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WHO votes for smallpox reprieve Debora MacKenzie 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 ...

GENEVA (AP) - Acting on fears of bioterrorism, the 191 World Health Organization (news - web sites) members on Saturday formally reversed a long-standing order for the destruction of all smallpox virus stocks and recommended they be retained for research into new vaccines or treatment. The World Health Assembly, the U.N. health agency's top decision-making body, decided to back an earlier recommendation by WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland to drop a 2002 deadline for destroying the virus, held at top security laboratories in the United States and Russia. In January, the WHO's 32-member Executive Board approved Brundtland's policy. Late Friday,...