WHO votes for smallpox reprieve {Get the U.S out of U.N -Health Care}}

The 32 nations who govern the World Health Organization have voted to put off destroying the last official stocks of smallpox virus. They have asked the WHO to set a new deadline for destroying the stocks in May, at the assembly of all 191 members of the organisation.

The virus samples were to have been destroyed this year. But in November the US decided it would keep its stocks to help develop new drugs and vaccines for smallpox. The US was considered unlikely to reverse that decision if WHO members had voted to destroy the virus.

Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, following a global vaccination campaign led by the WHO. The only officially remaining virus is in freezers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and at Vector, the Russian viral research institute at Koltsovo in Siberia.

These stocks were supposed to be destroyed in 1999, making the smallpox virus officially extinct. But the US president at the time, Bill Clinton, persuaded WHO members to postpone destroying them until December this year, so more research could be done on new vaccines and drugs, and on smallpox genes. The reason for the delay was a growing fear of smallpox as a weapon in a world no longer vaccinated for the disease.

Not all smallpox may be in official hands. The Soviet Union weaponised 100 tonnes of the virus in the 1980s, and some may have escaped destruction. Jonathan Tucker of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Washington says Iraq and North Korea are suspected of possessing the virus, partly because they have vaccinated their troops against smallpox.

In 1999, WHO members agreed to a smallpox research plan as part of the agreement to postpone destroying the virus. But in December 2001, the WHO Secretariat reported that two of its goals for 2002 - new anti-smallpox drugs, and an animal model for smallpox - would not be ready in time. It also said live smallpox virus would be needed to test any new drugs or vaccines.

In the wake of the anthrax attacks in the US, the US Department of Defence decided in November that smallpox stocks should not be destroyed before two anti-smallpox drugs, and a new, safer vaccine are licensed, along with new methods for detecting the virus and diagnosing infection.

Russia also opposes destroying the stocks. "In view of the recent tragic events in the US, I have my concerns about the threat of terrorist use," says Lev Sandakhchiev, head of Vector.

WHO to vote on smallpox destruction

Debora MacKenzie

The 32 nations who govern the World Health Organization must decide this week whether to destroy the last official stocks of smallpox virus. But the US and Russia, which hold the stocks, are unlikely to comply with a vote to destroy them.

Such an outcome would be damaging for the WHO. Its director, Gro Harlem-Brundtland, reversed WHO policy last week, announcing that she supported postponing the destruction. But developing countries on the WHO's Executive Board are angry that the US is abandoning a pledge to destroy the stocks on 21 December 2002.

These stocks were supposed to be destroyed in 1999, making the smallpox virus officially extinct. But the US president at the time, Bill Clinton, persuaded WHO members to postpone destroying them until 2002, so more research could be done on new vaccines and drugs, and on smallpox genes. The reason for the delay was a growing fear of smallpox as a weapon in a world no longer vaccinated for the disease.

Weaponised stocks

Not all smallpox may be in official hands. The Soviet Union weaponised 100 tonnes of the virus in the 1980s, and some may have escaped destruction. Jonathan Tucker of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Washington says Iraq and North Korea have vaccinated troops against smallpox and are also suspected of having stocks.

In 1999, WHO members agreed to a smallpox research plan. But in December 2001, the WHO Secretariat reported that two of its goals for 2002 - new anti-smallpox drugs, and an animal model for smallpox - would not be ready in time. It also said live smallpox virus would be needed to test any new drugs or vaccines.

Following the anthrax attacks in the US, the US Department of Defence decided that smallpox stocks should not be destroyed before two anti-smallpox drugs, and a new, safer vaccine are licensed, along with new methods for detecting the virus and diagnosing infection.

Russia also opposes destroying the stocks. "In view of the recent tragic events in the US, I have my concerns about the threat of terrorist use," says Lev Sandakhchiev, head of Vector.

The WHO Executive Board will make its decision on 17 or 18 January.

The man generally credited with leading the eradication effort, D.A. Henderson, a physician who is head of Johns Hopkins University's Center for Civilian Biodefense, said nothing the world has experienced in the past 100 years approaches the potential catastrophe of smallpox. The 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 20 million people worldwide, "pales in comparison," he said. More than 300 million people were killed by smallpox in the 20th century.

Henderson believes that the risk of smallpox being used by states is small because it would invite massive retaliation. President Bush hinted during the Gulf War that he was prepared to answer a smallpox attack with nuclear weapons.

Henderson, the leader of the destructionist camp, vehemently opposes any deadline extension. He has argued that research can continue without live smallpox virus. Moreover, he said, if the United States and Russia are ordered to destroy their stocks, only outlaws would have the virus.

"If the World Health Organization made retention of the virus a crime against humanity, that is pretty strong," said Henderson.

Others are not so certain.

"I don't think," said Zelicoff of Sandia National Laboratories, "that Saddam Hussein would be persuaded by that argument."

- Seattle Times

For a brilliant guy, originally behind the WTO 'eredication' of smallpox...he sure sounds like an idiot if he seriously thinks labeling smallpox a 'crime against humanity' is going to have any effect at all on anyone's desire to use it. That anyone who does so would be labeled an outlaw is 100% meaningless.

I hope the reporter is incorrect in what he said, because if I'm not mistaken, Henderson's heading up the wing of homeland security concerned with bioterrorism. I fear the words may indeed be his thinking, since he was all for eradicating the stocks.

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