Janet Parker (1938– September 11, 1978) was the last person to die from smallpox.^[1] She was a Medical photographer working in the Anatomy department of Birmingham University and she lived in Burford Park Road, Kings Norton, Birmingham, UK. Parker died after being exposed to the virus which was being grown in a research laboratory, one floor below the Anatomy department.^[2] The tragedy led to the suicide of Professor Henry Bedson, the Head of Microbiology department.^[3] An official government enquiry into Parker's death was led by Professor R. A. Shooter, ^[4] which was debated in the British Parliament.^[5] Shooter's originally secret report has recently been declassified. ^[6] Parker's death triggered radical changes in how dangerous pathogens are studied in the UK.^[7][8]

Death

At the time of her death, Parker worked in the University of Birmingham Medical School, Birmingham, England, 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, 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 ^[9] 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 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.^[10]

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 is rumored to maintain stockpiles 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

References

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

External links

• Washington Post article with some information on Parker's death
• Book Chapter on Smallpox
• 1978 TIME magazine article
• Discover article
• London Review of Books article