old Norse skabb” …
Now we have SWAT SCAB teams of the scientific kind …
Who’d a thunk it?
Ewww! A small pox scab? I don’t think the originalists will admit that there is a small pox scab exemption in the Constitution!
Prof.,
Don’t worry about turning 50, I just turned 60 last week and 50 looks awful good to me now!
You lawyers have a strange sense of humor.
Having a science background, I can appreciate the excitement and historical significance of using a smallpox scab to develop a vaccine. I can also appreciate the possibly enormous danger such a scab might still present to the public and see the seed there of an interesting article. Jokes about scab as prisoner? Not so much, but to each his own. Humor can be contagious, you know. 🙂
Wait ’til the union goons rough it up.
Wasn’t this a plot on “House” a couple of months ago?