Smallpox paragraph 3

It is important to keep the smallpox virus so as to continue researching medicines in case a bioterror attack is to happen using smallpox (McKay 2011). Due to the United States terrorist attacks of September 2001 and some prospects of bioterrorism, the smallpox can be an effective weapon as it kills and spreads so easily to kill almost a third of people it infects. Therefore keeping the virus could be also for defence purposes. Moreover, the researchers need more time to study about the disease and how it works. This can be beneficial in case the virus mutates to form a very virulent one with different symptoms than the smallpox and could spread easily from one person to another (Connor 1993).
Another reason for keeping the virus will be for the development of vaccines and antiviral medications (McKay 2011). In addition, Hammond et al (2011) stated that the World Health Assembly authorized the keeping of the smallpox samples for 'essential public health research for the development of new antiviral drugs'. Hammond et al (2011) also mentioned that currently there are two primary drugs for the treatment of smallpox infection, the ST-246 and CMX001 which have been effective in experiments with animals as there are no human cases to study at the moment. the antiviral drugs only work to treat those people exposed to the variola virus before vaccines could be given. If smallpox reinfection occurs, the results could be very devastating, therefore, the virus need to be kept to examine in the hope of creating vaccines and other cures. This could help also poorer countries with fewer resources to treat a potential outbreak.