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US Preserves Smallpox For Defense

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the it's-not-mine-i-swear dept.

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."

2 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Science? by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The odds of them using smallpox as a weapon are too low to risk vaccinating everyone. The vaccination program would harm far more people. I don't mean that in a crazy autism way, I mean from bad reactions to the vaccine. Every vaccine has a rate at which these occur and we can compare that to the risks Al Qaeda poses. Since Al Qaeda has so far in the last 50 years killed less people in the USA than farm animals and they show no sign of getting stronger we can probably forgo the vaccinations for now.

  2. Re:Science? THREE BILLION?? by lee1 · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.)