f13.net

f13.net General Forums => Serious Business => Topic started by: Shockeye on August 18, 2005, 11:08:03 AM



Title: Garage Sale Surprise!
Post by: Shockeye on August 18, 2005, 11:08:03 AM
Quote from: AP
Smallpox vaccine turns up in B.C. yard sale purchase (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002444358_webvaccine18.html)

Thursday, August 18, 2005 - Page updated at 08:15 AM

PRINCE GEORGE, British Columbia – Andrew Knickle found something he hardly expected — or wanted — after he haggled down the price of a box of sailing tarpaulins to $3 (US$2.50) at a yard sale.

"It was a kind of a hard, plastic tube with a screw cap that was labeled smallpox vaccine," Knickle said. "It scared me. All kinds of things went through my head, wondering if this could be meant for some evil purpose in this day and age of bioterrorism."

When he shook the package, which bore a label from Connaught Laboratories in Willowdale, Ontario, and an expiration date of 1973, it was evident that something was inside, he said.

"Usually something like this is under tight control, and I think it's very unusual that it popped up in a box of tarps," Knickle said.

Northern Health Authority officials retrieved the still-sealed vial.

Medical health officer Dr. Lorna Medd said the "watered-down, cousin-of-smallpox vaccine" would not have been active and posed no health risk.

"In 1972 they stopped immunizing children for smallpox," Medd said. "Our supposition is that this vial was somehow not collected from a military office, a health unit or a doctor's office and it just got lost."


Title: Re: Garage Sale Surprise!
Post by: Furiously on August 18, 2005, 11:45:06 AM
I think someone doesn't know what Vaccine means.


Title: Re: Garage Sale Surprise!
Post by: Samwise on August 18, 2005, 11:57:28 AM
Could be.  Though vaccines can often have unpleasant side effects; an active smallpox vaccine could very well be a little dangerous. 


Title: Re: Garage Sale Surprise!
Post by: Miasma on August 18, 2005, 12:42:38 PM
I think some vaccines are the same as the virus, just weakened by heat.  I don't know if the old smallpox vaccine was one of them, the current one is made from a different virus.

I suppose if it was that type of vaccine, and it hadn't spoiled, and there was still usable genetic material, and it fell into the wrong hands, and those hands had access to a high level genetics lab - it might have been harmful...