SmallpoxSmallpox Was Declared Eradicated 40 Years Ago This Month, but Worries Remain

Forty years ago – more precisely, on 9 December 1979 – the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that smallpox had been confirmed as eradicated. A few months later, the World Health Assembly (WHA) officially declared that “the world and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox.”

Yet, Newsweek reports, four decades later, two nations — the United States and the Russian Federation — keep stockpiles of the variola virus which causes smallpox.

Smallpox is an infectious and disfiguring viral disease which has been the scourge of different societies for thousands of years.Ssmallpox is estimated to have killed as many as 300 million people in the twentieth century alone.Smallpox “eradication is, arguably, one of the greatest achievements of our species and the greatest achievement of modern medicine,” Pandora Report writes.

The existing smallpox specimens are kept under tight security at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) laboratory in Atlanta, and at Russia’s State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology (Vector) in Novosibirsk, in Siberia. The two countries say that their decision to keep small stores of the virus is needed in order to complete of five important research goals: (1) More research in preparation for the disease reemerging; (2) Vaccine improvement; (3) Development of new treatments; (4) Development of antivirals; and (5) Improvements in diagnostics methods.

WHO guidance notes that the stocks will be maintained until these goals are met, but there is disagreement among scientists about how far we have advanced toward meeting each of the five goals. Last year, for example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new drug for smallpox treatment; but WHO’s Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research concluded that another antiviral treatment is needed.

Newsweek notes that scientists and security experts raise questions about maintaining these stockpiles. Amesh A. Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Newsweek that there is always a possibility of the virus being released by accident or on purpose. As people are no longer vaccinated against smallpox, this could potentially spark a large and lethal epidemic or pandemic.

Adalja argues that the time has come to get rid of smallpox once and for all. “The virus should be destroyed,” he said. “As time passes, the initial reason for keeping viable virus has less support.”

“In 2019, we now have achieved most of those milestones so it has become increasingly unnecessary to keep viable virus, especially since its genetic sequence is known and the virus could be recreated if needed,” he told Newsweek.

“Keeping the viable stocks and working with them could lead to laboratory accidents with resultant infection and spread. The stocks could also be misused or fall into the wrong hands and be used nefariously,” Adalja said.

David Relman, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, told Newsweek that the stocks should be maintained in order to test the efficacy of new vaccines and drugs – especially in light of another danger: Relman said he is “much more worried about the re-synthesis of smallpox from chemicals in the library and re-booting the virus with methods that have now been published.” If science-capable terrorists or a mad scientist do re-synthesize the smallpox virus, having available stocks of the virus will allow a quicker response to the new threat.

Grant McFadden, director of the Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines, and Virotherapy at Arizona State University, captures the ambivalence many scientists have when asked to opine about whether the stockpiles should be retained or destroyed: “A great deal has been achieved on the original research goals, but the argument that more remains to be done is hard to refute…It is important to have these debates about whether mankind should deliberately eliminate feared pathogens, or study them.”