WHO Gives a Cautious Green Light to Smallpox Experiments

摘要

A World Health Organization (WHO) advisory committee has given its blessing to limited genetic manipulation of the smallpox virus. If the recommendation is accepted by WHO director-general Jong-wook Lee and the World Health Assembly next year, it would mark the first time since smallpox was eradicated that scientists would be allowed to genetically modify the virus. Once smallpox was wiped out in 1979, the known remaining viral stocks were transferred to two high-security labs at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and later the VECTOR research center in Koltsovo, Russia. Many involved in the eradication effort pushed for the remaining stocks to be destroyed, but others argued that they should be maintained to allow research on new treatments or safer vaccines in case terrorists or rogue governments have illicit stashes.