Smallpox - To be, or not to be?

[Loppan Torkel]

They're extinct in the wild, but in two laboratories - in US and in Russia - it's kept in captivity.

WHO is now to decide the future of the smallpox virus - destroy the remaining viruses or let them continue to exist?

A U.S. scientist has advised against eliminating the world's last known stocks of smallpox, just weeks before nations are set to reconsider destruction.

"The research agenda with live [smallpox] virus is not yet finished," Inger Damon, who oversees studies of the agent at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said in a newly published article co-authored with two other scientists.

.....


Russia and the United States successfully pushed in 2011 to delay any consideration of a destruction deadline until this year. That extended a series of postponements ever since a WHO advisory committee in 1990 recommended destroying the remaining virus.

Advisers to the global health agency reached general agreement in September that live virus stocks "need no longer be retained for further essential research." Its conclusions were echoed two months later by an independent panel of experts convened to examine recent developments in smallpox studies.

Speaking to GSN on Tuesday, epidemiologist Donald Henderson argued in favor of destroying the remaining virus stocks. He recommended focusing on ensuring adequate international supplies of older, less expensive vaccine instead of pursuing further research with live virus.

"We've had a couple of stabs at trying to develop these products as called for by the [United States] way back when, and it hasn't worked," said Henderson, who headed the World Health Organization's global smallpox eradication program in the 1960s and 1970s.

"If it comes to a majority vote in the World Health Assembly, which it's almost come to several times, I think the overwhelming desire will be to destroy," Henderson said.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/key-u-s-scientist-pushes-to-hang-onto-last-remaining-smallpox-virus-20140502

 

[classical_hero]

Kill it with fire.

Link to video.

 

[Perfection]

It saddens me that we need to consider such a thing.

 

[Cutlass]

The only justification for keeping them would be to insure the ability to create a vaccine in the future should it ever be discovered that it wasn't as extinct as we think it is.

 

[Perfection]

I dunno, I could imagine them being useful for other purposes. Viruses can be used in medicine too.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Viruses cannot be killed because they are not alive. I do not usually care about such semantics however in this case the distinction is important so as to head bleeding hearts who think no living thing should be driven to extinction.

It is a bit of genetic code that does horrible things, nothing more.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

That's what the god-like aliens might say when they see us.

 

[Perfection]

Viruses are not just bits of DNA, they're powerful replicating machines. By destroying this virus, we set ourselves back in harnessing this power, both for good and evil purposes

 

[madviking]

keep them alive. or at least keep them cryogenically frozen somewhere safe.

 

[Tee Kay]

keep them alive. or at least keep them cryogenically frozen somewhere safe.

Ie neither in America or Russia.

 

[kramerfan86]

Keep it but in a secure neutral country like Switzerland.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Keep it alive. There are endless research possibilities, some we probably don't even know about yet.

Killing it only makes it so we can't learn anymore about it in a controlled environment. Also backup, as Cutlass said.

 

[Kozmos]

Keep it in SPAAAAACEEE.

 

[Ghpstage]

It seems unlikely to me that smallpox DNA has any value that couldn't be obtained from other, safer sources, without good reason to believe otherwise its probably best to finish it off....

As a back up against reincarnation, I don't know. Depends on how effective the classical cowpox, or later vaccinia based vaccines would be, and how likely those smallpox samples would be useful in creating a vaccine to something thats most likely to have mutated considerably.

 

[CavLancer]

I'm not going to miss this virus. Its undead so don't kill it. Demote it to deaddead.

 

[madviking]

Ie neither in America or Russia.

keep it right next to that giant seed vault in svalbard.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Only if they've got separate freezers

 

[ParkCungHee]

The only justification for keeping them would be to insure the ability to create a vaccine in the future should it ever be discovered that it wasn't as extinct as we think it is.

Or the existence/emergence of a virus with similar features.

 

[Gary Childress]

I would normally say destroy them, don't give them an opportunity to someday mutate into something worse, don't give anyone the opportunity to use them in any sort of biological warfare experiments, don't give them the opportunity to someday fall into the wrong hands, for example terrorists or something. Remember what happened after the political disaster in the dissolution of the Soviet Union there was concern over what was going to happen to their nuclear stockpiles and biological warfare facilities in the climate of virtual chaos that directly followed.

On the other hand a good point has been made that who knows if they would be needed in the future to create a vaccine against a similar virus or else somehow lend themselves to some sort of beneficial study of human biology or something which we have yet to for see.

Either way, keeping them or destroying them, there is the possibility we will someday look back on our choice with profound regret. OR maybe we won't.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

I dunno, I could imagine them being useful for other purposes. Viruses can be used in medicine too.

They can be, but probably in some transgenic form... since that virulence is usually of little use outside of developing biological weapons.