US Preserves Smallpox For Defense

lee1 writes "The US is preserving the last remaining known strains of smallpox in case they are needed to develop bio-warfare 'countermeasures' and as a hedge against possible outbreaks in a population with no natural immunity. 451 specimens are stored in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control, and 120 strains at the Russian Vector laboratory in Siberia. Meanwhile, the government has contracted to pay almost $3 billion to procure 14 million smallpox vaccination doses."

Comments

Re:Science? THREE BILLION??

[lee1]

The editors changed my linkage. The details for the part about the $3 billion can be found here:
http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20110516_8175.php

(I'm so advanced that I combined information from two sources to produce my summary.)