Smallpox was proclaimed completely eradicated in 1980, but there is much debate as to destroy the existing supplies that still exist in two laboratories, one in Atlanta and a Russian government laboratory near Novosibirsk, or keep them aliive for future usage if need be. The United States has been making its case to health officials in meetings in many countries over the past several weeks, arguing that scientists need more time to finish developing antiviral drugs and vaccines to protect the public from a potential outbreak.

The U.S. must win over skeptical government, particularly in developing countries, that fear they would be on the front lines of an accidental release and say the best defense is to destroy the stocks.

D.A. Henderson, head of the WHO's eradication campaign and a distinguished scholar at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh stated frankly:

"You just can't provide 100% security."

A decision is expected to be made in Geneva this week, where the WHO is holding its annual convention. This action will finally conclude a debate launched in January over the fate of the remaining stocks of one of the most lethal viruses in human history.

The U.S. believes the live virus is needed to finish developing a vaccine without the serious side effects that older-generation vaccines can have in people with immune deficiency disorders, along with two other antiviral medications. The research would be shared with other countries, not just kept for U.S. defense purposes according to Nils Daulaire, director of the Office of Global Health Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. representative on the WHO's executive board.

Daulaire continues:

"We're talking about getting the science right. We do favor the eventual destruction of the stocks once the primary goals of the research have been achieved. We don't think it's a never ending process. Research has this nasty tendency not to be predictable. We don't know what the time horizon is."

The main challenge smallpox researchers face is finding a way to test treatments on animals, because smallpox infects only humans. Researchers have yet to infect monkeys with smallpox in the same way that it infects humans, for example.

Lim Li Ching, a researcher for the Third World Network, a nongovernmental organization based in Malaysia that advocates for destruction of the virus says:

"At the end of the day, it comes down to a regulatory issue. From a public health perspective, all the goals the World Health Assembly authorized research for have been achieved."

Smallpox is one of the two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest, which was unofficially declared eradicated in 2010, and is expected to be officially declared eradicated in 2011.

Smallpox is highly contagious, but generally spreads more slowly and less widely than some other viral diseases, perhaps because transmission requires close contact and occurs after the onset of the rash. The overall rate of infection is also affected by the short duration of the infectious stage. In temperate areas, the number of smallpox infections were highest during the winter and spring. In tropical areas, seasonal variation was less evident and the disease was present throughout the year.

Sources: BBC and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Sy Kraft