Comments on: Is It Time to Destroy the Last Smallpox Stores?

By: Silverhair

Silverhair — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:43:10 +0000

This sort of thing really used to boggle my mind.

First they claim to have eradicated something.
Then they pat themselves on the back and get complacent.
Then it pops up again years later, “New and improved!” (nastier and drug resistant, for those of you who may have missed the sarcasm).

Have we learned nothing? WE CAN’T “ERADICATE” ANYTHING!
And I am not referring to the fact that matter cannot be destroyed, I am referring to the fact that whatever it is that they claim to have destroyed always manages to live on somewhere, in some form or another.

Every time I hear this claim, I always want to reach out, grab them by the scruff of the neck and give them a shake!

I am going to get down from my soapbox now.
Thank you.

By: Naveed

Naveed — Sat, 21 May 2011 17:30:28 +0000

Can the US be sure the Russians would actually destroy their stock? Can the Russians be sure the US would actually destroy theirs? I think for this reason both countries will keep their stocks. Cold War tensions seem to still exist and it could be a powerful and devastating weapon if only one country had a stock.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 21 May 2011 03:18:46 +0000

Maybe we shouldn’t let people who have no clue about viral disease prevention, biological warfare, and genetics, like the people responding to this article, make decisions involving those things.

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:17:19 +0000

I vote in favor of keeping it. As a biologist, I know that it is almost impossible for us to make an effective vaccine without the actual virus. In the very small chance that someone does get a hold of the virus and uses it for malicious purposes, we will need to real thing to make an effective vaccine. I feel safer knowing that my government has this deadly virus in store, and is capable of making a vaccine. Is there a risk in keeping it? Absolutely. It’s a deadly virus, after all. But there are a lot of worse things out there that we will never eradicate, and not many people lose sleep over it. Nobody gets concerned that the CDC has strains of Ebola in its lab, yet it is more devastating than small pox because our treatments against it don’t always work, and death from Ebola is among one of the more horrible ways to die… keeping small pox in our labs ensures that if it ever does surface in the human population, we can fight it.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 20 May 2011 10:12:06 +0000

It would be the first time human beings INTENTIONALLY AND WITH FORETHOUGHT made something extinct.

Is that a presidence we want to set?

By: Person

Person — Fri, 20 May 2011 00:30:37 +0000

I say we destroy one.

The one in america, too. I can not see Russia sinking as low as to using something like that.

We should have some for vaccines, but the less, the better.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 19 May 2011 23:17:54 +0000

The smallpox vaccine is not derived from smallpox virus. The vaccine is vaccinia virus which is in the cowpox family. Back in 1796 Dr. Jenner figured out that milkmaids were protected from smallpox and it was because they had already been innoculated with the less harmful cowpox.

@13. Scolopendra – Salk came up with the polio vaccine not smallpox

By: ben

ben — Thu, 19 May 2011 22:24:24 +0000

@Sandra
I’m not sure that when they say the governments want to keep their virus stock, they’re referring to their vaccines.

I’m not sure YOU fully understand how pox vaccines work, but there are two types: the Salk, which is a KILLED vaccine, and the Sabin (which is an ATTENUATED vaccine – its infectious part has been deactivated). Neither is a live vaccine, and I doubt you can make a weapon from the killed vaccine any easier than you could from scratch with knowledge of its genome. I might be wrong though.

But again, as Rob in comment 8 says, what’s wrong with using new virus stock to produce vaccines? I don’t think it’d take all that long should a new outbreak occur.

By: Fotis

Fotis — Thu, 19 May 2011 19:22:23 +0000

Two words: “Space Aliens”

We need to keep it just in case )

By: Sandra

Sandra — Thu, 19 May 2011 03:40:45 +0000

Hey Jamie B,
You are very confused about how POX vaccinations work and that’s what’s leading to your erroneous conclusion on the matter.
You CAN’T destroy the virus and KEEP the vaccine. The vaccine is a derivitive of the VIRUS ITSELF. The body develops an immunity to the virus through EXPOSURE to the virus in micro-form, such as the dose given in a vaccine. The VIRUS and the VACCINE are the VERY SAME THING – just in different forms.
The stockpiles of vaccines are the very issue they are being criticized for.
Capiche?