Re: how to order meal?

Robert Bannister <robban@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Does that ever happen? We were told that smallpox had been eradicated,
but just to make sure, Russia and America stockpiled it.

Interesting. I had thought that those stockpiles had been destroyed,
but I see that Wikipedia says not, though my belief was not unfounded

In 1978, there was evidently an escape of smallpox from
containment in a research laboratory in Birmingham, England. A
medical photographer, Janet Parker, died from the disease itself,
and the Professor responsible for the unit, Professor Henry
Bedson, killed himself. In light of this accident, all known
stocks of smallpox were destroyed, except the stocks at the United
States Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Vector Institute
in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk in Siberia, where a regiment of troops
guards it. Under such tight control, smallpox would, it was
thought, never be let out again. Even though the destruction of
virus stocks was ordered in 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996, they have
not yet been destroyed, since a number of researchers still wish
to retain the stocks for scientific purposes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox

The World Health Organization apparently passed a resolution in 1999
pushing back the destruction date until the end of 2002. Their web
site implies that it's still around:

When smallpox was officially certified as eradicated, in December
1979, an agreement was reached under which all remaining stocks of
the virus would either be destroyed or passed to one of two secure
laboratories -- one in the United States and one in the Russian
Federation. That process was completed in the early 1980s and
since then no other laboratory has officially had access to the
virus which causes smallpox.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/faq/en/index.html

Poking further, there's a "WHO Advisory Committee on Variola Virus
Research" that meets periodically to discuss the issue and oversee all
research using the virus. At the November, 2005, meeting, for
example,

http://www.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB117/B117_33-en.pdf

they decided that enough was known about the DNA sequence that nobody
would further be allowed to get access to the virus for this purpose.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |To find the end of Middle English,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |you discover the exact date and
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |time the Great Vowel Shift took
|place (the morning of May 5, 1450,
kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx |at some time between neenuh fiftehn
(650)857-7572 |and nahyn twenty-fahyv).
| Kevin Wald
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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