'Small pox virus may become poor man's atom bomb'

"If the destruction is delayed indefinitely, the synthesis and preparation of small pox virus as a bio-weapon, by a non-superpower would increase and it may truly become a poor man's atom bomb," says Kalyan Banerjee, former director of the National Institute of Virology in Pune.

The World Health Assembly-WHO's decision-making body-announced Tuesday that it would defer until 2014 any decision on the destruction of the two remaining stocks of the virus since "crucial research" based on the virus remains to be completed.

After smallpox was officially eradicated in 1980, all countries were asked to surrender their stocks of the virus to the WHO to prevent accidental release. Currently the virus is held at two WHO-sanctioned repositories - the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and a Russian facility in Koltsovo in Siberia.

The debate over whether or not to destroy these two last samples had been going on since 1980. But the WHO has constantly been postponing the date of destruction under pressure from the United States and Russia that wanted to retain the samples until the needed research was complete to develop new drugs and vaccines to counter a potential bioterror attack.

"In my opinion, the world will gain much more by destroying the last traces of the virus than by keeping it," said Banerjee who himself was former member of a WHO advisory committee on smallpox research and now a committee adviser.

"The arguments tendered in favour of retaining the virus appear to be unconvincing," he told IANS. "To put it bluntly, it is the same logic, by which the superpowers continue the possession of the nuclear weapons; they wish to hold on to the smallpox virus as a super bio-weapon."

"The research is being drawn on and on, but research cannot be made a tool or apology for the indefinite retention of the virus," Banerjee said.

The existing vaccine (the classical Lister strain) has a proven record of preventing the spread of the virus and curtailing the epidemic and even if they develop a new vaccine, it cannot be used in the case of emergency, he said. And no live variola virus is necessary to develop new drugs since such studies can be done with monkeypox or mousepox viruses which belong to the same family of variola virus which causes smallpox.

According to Banerjee, the smallpox researchers wished to sequence one strain each of "variola major" and "variola minor" essentially for archival purposes. "But now more than 40 strains have been fully sequenced and if I am correct it is planned to sequence all the strains. The researchers wish to go on and on (without end)."

Another leading Indian virologist agrees. As far as smallpox virus is concerned, "I think we know enough and, all in all, I am in favour of first evolving rules and then destroying (the virus stocks)," said Jacob John at the Christian Medical College in Vellore.

Banerjee argues that continued retention of the smallpox virus no longer serves any essential public health purpose. "As today, the likelihood of small pox virus as a bio weapon by a non-superpower is nil. The destruction of the virus at CDC or Russia would definitely reduce any chance of any mischief by mischief makers. Immediate destruction of the small pox virus is the best policy."

"I firmly believe that not only the small pox virus stocks but also infected materials (like blood, tissues, tissue culture fluids, etc) which have been generated through several years of experimentation should also be destroyed," he said.