Following the smallpox eradication, experts in the 1990s recommended that the United States and Russia destroy their stocks of the virus. That didn't happen. And now Shots is reporting the World Health Assembly has decided smallpox will live to die another day:
The three-year delay represents a compromise. "This was a good outcome," Dr. Nils Daulaire, director of the Office of Global Health Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services and head of the U.S. delegation at the World Health Assembly, the Wall Street Journal reported. While the extension was as long as the U.S. was looking for, Daulaire said, "The result is the research program central to the reason for maintaining the virus continues and we'll be three years closer to having the countermeasures we're aiming for."
