IT’S NOW a fair bet that we will never see the total extinction of the
smallpox virus. The idea was to cap the glorious achievement of 1980, when
smallpox was eradicated in the wild, by destroying the killer virus in the last
two labs that are supposed to have it—one in the US and one in Russia. If
smallpox had truly gone from the planet, what point was there in keeping these
reserves?
In reality, of course, it was naive to imagine that everyone would let go of
such a potent potential weapon. Undoubtedly several nations still have a…
