Even regarding smallpox, a disease that is extinct but could be revived as a bioterror weapon, there is good news.
Like polio, smallpox was a viral disease for which effective, easily administered vaccines existed.
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Several years ago plans to destroy the remaining legal stocks of the virus that causes smallpox a disease supposedly now eradicated were dropped on advice from America's intelligence services, among others, that North Korea and other countries were secretly experimenting with the stuff.
Some emergency officials admit that they have little hope of helping people infected with a nerve agent like sarin, or a disease like smallpox, and that their plans focus on ensuring that those infected are isolated from the rest of the population rather than treated.
Likewise, a person with an infectious disease, such as smallpox, threatens with serious physical harm those with whom he comes into proximity.
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In the U.S., the smallpox virus is kept at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The eradication of smallpox was possibly the greatest victory of science over disease in the history of mankind.
Mr Hilleman believed that science would eventually rid the world of disease, as it had disposed of smallpox in 1979 and is close to banishing polio.
That could mean that even if we never face an attack of airborne anthrax or smallpox, funding more research into treatments for infectious disease will be a good thing.
In December, 1966, Bill Foege was working as a consultant for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on smallpox eradication in a medical mission in a remote part of eastern Nigeria.
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Given all new labs and a new charter by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, Vector "weaponized" new strains of smallpox at a time when the World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated worldwide.
Smallpox has killed 500 million people this century alone, making it the deadliest disease known to man.
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