[1][2] The debate centers on whether the last two known remnants of the Variola virus known to cause smallpox, which are kept in tightly controlled government laboratories in the United States and Russia, should be finally and irreversibly destroyed.
Advocates of final destruction maintain that there is no longer any valid rationale for retaining the samples, which pose the hazard of escaping the laboratories, while opponents of destruction maintain that the samples may still be of value to scientific research, especially since variants of the smallpox virus may still exist in the natural world and thus present the possibility of the disease re-emerging in the future or being used as a bio-weapon.
Due to resistance from the U.S. and Russia, in 2002 the World Health Assembly agreed to permit temporary retention of the virus stocks for specific research purposes.
[12] In 2011, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, laid out the rationale of the administration of President Barack Obama in a New York Times op-ed piece.
She said, in part: The global public health community assumes that all nations acted in good faith; however, no one has ever attempted to verify or validate compliance with the WHO request....
[13]In November 2021 the CDC announced that several frozen vials labeled "Smallpox" were discovered in a freezer in a Merck & Co. vaccine research facility at Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.