THE virus that causes camelpox is an even closer relative of the smallpox virus than scientists believed. This heightens fears about its potential risks, particularly because some experts fear that Iraq may be using it in its biological weapons programme.
“It was surprising how close these two viruses were,” says Geoffrey Smith of Imperial College in London, who has sequenced a strain of camelpox virus isolated from camels in Iran in 1970. “It could be that only a small set of changes would be necessary for camelpox virus to infect people.”
The viruses that cause smallpox and camelpox are both…
