Should remaining stockpiles of smallpox virus (variola) be destroyed?

Abstract

In 2011, the World Health Organization will recommend the fate of existing smallpox stockpiles, but circumstances have changed since the complete destruction of these cultures was first proposed. Recent studies suggest that variola and its experimental surrogate, vaccinia, have a remarkable ability to modify the human immune response through complex mechanisms that scientists are only just beginning to unravel. Further study that might require intact virus is essential. Moreover, modern science now has the capability to recreate smallpox or a smallpox-like organism in the laboratory in addition to the risk of nature re-creating it as it did once before. These factors strongly suggest that relegating smallpox to the autoclave of extinction would be ill advised.

Figure 1

One-year-old child on day 10 of a smallpox infection; his face is covered with painful lesions that are beginning to scab. Photograph courtesy of the Centers for Disease and Prevention Public Health Image Library; by Charles Farmer, Jr., 1962.

Figure 2

The no-longer-manufactured Wyeth vaccine that made possible the ultimate eradication of smallpox. Photograph courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Image Library; by James Gathany, 2002.