Read Online 100 Places You Will Never Visit by Daniel Smith - Free Book Online
Authors: Daniel Smith
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its work broadened, so that today it employs some 15,000 people and has an annual budget of several billion dollars.
SWATTING BUGS The headquarters of the CDC on Clifton Road in Druid Hills, Georgia, as seen from Emory University. The CDC purchased the land for this site from the University in 1947 for a nominal payment of US$10.
The CDC also happens to be home to one of a small number of Biosafety Level 4 laboratories, a designation that reflects stringent precautions for storing certain harmful biological agents. It is because of these exacting safety and security standards that it is allowed to keep a stock of smallpox virus. Only a handful of other viruses—including Ebola and the Marburg virus—are subject to such high-level protective measures.
Smallpox accounted for the death of millions across the globe over many centuries, and seemed beyond control until the English physician Edward Jenner discovered the first ground-breaking vaccine in 1796. In 1980, after a global vaccination program running for several decades, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that smallpox had become the first disease to be completely eradicated from the world. The last person to naturally contract it (as opposed to being infected in a laboratory accident) was an unvaccinated Somali hospital worker.
MICROSCOPIC KILLERS Scientists at the CDC undertake investigations into some of the deadliest viral and biological threats known to humanity. Pictured here are electron micrographs of tissue affected by, from left to right, Legionella, Anthrax and Ebola.
A scheme was set up whereby existing smallpox stores were to be surrendered and destroyed. However, the United States and the then Soviet Union argued that they should be allowed to keep small stocks in high-security environments so that further research work might be undertaken. CDC was to be one of these secure environments and the VECTOR State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia, the other.
CDC is home to around 450 samples (some of which have reportedly been given nicknames depending upon their origins—for the record, these include “Harvey,” from a British patient who contracted the bug in Gibraltar, “Yamamoto” from Japan and “Garcia” from South America). Stored in a chained and padlocked freezer in a high-security building, no more than ten scientists have access to the samples. On the rare occasions when they are accessed, staff must wear protective suits and breathing apparatus.
SUITED UP Two CDC laboratory workers carrying out research in one of the facility’s top-security Biosafety Level 4 labs. The scientists’ air supply comes from overhead lines that plug directly into their protective suits. A complex airflow system ensures pathogens do not escape from the experimental area.
The WHO regularly reviews whether the remaining samples should be destroyed, and have so far decided against it. While those in favor of getting rid of the stockpiles suggest that a renewed outbreak is only possible while the virus is preserved, advocates of retention argue that it is impossible to know whether these really are the only reserves left on the planet. While it is hoped that no country surreptitiously retained a small sample when the global stocks were disposed of in the 1980s, we cannot know for certain. Furthermore, the population born since the 1980 WHO announcement has gone unvaccinated, while evidence suggests even those who have been vaccinated can expect only a decade of immunity. In an age when bioterrorism is a perpetual threat, the supporters of retention contend that it would be madness to destroy our best hope of responding to a new outbreak.
21 Iron Mountain, Boyers
LOCATION Boyers, Pennsylvania, USA
NEAREST POPULATION HUB Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
SECRECY OVERVIEW High-security location: a secure storage facility built into a disused mine.
Iron Mountain Incorporated is one of the world’s leading data management
SWATTING BUGS The headquarters of the CDC on Clifton Road in Druid Hills, Georgia, as seen from Emory University. The CDC purchased the land for this site from the University in 1947 for a nominal payment of US$10.
The CDC also happens to be home to one of a small number of Biosafety Level 4 laboratories, a designation that reflects stringent precautions for storing certain harmful biological agents. It is because of these exacting safety and security standards that it is allowed to keep a stock of smallpox virus. Only a handful of other viruses—including Ebola and the Marburg virus—are subject to such high-level protective measures.
Smallpox accounted for the death of millions across the globe over many centuries, and seemed beyond control until the English physician Edward Jenner discovered the first ground-breaking vaccine in 1796. In 1980, after a global vaccination program running for several decades, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that smallpox had become the first disease to be completely eradicated from the world. The last person to naturally contract it (as opposed to being infected in a laboratory accident) was an unvaccinated Somali hospital worker.
MICROSCOPIC KILLERS Scientists at the CDC undertake investigations into some of the deadliest viral and biological threats known to humanity. Pictured here are electron micrographs of tissue affected by, from left to right, Legionella, Anthrax and Ebola.
A scheme was set up whereby existing smallpox stores were to be surrendered and destroyed. However, the United States and the then Soviet Union argued that they should be allowed to keep small stocks in high-security environments so that further research work might be undertaken. CDC was to be one of these secure environments and the VECTOR State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia, the other.
CDC is home to around 450 samples (some of which have reportedly been given nicknames depending upon their origins—for the record, these include “Harvey,” from a British patient who contracted the bug in Gibraltar, “Yamamoto” from Japan and “Garcia” from South America). Stored in a chained and padlocked freezer in a high-security building, no more than ten scientists have access to the samples. On the rare occasions when they are accessed, staff must wear protective suits and breathing apparatus.
SUITED UP Two CDC laboratory workers carrying out research in one of the facility’s top-security Biosafety Level 4 labs. The scientists’ air supply comes from overhead lines that plug directly into their protective suits. A complex airflow system ensures pathogens do not escape from the experimental area.
The WHO regularly reviews whether the remaining samples should be destroyed, and have so far decided against it. While those in favor of getting rid of the stockpiles suggest that a renewed outbreak is only possible while the virus is preserved, advocates of retention argue that it is impossible to know whether these really are the only reserves left on the planet. While it is hoped that no country surreptitiously retained a small sample when the global stocks were disposed of in the 1980s, we cannot know for certain. Furthermore, the population born since the 1980 WHO announcement has gone unvaccinated, while evidence suggests even those who have been vaccinated can expect only a decade of immunity. In an age when bioterrorism is a perpetual threat, the supporters of retention contend that it would be madness to destroy our best hope of responding to a new outbreak.
21 Iron Mountain, Boyers
LOCATION Boyers, Pennsylvania, USA
NEAREST POPULATION HUB Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
SECRECY OVERVIEW High-security location: a secure storage facility built into a disused mine.
Iron Mountain Incorporated is one of the world’s leading data management
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