History Marie Curie Marie Skodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prize—in physics and chemistry. She was the first female professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. Curie visited Poland for the last time in the spring of 1934. Only a few months later, on 4 July 1934, Curie died at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, from aplastic anemia contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation. The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed, without the safety measures that would later be developed. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the faint light that the substances gave off in the dark. Marie was also exposed to x-rays from unshielded equipment while serving as a radiologist in field hospitals during the war. Janet Parker Janet Parker (March 1938 – September 11, 1978) was the last person to die from smallpox. She was a medical photographer and worked in the Anatomy Department of the University of Birmingham Medical School. Parker died after being accidentally exposed to a strain of smallpox virus that was grown in a research laboratory, on the floor below the Anatomy Department. The event led to the suicide of Professor Henry Bedson, the then Head of the Microbiology Department. An official government inquiry into Parker's death was led by Professor R. A. Shooter, whose report was debated in the British Parliament. Parker's death triggered radical changes in how dangerous pathogens were studied in the UK. The University was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive for breach of Health and Safety legislation but was cleared in Court. Fort Detrick Fort Detrick (/ˈdiːtrɪk/) is a U.S. Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center for the United States' biological weapons program (1943–69). Today, Fort Detrick's 1,200-acre (490 ha) campus supports a multi-governmental community that conducts biomedical research and development, medical materiel management, global medical communications and the study of foreign plant pathogens. It is home to the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), with its bio-defense agency, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). Camp Detrick (1943-56) On 9 March 1943, the government purchased 154 acres (62 ha) encompassing the original 92 acres (37 ha) and re-christened the facility "Camp Detrick". The same year saw the establishment of the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (USBWL), responsible for pioneering research into biocontainment, decontamination, gaseous sterilization, and agent purification. The first commander, Lt. Col. William S. Bacon, and his successor, Col. Martin B. Chittick, oversaw the initial $1.25 million renovation and construction of the base. World War II and BW research (1943-45) During World War II, Camp Detrick and the USBWL became the site of intensive biological warfare (BW) research using various pathogens. This research was originally overseen by pharmaceuticals executive George W. Merck and for many years was conducted by Ira L. Baldwin, professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin. Baldwin became the first scientific director of the labs. He chose Detrick Field for the site of this exhaustive research effort because of its balance between remoteness of location and proximity to Washington, DC — as well as to Edgewood Arsenal, the focal point of U.S. chemical warfare research. Buildings and other facilities left from the old airfield — including the large hangar — provided the nucleus of support needed for the startup. The 92 acres (37 ha) of Detrick Field were also surrounded by extensive farmlands that could be procured if and when the BW effort was expanded. The Army's Chemical Warfare Service was given responsibility and oversight for the effort that one officer described as "cloaked in the deepest wartime secrecy, matched only by ... the Manhattan Project for developing the Atomic Bomb". Three months after the start of construction, an additional $3 million was provided for five additional laboratories and a pilot plant. Lt. Col. Bacon was authorized 85 officers, 373 enlisted personnel, and 80 enlisted Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) members under two WAAC officers. At its peak strength in 1945, Camp Detrick had 240 officers and 1,530 enlisted personnel including WAACs. Post-war years (1946-55) The elaborate security precautions taken at Camp Detrick were so effective that it was not until January 1946, 4 months after VJ Day that the public learned of the war-time research in biological weapons. In 1952, the Army purchased over 500 acres (200 ha) more of land located between West 7th Street and Oppossumtown Pike to expand the permanent research and development facilities. Two workers at the base died from exposure to anthrax in the 1950s. (Another also died in 1964 from viral encephalitis.) There was a building on the base, Building 470 locally referred to as "Anthrax Tower". Building 470 was a pilot plant for testing optimal fermentor and bacterial purification technologies. The information gained in this pilot plant shaped the fermentor technology that was ultimately used by the pharmaceutical industry to revolutionize production of antibiotics and other drugs. Building 470 was torn down in 2003 without any adverse effects on the demolition workers or the environment. The facility acquired the nickname "Fort Doom" while offensive biological warfare research was undertaken there. 5,000 bombs containing anthrax spores were produced at the base during World War II. From 1945 to 1955 under Project Paperclip and its successors, the U.S. government recruited over 1,600 German and Austrian scientists and engineers in a variety of fields such as aircraft design, missile technology and biological warfare. Among the specialists in the latter field who ended up working in the U.S. were Walter Schreiber, Erich Traub and Kurt Blome, who had been involved with medical experiments on concentration camp inmates to test biological warfare agents. Since Britain, France and the Soviet Union were also engaged in recruiting these scientists, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) wished to deny their services to other powers, and therefore altered or concealed the records of their Nazi past and involvement in war crimes. Testing performed on SDAs The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on September 28, 1994, which stated that between 1940 and 1974, DOD and other national security agencies studied hundreds of thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances. The quote from the study: Many experiments that tested various biological agents on human subjects, referred to as Operation Whitecoat, were carried out at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in the 1950s. The human subjects originally consisted of volunteer enlisted men. However, after the enlisted men staged a sitdown strike to obtain more information about the dangers of the biological tests, Seventh-day Adventists [SDAs] who were conscientious objectors were recruited for the studies. The Army purchased an additional 147 acres (59 ha) in 1946 to increase the size of the original "Area A" as well as 398 acres (161 ha) located west of Area A, but not contiguous to it, to provide a test area known as Area B. In 1952, another 502.76 acres (203.5 ha) were purchased between West 7th Street and Oppossumtown Pike to expand the permanent research and development facilities. Jeffrey Alan Lockwood finds that the biological warfare program at Ft. Detrick began to research the use of insects as disease vectors going back to World War II and also employed German and Japanese scientists after the war who had experimented on human subjects among POWs and concentration camp inmates. Scientists used or attempted to use a wide variety of insects in their biowar plans, including fleas, ticks, ants, lice and mosquitoes—especially mosquitoes that carried the yellow fever virus. They also tested these in the United States. Lockwood thinks that it is very likely that the U.S. did use insects dropped from aircraft during the Korean War to spread diseases, and that the Chinese and North Koreans were not simply engaged in a propaganda campaign when they made these allegations, since the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense had approved their use in the fall of 1950 at the "earliest practicable time". At that time, it had five bio warfare agents ready for use, three of which were spread by insect vectors. By 1952, the U.S. had dropped insects carrying a wide variety of diseases over China and North Korea, including plague, anthrax, encephalitis, cholera, dysentery, neurotropic viruses, and plant and livestock pathogens. Fort Detrick (1956-Present) Cold War years (1956-89) Camp Detrick was designated a permanent installation for peacetime biological research and development shortly after World War II, but that status was not confirmed until 1956, when the post became Fort Detrick. Its mandate was to continue its previous mission of biomedical research and its role as the world’s leading research campus for biological agents requiring specialty containment. The most recent land acquisition for the Fort was a parcel of less than 3 acres (1.2 ha) along the Rosemont Avenue fence in 1962, completing the present 1,200 acres (490 ha). On Veterans Day, November 11, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon asked the Senate to ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons.