Public healthSmallpox remains a large threat and issue of contention

Published 20 January 2011

Smallpox has been estimated to have taken the lives of an estimated 300-500 million people during the twentieth century; the last two known remaining locations of the virus which triggers the disease are the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, and the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR) near Novosibirsk in Russia; there is an intense debate among scientists about whether these last remaining samples should be destroyed; proponents of destruction say the remaining cultures may one day be used as bioweapons, while opponents of destruction say that destroying the cultures would not make any difference because terrorists could develop synthetic smallpox virus to use as weapon

Victim of a disease long thought eradicated // Source: dcscience.net

Since 2001 the United States has spent $1.8 billion on smallpox countermeasures and has stockpiled more than 300 million doses. Despite these preparations, international efforts to destroy the last known caches of smallpox will be met with resistance by the United States and Russia, who contend that the deadly and infectious disease must be preserved for the sake of further research.

Transmittable by air, bodily fluids, or the contaminated objects of an infected person, the disease has been believed to have emerged in human populations about 10,000 B.C., and has been estimated to have taken the lives of 300-500 million. In 1796 a young doctor by the name of Edward Jenner inoculated a boy with the discharge of a cowpox pustule — thus creating the world’s first vaccine for smallpox that would effectively vaccinate approximately 100,000 people by 1800.

Following the Second World War, the World Health Organization (WHO) set out to destroy the disease, since outbreaks still regularly occurred in Africa and India. After a large eradication effort that ended in 1980, three repositories of the virus remained, one of them being the University of Birmingham where a medical photographer accidentally caught the disease and caused the closing of the medical school. According to a report by the Telegraph, the last two known remaining locations of the virus which triggers the disease are the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, which has 451 samples stored in liquid nitrogen, and 120 samples at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR) near Novosibirsk in Russia.

In a report by the Wall Street Journal, U.S. officials claimed that the virus needs to be held as a countermeasure against any bioterror attack. Kalyan Banerjee, a virologist from India and former member of a WHO advisory committee on smallpox research, said that the U.S. may be holding onto the virus with the “same logic by which the superpowers continue the possession of the nuclear weapons; they wish to hold on to the smallpox virus as a super bio-weapon.”

The argument to destroy the disease has been on-going for close to two decades, with proponents of the measure claiming that the threat of an altered or synthetic virus is plenty of reason to get rid of remaining strains, whereas others believe it will not make a difference either way since the virus could eventually be synthesized in a lab.

Homeland Security NewsWire spoke with Kavita Berger, Ph.D., associate program director at the center for science, technology, and security policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and asked whether laboratories could map out the virus and recreate it if needed and she responded: “Scientifically, synthesizing smallpox from a DNA sequence is very difficult to do, and the end product (that is, the viral particles) may not infect cells and cause disease in the same way as the existing smallpox samples.”

Officials from the WHO met Wednesday,19 January 2011, to propose the eradication of samples but the decision will be considered later on in the year according to Daniel Epstein, information officer in Washington, D.C. for the WHO, who told the NewsWire: “The decision on destruction of smallpox will be considered by the world health assembly in May. I think the executive board of the world health assembly is taking a look at the topic and making recommendations at this time.”