Smallpox vaccine turns up in B.C. yard sale purchaseThursday, 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."
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