US Preserves Smallpox For Defense 248
lee1 writes "The US is preserving the last remaining known strains of smallpox in case they are needed to develop bio-warfare 'countermeasures' and as a hedge against possible outbreaks in a population with no natural immunity. 451 specimens are stored in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control, and 120 strains at the Russian Vector laboratory in Siberia. Meanwhile, the government has contracted to pay almost $3 billion to procure 14 million smallpox vaccination doses."
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Evils... (Score:4, Informative)
"...an outbreak that would start from where exactly?"
Maybe from here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2404051.stm [bbc.co.uk]
or here:
http://www.livescience.com/2403-climate-threat-thawing-tundra-releases-infected-corpses.html [livescience.com]
or even here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-12-26-smallpox-in-envelope_x.htm [usatoday.com]
Can we assume that the declared US and Russian stocks are the last viable samples anywhere on the planet..?
Re:Defense. (Score:4, Informative)
Smallpox can't live more then 48 hours on blankets.
That story is an often repeated myth but is virologically impossible.
Re:Science? THREE BILLION?? (Score:5, Informative)
http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20110516_8175.php [nti.org]
(I'm so advanced that I combined information from two sources to produce my summary.)
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, that's where the root of vaccinate comes from: latin for "cow".
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:long term security comes to mind (Score:4, Informative)
if you already have a functional vaccine, you can make copies of it. you don't need the original virus to do that. yes, some methods depend upon the original virus to do that, but not all methods
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Post-eradication [wikipedia.org]