Janet Parker

Janet Parker (1938/1939–September 11, 1978) was a British medical photographer, and is the last person known to have died from smallpox.

At the time of her death, Parker worked in the University of Birmingham Medical School, Birmingham, England, in a darkroom above a lab where research with live smallpox virus was being conducted. On August 11, 1978, Parker (who had received a smallpox vaccine twelve years prior) fell ill, complaining of a headache and muscular pains. She soon developed spots that were thought to be a 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 of fluid from her rash. Janet Parker died of smallpox on September 11 in Catherine-de-Barnes then an isolation  hospital. Many people were exposed to Janet before she was admitted, but only her mother contracted the disease. Parker's mother survived, but her father died of a heart attack while visiting Parker in the hospital.

Although the exact route by which Parker was exposed is unknown, the laboratory in which the experiments were being performed had no containment procedures apart from a "fume cupboard". An investigation 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.

On September 6, Professor Henry Bedson, the son of Sir Samuel Phillips Bedson and the head of the medical microbiology department, committed suicide at home by cutting his throat. 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."

In 1977, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had told Henry Bedson that his application for his lab 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.

In 1980, 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 is rumored to maintain stockpiles in multiple laboratories.

Reference

 * Tucker, Jonathan. Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox.  Grove Press, 2002, 304 pages.  Includes an account of the Parker tragedy.