Smallpox Virus Granted New Life
Smallpox will live to see another year.
Scientists in Atlanta and Moscow were scheduled to simultaneously destroy the world’s last remaining smallpox virus on New Year’s Eve. But the plan caused such a furor that history’s deadliest disease has won a reprieve.
“We don’t know just what the next step will be,” said Chuck Fallis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Smallpox in 1977 became the only disease ever eradicated. But scientists preserved some of the live virus to study, frozen in 600 test tubes in heavily guarded laboratories at the CDC in Atlanta and at Russia’s Institute for Viral Preparations.
In 1990, the World Health Organization asked the agencies to genetically map one strain of the virus and then, by flipping a switch to heat up the vials, destroy it all on Dec. 31, 1993.
The agencies agreed and have mapped two strains and are working on a third. But, because those maps did not yield enough information and because of a scientific outcry, the health organization and CDC agreed to delay smallpox’s execution date.
Many researchers opposed destroying an entire species, particularly one that might teach them how to fight other diseases.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
