The risk of dispersing smallpox virus through biological weapons

Many fear that bad guys can get smallpox viruses and deliberately disperse through biological weapons.

Expression of smallpox.(Source: Utmedicalcenter ).

Russia and the US say that more research is needed to create safer vaccines against deadly diseases that have been wiped out more than 30 years ago. They also wanted to ensure that all of the reserved virus samples were destroyed or transferred to two Russian and US archives to avoid the possibility of viruses being used in biological weapons.

But the joint proposal of the two countries is to propose a five-year deadline to decide whether or not to kill the virus against the objections of the member countries in the annual meeting of the World Health Organization - which has been discussed discuss this issue over the past 25 years.

" Many developing countries want to destroy the virus, especially Iran ," Reuters quoted a diplomat as saying.

Iran has long been in disagreement with the United States and a number of powers about the nuclear program. Tehran denies allegations by Western countries that it is planning to develop nuclear weapons, and only insists that it only wants to produce nuclear power.

Many countries believe that the remaining smallpox virus samples should be destroyed because smallpox has been wiped out and the virus is deadly. They also argue that current technology is enough to create new vaccines without using live viruses.

Many people fear that "bad players" might somehow get these viruses and deliberately disperse them. ' As long as smallpox completely disappears, the world is still likely to be attacked because most of the world's population is not yet immune to the disease,' said Kathleen Sebelius, US Secretary of Health. .

Proposals from the US and Russia are supported by 19 countries, including allies of the United States such as Britain, Canada and Japan, and many countries of the former Soviet Union.

The WHO 's 193 member countries make decisions on consensus-based issues, but its rules also allow voting. The controversy is still ongoing.

WHO biosafety inspectors have examined two smallpox virus storage sites at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the Russian Center for Virus and Biotechnology Studies in 2009. Results shows that both of these archives are safe and secure.

WHO confirmed smallpox, a contagious disease, was wiped out worldwide in 1979, two years after the last case was discovered in Somalia. The disease no longer spread naturally, although a woman in England died in 1978 after being accidentally exposed to the virus in the laboratory.

WHO still reserves 32.6 million doses of smallpox vaccine in Sweden in case of an emergency.