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:Duh.

[arivanov]

No, You _CANNOT_ recreate smallpox from DNA sequence. Not yet. There is a world of difference between simple viruses which have been assembled in the lab like the polyo virus and a smallpox virus. In fact there is a world of difference between a SmallPox virus and Flu.

The SmallPox virus is _BIG_. It is so big that it is on the borderline to defy the common assumption that viruses are not visible under microscope. It carries a whole battery of own enzymes which are essential for the initial cycle of the infection. We have not yet learned how to build all these with the correct glycosylation (they have glycosides sticking on them same as your average eucariote protein). We are not in a position to assemble it either. If we were, we could assemble a whole eucariote cell which is not anywhere near the current science level. Same level of complexity more or less.

In 10 years we may be in a position to build it from sequence. Now - not a chance.