Virusphere: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Frank Ryan

headed by the American physician, Donald Ainslie Henderson, who worked under the auspices of the World Health Organization. This was formally signed off with the confirmed eradication of the disease in 1979.

      There can be no denying that the eradication of smallpox was an extraordinary achievement. Ironically, however, this very success makes our modern populations unduly susceptible to a malicious attack involving a potentially bioengineered smallpox virus that might be deliberately created to be as lethal as possible. New generations, who have never been vaccinated, would have no inbuilt protection to such a spreading lethal strain. This is why the smallpox virus is now included in the list of Category A bio-warfare agents. Following smallpox eradication, it was agreed by international treaty that samples of the smallpox virus should only be retained in two maximum security laboratories – one at the CDC in Atlanta, in the United States, and one at similar facilities in Moscow, in Russia. The plan was to allow some continuing research aimed at countering any attempt to use the virus for bio-warfare, whether through terrorism or through formal hostilities between nations. We must hope that, if the worst comes to the worst, the officially sanctioned research in this small number of biosafety laboratories will come to our rescue with a modern vaccine, which will need to be spread globally with more efficiency than we have ever seen with any previous vaccination programme.