Janet Parker

The 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom claimed the life of Janet Parker (1938–1978), a British medical photographer, who became the last recorded person to die from smallpox. Her illness and death, which was connected to the deaths of two other people, led to an official government inquiry and triggered radical changes in how dangerous pathogens were studied in the UK. The government inquiry into Parker's death by R.A. Shooter found that while working at the University of Birmingham Medical School, she was accidentally exposed to a strain of smallpox virus that had been grown in a research laboratory on the floor below her workplace, and that the virus had most likely spread from that laboratory through ducting. Shooter's conclusion on how the virus had spread was challenged in court when the University of Birmingham was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive for breach of Health and Safety legislation.

Born in March 1938, Parker was the only daughter of Frederick and Hilda Witcomb (née Linscott). She was married to Joseph Parker, a Post Office engineer, and lived in Burford Park Road, Kings Norton, Birmingham, UK. After several years as a police photographer she joined the University of Birmingham Medical School, where she was employed as a medical photographer in the Anatomy Department. Janet Parker often worked in a darkroom above a laboratory where research on smallpox viruses was being conducted.

Smallpox is an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants named Variola major and Variola minor. The last naturally occurring infection was of Variola minor in Somalia in 1977. At the time of Janet Parker's death, the laboratory at University of Birmingham Medical School was conducting research on variants of smallpox virus known as "whitepox viruses", which were considered to be a threat to the success of the World Health Organisation's smallpox eradication programme.

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