The smallpox virus retention debate has been going on among scientists and health officials since the smallpox virus was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1980.[1][2] The debate centers on whether or not the last two known remnants of the Variola virus known to cause smallpox, which are kept in tightly controlled government laboratories in the United States and Russia, should be finally and irreversibly destroyed. Advocates of final destruction maintain that there is no longer any valid rationale for retaining the samples, which pose the hazard of escaping the laboratories, while opponents of destruction maintain that the samples may still be of value to scientific research, especially since variants of the smallpox virus may still exist in the natural world and thus present the possibility of the disease re-emerging in the future or being used as a bio-weapon.
^"Smallpox". WHO Factsheet. Archived from the original on 21 September 2007.
^Fenner F (2006). Nature, Nurture and Chance: The Lives of Frank and Charles Fenner. Canberra, ACT 0200: Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-1-920942-62-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
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