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HMM Newsletter - No. 13, 1997 ISSN 1036-3041


A dose of the pox


Dear Ed.,

Your May newsletter contained a collection of internet messages about hazardous objects in medical collections. Both interesting and amusing, it raised a serious issue.

In July 1999, when the World Health Organisation autoclaves the "last known" reservoirs of smallpox, it's unlikely they'll be thinking about the Powerhouse Museum. The officials surely don't know about the clinical smallpox detection kit sitting in our basement. In 1983 the kit's glass capillary tubes were found to be half full of dried pus that could have contained viable smallpox virus. Intact virus particles have reportedly been exhumed along with 400-year-old mummys. Who knows how long they could survive in dried scabs under museum storage conditions? Our entire kit was promptly autoclaved by the microbiology department of the local technical college. In that instance we decided that the need to protect museum staff far outweighed the risk of damaging the historical integrity of the object. As it was, autoclaving didn't harm the kit...and we no longer have to wear full protective garb.

Sandra McEwen
Curator, Biotechnology
Powerhouse Museum

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Back to HMM Home Page] Published by the Australian Science Archives Project on ASAPWeb, 1 August 1998
Prepared by: Lisa Cianci

Date modified: 10 August 1998
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