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Why Are the World's Scientists Continuing To Take Chances With Smallpox?

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

Lasrick writes: MIT's Jeanne Guillemin looks at the recent blunders with smallpox and H5N1 at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health to chronicle the fascinating history of smallpox eradication efforts and the attempts (thwarted by Western scientists) to destroy lab collections of the virus in order to make it truly extinct. "In 1986, with no new smallpox cases reported, the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO, resolved to destroy the strain collections and make the virus extinct. But there was resistance to this; American scientists in particular wanted to continue their research." Within a few years, secret biological warfare programs were discovered in Moscow and in Iraq, and a new flurry of defensive research was funded. Nevertheless, Guillemin and others believe that changes in research methods, which no longer require the use of live viruses, mean that stocks of the live smallpox virus can and should finally be destroyed.

34 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. The problem is... by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...you can't possibly guarantee the destruction of every sample. We have lax tracking policies to thank for that. If we voluntarily destroy all our live samples, and some other nation doesn't, then you can bet your next paycheck someone will use that as a weapon against us and we'll be totally powerless to retaliate (or so goes the argument).

    --
    Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
    1. Re:The problem is... by guises · · Score: 5, Informative

      That is not the argument. I don't know what the argument is, but it can't be that - it doesn't make any sense. If we voluntarily destroy all our samples, and some other nation doesn't, then there will be that much less smallpox. This is a valuable goal in itself, even if it doesn't mean that the virus has been completely eradicated.

      No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon, the infection would inevitably spread back to the country which initiated it, and the idea that we would need samples of our own to retaliate is preposterous. For one thing, the entire premise of this scenario is that this other country has just given us all the samples that we could possibly want. For another, we still have tons and tons of missiles and bombs just sitting there, looking for a way to justify all of the money that we paid for them.

    2. Re:The problem is... by bigfinger76 · · Score: 2

      So, the argument is why do we allow any scientist, country, or military to keep live samples?

      Who is this we?

    3. Re:The problem is... by structural_biologist · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We have had the ability for quite some time to synthesize viruses from scratch (the first report in the scientific literature came from the laboratory of poliovirus from scratch, published in 2002). So, there is no reason to keep smallpox stocks around because we can just synthesize the virus if we need it. While this technology means that anyone with sufficient resources could download the (publically available smallpox genome, and synthesize it, the same technology also enables scientists to more rapidly generate vaccines without having to start with a physical sample of the virus.

    4. Re:The problem is... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon, the infection would inevitably spread back to the country which initiated it, and the idea that we would need samples of our own to retaliate is preposterous.

      Yes, the point is that it's like MAD and other weapons policies: you don't want to put down your gun (or shield, for that matter) while the other guy is still holding on to his. Despite what many people say, that is completely sane and rational behavior.

      The thing OP kind of sidesteps is that while Western countries countries resisted complete eradication, they did so openly. Only later it was discovered that other countries (most of which were supposedly in favor of the eradication program) kept their own samples and research anyway. Which is a perfect illustration of why the West wanted to hang on to theirs, too.

      It's easy enough to call such policies insane, but nobody wants to be the only "sane" person in the room while all the nutjobs still have their weapons. That kind of disproves it would a sane approach, yes?

    5. Re:The problem is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It depends. Smallpox is not the best example, but the ideal virus to use as a biological weapon is a virus with long, mostly asymptomatic infectious phase and a high mortality rate. A virus with those characteristics could infect a large portion of the population before detection and basically wipe it out before effective measures can be taken (typically the first to fall to the infection are the first responders, nurses and MDs and chances are that by the time of the risk is apparent you won't have any effective personnel to deal with it)

      Also, a weaponized virus is not necessarily invulnerable to treatment (that would make it too dangerous to handle), to be effective as a weapon is more than enough to require some sort of unusual treatment; if it manages to infect a large portion of the population before detection, the existing inventories of the treatment won't be enough to deal with it and by the time the logistics for production and distribution of the treatment are in place, the population will be most likely decimated.

      Finally, there are people insane enough to invest time and money to develop biological weapons, the US government being the primary offender to date (google is your friend). A virus like in the scenario I describe is a "coward's weapon" to be used once on an unsuspecting population, not something you put in a warhead and launch in a war zone. For starters, is not meant to target enemy combatants, but an entire population, so using it is both a war crime and a crime against humanity and no nation would want to risk getting caught using it in the open. Thats why the most likely scenario is the use of intelligence services to start the epidemic by infecting a few unsuspecting civilians in an hostile nation (thats highly unlikely to leave any traces about the origin of the disease)

      Sadly, if history serves as evidence, said methods are not beyond what our dear politicians are capable of.

    6. Re:The problem is... by Oligonicella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Still doesn't justify keeping it around. We *have* a vaccine. We also have nukes, so retaliation by smallpox isn't necessary.

    7. Re:The problem is... by s.petry · · Score: 2

      Except that Smallpox is not a WMD, so "weaponized" smallpox is not a deadly disease if the person who contracted it receives very _basic_ medical treatment.

      As an educated guess, the study into smallpox has been to figure out out why it is so contagious so that we can build our own great contagion. Merge the contagious properties of smallpox with the payload of Ebola and then you have a weapon.

      Sad that we spend so much money learning how to kill each other instead of figuring out how to advance society, but this is the reality that people continue to buy in to.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    8. Re:The problem is... by bloodhawk · · Score: 2

      did you not even read the summary let alone the article? we don't need LIVE small pox virus anymore to produce vaccines or perform research. Should someone use it as a weapon then obviously we would have an abundant supply of the live virus anyway.

    9. Re:The problem is... by idontgno · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ebola is a bacteria

      Whaaaaaa?

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    10. Re:The problem is... by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Informative

      In theory, you can always learn more by continuing to study something. In practice, though, modern medicine has a pretty complete knowledge of smallpox. Humans have been studying the disease since before anyone even knew what a virus was. There's evidence that the Chinese were inoculating people for smallpox over a thousand years ago. And the first practical, widespread form of that vaccine dates back to the late 1700s. This was literally the very first virus ever treated with a vaccine. It's well-trodden ground, research-wise.

      The problem is, this virus is highly contagious and relatively dangerous compared with other viruses. For variola major, the case fatality rate is typically 30–60%, which puts it among the worst communicable diseases out there, approaching the fatality rate of ebola, and far more contagious. With nearly a two-week average incubation period (and up to 17 days in the worst case), one minor screw-up could easily cause a very serious pandemic before enough vaccines could be produced and distributed.

      So basically, you have to weigh the odds of an accidental release (which, with recent revelations about this stuff getting lost for decades, then turning up by accident, seems not so improbable) against the relatively small chance of learning anything new from it that can't also be learned from cowpox or other similar viruses. On the risk-reward curve, this seems to be so far towards the "pure risk" end that any reward would border on undeniable proof of divine intervention, which means the speculated rewards would have to be pretty darn amazing for it to be worth the risk.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    11. Re:The problem is... by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Yes, the point is that it's like MAD and other weapons policies: you don't want to put down your gun (or shield, for that matter) while the other guy is still holding on to his.

      MAD doesn't work for self-replicating things like bioweapons. If you put your gun or nuke down, and the other guy still has his and decides to shoot at you, you're screwed.

      OTOH, if you destroy your smallpox virus samples, and the other guy still has his and decides to use it on you, well he's just given you a smallpox sample you can use right back on him just as if you'd never destroyed your samples.

      The only bioweapon for which MAD would work would be one which kills quickly enough that the target nation is killed off before it can collect samples and send them back to the attacker. But any bioweapon that kills that quickly would be useless because it would kill the victim before he could spread the contagion to others, thus defeating the very characteristic which makes a bioweapon a weapon of mass descruction.

  2. We made everything else extinct by rossdee · · Score: 2

    We should give some lifeform a break

  3. Read The Demon in the Freezer by Gothmolly · · Score: 2

    Short answer, smallpox control has never really been that good. Also an answer - each government wants to keep the only supply as a potential weapon.

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
    1. Re:Read The Demon in the Freezer by geekoid · · Score: 2

      Potential defenses. It would be a stupid, horrible, and backfire in a lot of ways for a government to use it as a weapon. SOmething government have known since WWI
      Globally based theologically motivate nut jobs on the other hand, they won't care cause..'god'.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  4. What a stupid question by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Why are scientists continuing to take chances with uranium?"
    "Why are scientists continuing to take chances with high voltage?"
    "Why are scientists continuing to take chances with dimethyl mercury?"

    Because science.

    Also, there's no reason to obsess over the presence of a few virus particles in a jar on a shelf somewhere, if we have the source code in the form of its gene sequence. In that case we'll be able to resynthesize the virus at our leisure, at some point in the not-too-distant future.

    And if we don't already have the gene sequence in hand, well, that's a problem in itself.

    1. Re:What a stupid question by Triklyn · · Score: 2

      i'd say yes, but i'd hesitate still.

      epigenetic mechanisms are still being explored, and non-nucleotide based heredity like matrilineal passing of mitochondria. Remaking a virus from it's sequence seems like it should be really easy, and if there's any organism/automata that will be made first, it'll be a virus... but even still, there might be some transient quality that is... stored in ram and not in persistent memory that once lost is truly lost.

    2. Re:What a stupid question by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Funny

      And if we don't already have the gene sequence in hand, well, that's a problem in itself.

      What do you think the odds are that you could download the smallpox genome off The Pirate Bay or some TOR site?

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  5. Benefits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They take chances with it because the benefits outweighs the risks.
    How about we focus on those things that actually gets people hurt, like banksters taking chances with the economy and politicians using the army to play chicken-race. You know, the stuff that actually gets innocent people killed.

    In the case of smallpox what would happen is that the scientist screwing up might get infected and placed in quarantine. Even in the case of an actual smallpox outbreak it can be contained again with proper vaccination.

    1. Re:Benefits by Oligonicella · · Score: 2

      "They take chances with it because the benefits outweighs the risks." A supposition on your part. No more, no less.

  6. Game theory by Falos · · Score: 2

    It's an inferior move to reduce your options and throw away something irreversibly. You don't delete documents when you have abundant storage, you don't discard items in a video game with endless inventory.

    I'll accept that having poorly tracked, poorly secured, poorly vetted, poorly restricted, and/or poorly located samples keeps them from being a benign non-factor as above.

    I don't accept that throwing them away (the ones we know about) is the only counter. Hell, we can spare a few grams of payload and put one in space.

    1. Re:Game theory by kbeech · · Score: 2

      Have Buckaroo Bonzai drop it off in the Eighth Dimension to keep Doctor Lizardo busy!

  7. Re:Better safe than sorry by MouseR · · Score: 2

    Plus, having some in stock allows the the create of a vaccine if by some chance it ever emerges again.

  8. Beyond human efforts. by Doubting+Sapien · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Laboratory samples are not necessarily the only sources of still viable small pox virus. With climate change now a global reality, thawing of the arctic permafrost means that the remains of victims who died of smallpox before eradication, even if buried (but especially if not), can potentially still release the disease into the current population. There was some news a while ago when the the Spanish Flu of 1918 was recovered in this way, albeit intentionally in the interest of science. But who knows if/when nature should take it's course this way with small pox, without our help?

    --
    ========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
    1. Re:Beyond human efforts. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702145610.htm

      "In a mass grave in a remote Inuit village near the town of Brevig Mission, a large Inuit woman lay buried under more than six feet of ice and dirt for more than 75 years. The permafrost plus the woman's ample fat stores kept the virus in her lungs so well preserved that when a team of scientists exhumed her body in the late 1990s, they could recover enough viral RNA to sequence the 1918 strain in its entirety. This remarkable good fortune enabled these scientists to open a window onto a past pandemic--and perhaps gain a foothold for preventing a future one."

  9. Re:Better safe than sorry by Dins · · Score: 2

    If it emerges again, I imagine finding a sample of the virus won't exactly be a problem...

  10. Re:Better safe than sorry by mythosaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Destroying smallpox samples doesn't magically erase the disease from existence.

    Correct.

    In erases it from existence by non-magic, real, tangible methods (e.g. destroying every last living member of the species).

  11. Re: Same reason we keep developing nuclear weapons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Smallpox is a terrible disease for sure, but is not a good candidate for biological warfare. The reason why scientists keep it alive has nothing to do with war for a change; they keep it alive because if was a very successful virus and understanding the reasons of said success may be beneficial in the future.

    Sure, we can play safe and kill it based on flawed emotional responses but first, there is no guarantee that destroying the known samples will kill every existing reservoir, second: not having a sample will produce a slower response (and more dead and maimed children) if a variant of the virus emerges from somewhere else and finally we are discarding any positive application of the virus (like using a harmless mutation to carry a payload targeting cancer cells or similar)

    Also, notice that even if the virus as it is somehow escapes or is intentionally released, it is relatively easy to detect and cure.

    All in all, the benefits of keeping it alive for future research overweights the risks... the worst case scenario is a weaponized smallpox intentionally released in a civil population, but even in that case you WANT to have it somewhere to speed the development of a vaccine.

  12. I'd keep it on file by Karmashock · · Score: 2

    I'd avoid weaponizing it. I think the science labs that weaponize viruses on the argument that they need to know how to counter weaponized viruses is a little bunk. But I do think the viruses should be kept on file. Keep them in deep dark vaults... but keep them. I don't know if we'll ever need them for some reason but if we do they're there.

    As to the worry that scientists might misuse them. I didn't say I'd let the scientists play with them. Just keep them. Seal them away somewhere and require a public hearing to release them to any lab.

    Possibly include a 24 hour armed guard to accompany the virus if its released to a lab. The expense of such a guard should discourage casual research.

    --
    I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
  13. Re:Same reason we keep developing nuclear weapons by Triklyn · · Score: 2

    ... fire is a damn nice thing to have. cooking is good, boiling is good. combustion is good. the steam engine is good. coal is good. petrol is good... fire is life.

  14. Re:once again, White Christans fuck over everybody by RoknrolZombie · · Score: 2

    Of course not. It'll be bundled with a "free" cell phone for underdeveloped nations...or for populated nations. It'll be produced by the US and built in China, and nobody will have any idea where along the chain they got infected...

  15. Re:Better safe than sorry by Qzukk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If it's not exactly the same then what we've got wouldn't be very useful.

    I'm with the "destroy it" crowd. If someone attacks us with smallpox, nuke the fuck out of them.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  16. Re: Same reason we keep developing nuclear weapon by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why⦠what a fascinating idea. To hold in my hand that capsule⦠to know that life and death on such a level was my choice. Such power would set me up above the gods!

    --
    Imagine all the people...
  17. Re: Better safe than sorry by MouseR · · Score: 3, Funny

    And they keep coming out with new albums.