Smallpox Vaccine In Students’ Eyes

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30265, 18 October 1963, Page 11

Smallpox Vaccine In Students’ Eyes

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, October 17. Two Sydney medical students will know by 9 o’clock tomorrow night whether they will go blind because their eyes were splashed with deadly smallpox vaccine in a laboratory accident.

The students are cousins— John Mutton aged 21 and Geoffrey Mutton, aged 19, both of Mosman. The accident occurred on Tuesday afternoon in a laboratory at the Medical School of the University of Sydney, when a container broke and spurted vaccine into their eyes.

A dramatic nation-wide search was launched for supplies of the antidote, deoxyuridiine. It was found seven hours later in the optometry laboratory at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital—only

100 yards from the scene of the accident. The students have had drops of the antidote in their eyes every hour for 48 hours.

If inflammation appears in their eyes tomorrow night they will know their sight is in danger. It is the first time deoxy unidine has been used in Australia as an antidote for smallpox vaccine. A year ago in Dunedin, two Otago University students were splashed with the smallpox virus. The sight of the

students —Colin Fitzpatrick and Miss Martan Kral —was saved by an antidote flown to New Zealand by a Royal Australian Air Force Canberra bomber.