Why Are the World's Scientists Continuing To Take Chances With Smallpox? 190
Lasrick writes: MIT's Jeanne Guillemin looks at the recent blunders with smallpox and H5N1 at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health to chronicle the fascinating history of smallpox eradication efforts and the attempts (thwarted by Western scientists) to destroy lab collections of the virus in order to make it truly extinct. "In 1986, with no new smallpox cases reported, the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO, resolved to destroy the strain collections and make the virus extinct. But there was resistance to this; American scientists in particular wanted to continue their research." Within a few years, secret biological warfare programs were discovered in Moscow and in Iraq, and a new flurry of defensive research was funded. Nevertheless, Guillemin and others believe that changes in research methods, which no longer require the use of live viruses, mean that stocks of the live smallpox virus can and should finally be destroyed.
The problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
...you can't possibly guarantee the destruction of every sample. We have lax tracking policies to thank for that. If we voluntarily destroy all our live samples, and some other nation doesn't, then you can bet your next paycheck someone will use that as a weapon against us and we'll be totally powerless to retaliate (or so goes the argument).
Re:The problem is... (Score:5, Informative)
No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon, the infection would inevitably spread back to the country which initiated it, and the idea that we would need samples of our own to retaliate is preposterous. For one thing, the entire premise of this scenario is that this other country has just given us all the samples that we could possibly want. For another, we still have tons and tons of missiles and bombs just sitting there, looking for a way to justify all of the money that we paid for them.
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I agree that GP's point is silly. Btt we probably would need smallpox and and smallpox research to construct a vaccine against a weaponized smallpox. I remember after 9/11 how scared everyone was about weaponized anthrax, but at least we understood most everything about how anthrax operates.
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Yes, I was being facetious... giving voice to the people who hang on to this crap for no good reason.
I'm mostly just astounded by the fact that our government... who knows EVERYTHING... doesn't know where they are keeping their deadly viruses... even if they aren't weaponized.
But hey... nobody ever accused the US government of being efficient.
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They don't know everything - they just know whether you prefer Burger King or McDonalds, and that you lied to your friends about how pretty your girlfriend is.
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Except that Smallpox is not a WMD, so "weaponized" smallpox is not a deadly disease if the person who contracted it receives very _basic_ medical treatment.
As an educated guess, the study into smallpox has been to figure out out why it is so contagious so that we can build our own great contagion. Merge the contagious properties of smallpox with the payload of Ebola and then you have a weapon.
Sad that we spend so much money learning how to kill each other instead of figuring out how to advance society, but
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Ebola is a bacteria. But AFAIK that's the basic idea, merge genes of different viruses to create better forms of smallpox. That's what the samples are for to be able to create vaccines.
Re:The problem is... (Score:4, Informative)
Ebola is a bacteria
Whaaaaaa? [wikipedia.org]
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OK I stand corrected. Thank you.
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Whoosh.
The most effective weapons don't kill, but make the opponent expend resources which might otherwise be used in the battle.
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As an educated guess, the study into smallpox has been to figure out out why it is so contagious so that we can build our own great contagion.
Or to figure out why it is so contagious, so we can better treat future diseases that uses the same methods. Without more information, it is hard to tell which end goal is more likely.
Cowpox is where "vaccine" comes from. (Score:2)
No, we wouldn't need our own live smallpox to construct a vaccine against a weaponized smallpox. The original vaccine was made from cowpox, and eventually the closely related vaccinia disease, and was much safer than smallpox-based inoculation which was the other prevention available at the time.
The only reason to keep the stuff around is to attack the Russians in case they attack us with their smallpox, and we can be better people than that. Time to destroy it, and convince Putin to destroy his stockpile
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So, the argument is why do we allow any scientist, country, or military to keep live samples?
Who is this we?
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The SyFy version involves a pro wrestler playing the technician. Oh, and the plucky daughter just found out she's pregnant.
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I'm saying use it for vaccines against weapons not MAD.
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"If we voluntarily destroy all our samples, and some other nation doesn't, then there will be that much less smallpox. This is a valuable goal in itself,"
Do you support unilateral disarmament too?
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Smallpox isn't a weapon. Smallpox is a disease. Should someone be stupid enough to re-introduce it to the world, it will circle back and hit them, too. So the only thing destroying live smallpox samples does is reduce the chances of a catastrophic screw-up.
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"Smallpox isn't a weapon."
We're not talking taxonomy, we're talking possible utility.
"So the only thing destroying live smallpox samples does is reduce the chances of a catastrophic screw-up."
No, it also reduces the ability of labs to experiment on & learn from the thing.
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What could possibly be gained from further experimentation at this point? We already know how to isolate it and how to produce vaccines for it. And for gene therapy, there are lots of other, less dangerous viruses that can be used as vectors for delivering genetic material. It seems that keeping anything more than the bare minimum amount of material needed to produce vaccines would fall pretty far towards the risk end of the risk-reward curve.
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"What could possibly be gained from further experimentation at this point?"
A rhetorical assertion of a negative is not very convincing.
Re:The problem is... (Score:4, Informative)
In theory, you can always learn more by continuing to study something. In practice, though, modern medicine has a pretty complete knowledge of smallpox. Humans have been studying the disease since before anyone even knew what a virus was. There's evidence that the Chinese were inoculating people for smallpox over a thousand years ago. And the first practical, widespread form of that vaccine dates back to the late 1700s. This was literally the very first virus ever treated with a vaccine. It's well-trodden ground, research-wise.
The problem is, this virus is highly contagious and relatively dangerous compared with other viruses. For variola major, the case fatality rate is typically 30–60%, which puts it among the worst communicable diseases out there, approaching the fatality rate of ebola, and far more contagious. With nearly a two-week average incubation period (and up to 17 days in the worst case), one minor screw-up could easily cause a very serious pandemic before enough vaccines could be produced and distributed.
So basically, you have to weigh the odds of an accidental release (which, with recent revelations about this stuff getting lost for decades, then turning up by accident, seems not so improbable) against the relatively small chance of learning anything new from it that can't also be learned from cowpox or other similar viruses. On the risk-reward curve, this seems to be so far towards the "pure risk" end that any reward would border on undeniable proof of divine intervention, which means the speculated rewards would have to be pretty darn amazing for it to be worth the risk.
Re:The problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon, the infection would inevitably spread back to the country which initiated it, and the idea that we would need samples of our own to retaliate is preposterous.
Yes, the point is that it's like MAD and other weapons policies: you don't want to put down your gun (or shield, for that matter) while the other guy is still holding on to his. Despite what many people say, that is completely sane and rational behavior.
The thing OP kind of sidesteps is that while Western countries countries resisted complete eradication, they did so openly. Only later it was discovered that other countries (most of which were supposedly in favor of the eradication program) kept their own samples and research anyway. Which is a perfect illustration of why the West wanted to hang on to theirs, too.
It's easy enough to call such policies insane, but nobody wants to be the only "sane" person in the room while all the nutjobs still have their weapons. That kind of disproves it would a sane approach, yes?
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Having live samples available is also not needed or useful for producing the vaccine. The only argument that I've heard in favo
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Large numbers of people in the US were vaccinated for smallpox in the 60's; pretty much everyone over 50 or so.
Not so now or anywhere else, either. :)
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The point that I was trying to make is that comparing smallpox to a gun, or even a nuclear weapon, isn't accurate. Using smallpox as a weapon is MAD even if you're the only one using it.
I understood your point. I was making a different one.
Repeat: you don't want to be the only sane person in a room full of nutjobs with insane weapons. That would also be insane.
Having live samples available is also not needed or useful for producing the vaccine.
I disagree completely. You can't test immunity if you don't have something to be immune against. Generally speaking, dead-virus vaccines tend to be less effective than live-virus vaccines, and you can't create more dead virus unless you have live virus to make it from.
Research doesn't take place in a vacuum. But before you jump
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Smallpox is not a MAD weapon like nuclear weapons, that analogy does not work.
Someone launches smallpox at you, what are you going to do, launch some kind of herpes at them?
Also, US has thousands of nuclear weapons, so the MAD argument again doesn't work because the US have far superior weapon at their disposal.
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MAD doesn't work for self-replicating things like bioweapons. If you put your gun or nuke down, and the other guy still has his and decides to shoot at you, you're screwed.
OTOH, if you destroy your smallpox virus samples, and the other guy still has his and decides to use it on you, well he's just given you a smallpox sample you
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You seem to have completely ignored the post you replied to, it's not like MAD because MAD stands for Mutually Assured Destruction. Smallpox is not MAD it is MAILS (Mutually Assured Itchy Little Spots) and as such is a stupid crap weapon. Smallpox inoculation was used by the Chinese over 400 years ago.
As the parent mentioned, you don't need to keep stock because if your enemy has lost their marbles and launched itchy at you then you have a sample of it. And if you'd read the summary you'd know that you don'
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No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon, the infection would inevitably spread back to the country which initiated it
Yes, because there aren't any insane people around who carry a grudge against us.
Re:The problem is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Still doesn't justify keeping it around. We *have* a vaccine. We also have nukes, so retaliation by smallpox isn't necessary.
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It depends. Smallpox is not the best example, but the ideal virus to use as a biological weapon is a virus with long, mostly asymptomatic infectious phase and a high mortality rate. A virus with those characteristics could infect a large portion of the population before detection and basically wipe it out before effective measures can be taken (typically the first to fall to the infection are the first responders, nurses and MDs and chances are that by the time of the risk is apparent you won't have any eff
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[...] the ideal virus to use as a biological weapon is a virus with long, mostly asymptomatic infectious phase and a high mortality rate.
No, the ideal biological weapon does not spread from person to person. Any disease that does is guaranteed to infect your own population as well; it is basically a gun you can't aim, or a doomsday device (though not literally, it doesn't kill everybody).
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No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon
There's no shortage of people who are literally insane in politics. Consider what happens if the "Caliphate" gets their hands on some samples.
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There's no shortage of people who are literally insane in politics.
Indeed. 1 out of 4 people has a diagnosable mental illness.
--NIMH
Consider what happens if the "Caliphate" gets their hands on some samples.
You mean
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You mean the theocrats that are always talking about bringing the US back to its "christian" roots?
These guys don't need smallpox, because they're doing just fine with plain old JDAMs and Tomahawks.
OTOH, when you're equally insane but don't have billions of dollars to piss off on making things go boom, you might start considering extreme but cheap options.
Re:The problem is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: The problem is... (Score:2)
But as it can be synthesised, that refutes the argument that "if we destroyed it, it would be gone forever"
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But as it can be synthesised, that refutes the argument that "if we destroyed it, it would be gone forever"
Yes. While destroying existing stocks would not eradicate the virus forever, it would still help minimize the risks of accidental releases.
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did you not even read the summary let alone the article? we don't need LIVE small pox virus anymore to produce vaccines or perform research. Should someone use it as a weapon then obviously we would have an abundant supply of the live virus anyway.
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Of course not. It'll be bundled with a "free" cell phone for underdeveloped nations...or for populated nations. It'll be produced by the US and built in China, and nobody will have any idea where along the chain they got infected...
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We made everything else extinct (Score:3)
We should give some lifeform a break
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Read The Demon in the Freezer (Score:3)
Short answer, smallpox control has never really been that good. Also an answer - each government wants to keep the only supply as a potential weapon.
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Potential defenses. It would be a stupid, horrible, and backfire in a lot of ways for a government to use it as a weapon. SOmething government have known since WWI
Globally based theologically motivate nut jobs on the other hand, they won't care cause..'god'.
What a stupid question (Score:5, Interesting)
"Why are scientists continuing to take chances with uranium?"
"Why are scientists continuing to take chances with high voltage?"
"Why are scientists continuing to take chances with dimethyl mercury?"
Because science.
Also, there's no reason to obsess over the presence of a few virus particles in a jar on a shelf somewhere, if we have the source code in the form of its gene sequence. In that case we'll be able to resynthesize the virus at our leisure, at some point in the not-too-distant future.
And if we don't already have the gene sequence in hand, well, that's a problem in itself.
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Well, we wold need the virus for experimentation.
Of course if we can do it at leisure, then so can everyone else.
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i'd say yes, but i'd hesitate still.
epigenetic mechanisms are still being explored, and non-nucleotide based heredity like matrilineal passing of mitochondria. Remaking a virus from it's sequence seems like it should be really easy, and if there's any organism/automata that will be made first, it'll be a virus... but even still, there might be some transient quality that is... stored in ram and not in persistent memory that once lost is truly lost.
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again, something might be lost in the reproduction. we don't know enough about the transient interactions to know if anything important is.
Re:What a stupid question (Score:4, Funny)
What do you think the odds are that you could download the smallpox genome off The Pirate Bay or some TOR site?
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Benefits (Score:2, Insightful)
They take chances with it because the benefits outweighs the risks.
How about we focus on those things that actually gets people hurt, like banksters taking chances with the economy and politicians using the army to play chicken-race. You know, the stuff that actually gets innocent people killed.
In the case of smallpox what would happen is that the scientist screwing up might get infected and placed in quarantine. Even in the case of an actual smallpox outbreak it can be contained again with proper vaccinati
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Game theory (Score:2)
I'll accept that having poorly tracked, poorly secured, poorly vetted, poorly restricted, and/or poorly located samples keeps them from being a benign non-factor as above.
I don't accept that throwing them away (the ones we know about) is the only counter. Hell, we can spare a few grams of payload an
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I don't accept that throwing them away (the ones we know about) is the only counter. Hell, we can spare a few grams of payload and put one in space.
And wind up with *super*smallpox? Good fucking plan, Einstein!
Actually, good fucking plan. Let's do it.
Beyond human efforts. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Beyond human efforts. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702145610.htm
"In a mass grave in a remote Inuit village near the town of Brevig Mission, a large Inuit woman lay buried under more than six feet of ice and dirt for more than 75 years. The permafrost plus the woman's ample fat stores kept the virus in her lungs so well preserved that when a team of scientists exhumed her body in the late 1990s, they could recover enough viral RNA to sequence the 1918 strain in its entirety. This remarkable good fortune enabled these scientists to open a window onto a past pandemic--and perhaps gain a foothold for preventing a future one."
problem? (Score:2)
How problematic is a 60yr old vial of likely dead virus anyway?
According to the agency, the virus was freeze dried and sealed in melted glass and the samples have been in storage since the 1950s.
And they were sealed in melted glass? Come on...
Sounds like a BS "Panic! Your life is in danger!" story to distract us from the worlds real problems.
It's a great weapon. (Score:2)
Honestly, what a fantastic way of completely screwing your enemy. smallpox bombs are a fantastic weapon that will make the people turn on their local government and military as soon as their children start dying.
Biological and Chemical warfare is worse than nuclear warfare, and it's heinous to it's core.
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Let us know when you have a virus that obeys border laws.
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all, just shoot any potential carriers.
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Conventional weapons also don't know when treaties have been signed: land mines, cluster bombs...
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He was being sarcastic
Smallpox: The Movie (Score:2)
Sounds like a script from a movie...
Earth 2110 A mutated smallpox pandemic is sweeping the world.
Researchers desperately need an original sample from which to make an vaccine.
Man foolishly destroyed all samples back in the dark years of 2014.
Now a ragtag group of adventurers attempt to find the last remaining sample, the world depends on it!
I'd keep it on file (Score:3)
I'd avoid weaponizing it. I think the science labs that weaponize viruses on the argument that they need to know how to counter weaponized viruses is a little bunk. But I do think the viruses should be kept on file. Keep them in deep dark vaults... but keep them. I don't know if we'll ever need them for some reason but if we do they're there.
As to the worry that scientists might misuse them. I didn't say I'd let the scientists play with them. Just keep them. Seal them away somewhere and require a public hearing to release them to any lab.
Possibly include a 24 hour armed guard to accompany the virus if its released to a lab. The expense of such a guard should discourage casual research.
theory != practice (Score:2)
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
If you want to know that you can protect against/treat smallpox virus, even if mutated (un)naturally, you have to have some with which to work.
The question is fundamentally nonsense.
If (insert item here) is outlawed . . . (Score:2)
What about alien attacks? (Score:2)
What if it turns out that the disease that killed all the Martians when they attacked back in 1938 was smallpox, and what if that was the ONLY disease they were susceptible to?
Wouldn't we feel like dummies if we destroyed all our
supplies and they attacked again?
FYI, smallpox is not needed to make vaccine (Score:2)
For those who don't already know, the smallpox vaccine is the not made from smallpox.
It was originally made from a virus commonly known as "cowpox", although they may have used the horse version for development.
smallpox virus is "variola"
the vaccinating (cowpox) virus is "vaccinia"
The point is, we don't need smallpox to make more vaccine and would not do that anyway.
The CDC has enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the USA for smallpox, should it come to that.
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As I mentioned above, almost everyone over 50 in the US was vaccinated in the 60's.
We lined up in school, lol.
I still have my scar. :)
Aliens (Score:2)
This just makes me think of the Alien's movie, where The Company(tm) wants to harvest, study and learn from the Xenomorphs, even after being fully aware at how horribly dangerous they were.
Ice-9 (Score:2)
Why are Librarians taking chances with Mein Kampf? (Score:2)
It is stupid to think destroying lab stocks removes the 'problem'.
The 'problem' is not these stocks but undiscovered natural reservoirs of diseases.
Destroying the stock reduces capability of the biomedical community to respond to fresh out breaks.
Destroying it all is a bad idea (Score:2)
Is making any species extinct a good idea? If so, why?
I mean, if it had been destroyed in '86, we'd never have sequenced it. What more info can we get from it 10 or 20 years from now?
Also, this whole "debacle" is massively overblown. Note that a) the amules were all still securely sealed, and in appropriate storage... it's just that they should have been known, and put in recorded storage.
For that matter, where's whatever you were looking for at home? Or when was the last time your boss asked you to find so
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Plus, having some in stock allows the the create of a vaccine if by some chance it ever emerges again.
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If it emerges again t won't be exactly the same. Best to be prepared ahead of time instead of spending months, or years after it emerges trying to figure it out.
. Meaning we will \have learned more techniques to help us respond to different vectors, not that it will reemerge exactly like something we have in a lab.
plus, there is still a lot to learn fro it that applies to may viruses.
Re:Better safe than sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's not exactly the same then what we've got wouldn't be very useful.
I'm with the "destroy it" crowd. If someone attacks us with smallpox, nuke the fuck out of them.
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Re: Better safe than sorry (Score:4, Funny)
And they keep coming out with new albums.
Re:Better safe than sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
Destroying smallpox samples doesn't magically erase the disease from existence.
Correct.
In erases it from existence by non-magic, real, tangible methods (e.g. destroying every last living member of the species).
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we've thought extinct multiple species before... like macroscopic seeable species... and then been really surprised when a member or two of said species fell out of a bush in front of a cameraman... don't be naive.
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Sure, there's a long, long list of Lazarus species, once thought dead but found alive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
And we might clone back an Ibex someday again...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
But the list of extinct species vastly outnumbers the Lazarus list, and includes plenty that we're directly responsible for with our own hands.
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yeah, we know, things die real good around us humans for some reason.
the point was, we suck at knowing things, even when those things are big enough for us to see.
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we suck at knowing things, even when those things are big enough for us to see
Welcome to the real world where imperfect knowledge has been enshrined in a very useful philosophy we call "Science".
Science is just highly refined common sense. The fact that the biblical plague of smallpox has not been seen in the wild for decades convincingly demonstrates science knows enough to control it, what more do you need to know? Sure it may pop up somewhere after all these years, but even if that very unlikely* event was to occur we have already demonstrated we know how to deal with it and st
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:) the eradication of smallpox is perhaps the shining pinnacle of human achievement... and cooperation.
smallpox is easy to identify, much easier to control than polio. but that doesn't mean it's easy or uncostly. It took a full on decade with everybody involved, literally everybody. In the midst of the cold war.
Again, we're discovering species every day, and sometimes we've mislabelled species extinct. And apparently we know less about the ocean depths than the moon's surface... so you know, yes we suck
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True, but macroscopic species can survive on their own. Viruses need to infect hosts to spread, and many viruses don't remain viable for long outside of a host. From what I can find, it seems like smallpox is such a virus.
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:) found some preserved in scabs stuck in the pages of an old book.
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Well, go get your Nobel prize in epidemiology, since the world's last recorded case of smallpox was in 1978.
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... fire is a damn nice thing to have. cooking is good, boiling is good. combustion is good. the steam engine is good. coal is good. petrol is good... fire is life.
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No, fire bad. Bread, gooood.
Cite [jt.org]
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Smallpox is a terrible disease for sure, but is not a good candidate for biological warfare. The reason why scientists keep it alive has nothing to do with war for a change; they keep it alive because if was a very successful virus and understanding the reasons of said success may be beneficial in the future.
Sure, we can play safe and kill it based on flawed emotional responses but first, there is no guarantee that destroying the known samples will kill every existing reservoir, second: not having a sample
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Re: Same reason we keep developing nuclear weapon (Score:4, Funny)
Why⦠what a fascinating idea. To hold in my hand that capsule⦠to know that life and death on such a level was my choice. Such power would set me up above the gods!
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Very powerful. And smart enough to realize that I am probably not holding the only remaining vial. That is exactly why the American researchers were reluctant to destroy their samples. They were soon proven wise when it turned up in Russia and Iraq.
ahhh Hans, wry are arways you bleaking my barrs??! (Score:2)
ahhh, nostalgia! [wikipedia.org]