In 2011 WHO convened a meeting of Health Ministers throughout the world to discuss destruction of the last remaining stockpiles of the smallpox (variola) virus. The ministers - representing the 193-nation World Health Assembly - voted to review the decision in 2014.
A decision was again postponed by WHO in 2014
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/05/who-postpones-decision-on-destruction-of-smallpox-stocks-again.html
One of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) two advisory committees on smallpox supports the stocks’ destruction, and the other opposes it. --snip--
A central question remains whether research of public-health importance is still needed on the virus, or whether the last stocks should be destroyed to eliminate the threat of an accidental release from the two labs where they are held — at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, near Novosibirsk.
--snip--
Although the ACVVR reached a consensus on antivirals, there was considerable debate about this among its members. Some argued, for example, that with two promising drugs — tecovirimat and brincidofovir — close to licensing, virus stocks were no longer needed. Others felt that the virus should be kept in case these drugs failed to get licensed, requiring the development of other compounds.
The AGIES considered the same issues but swung towards virus being no longer needed to develop antivirals — it also suggested that should a future need arise to develop new drugs, live virus could in any case be recreated from viral DNA. The ACVVR is often perceived as being more focused on research interests, and the AGIES on public-health aspects.
By the time the WHO assembly got to discussion of destruction of smallpox stocks, it was near the end of the last day of the meeting. It quickly became clear that there were sharply divided opinions and no consensus, according to Glenn Thomas, a WHO spokesman. The decision to setup a third expert group is intended to bring together a mix of scientists and public-health and other experts to review all the elements of the debate and take the issue forward, says Thomas.
--snip---
Some scientists are also keen for smallpox research using live virus not to be stopped, but continued and expanded. Two members of the ACVVR, Clarissa Damaso, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and Grant McFadden, of the University of Florida in Gainesville, have argued, for example, that the WHO’s restricting of smallpox research to tightly circumscribed public-health applications has limited fundamental research that could advance public health. In an opinion piece published 1 May in the journal PLoS Pathogens, along with Inger Damon, head of the poxvirus and rabies branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, they argue that: “the research agenda with live variola virus is not yet finished and that significant gaps still remain”.
But the majority of the health ministers of the WHO member states — including those of many poorer countries, who view the risks of an accidental release as outweighing any research benefits — want the stocks of virus destroyed at some point. The question for the WHO assembly is, as always, when? But yet again, it has kicked that can down the road.
As for me, if it can remain secured with the exceedingly tight limitations on access that have been the case for many decades, then I tend to argue with CDC's lead poxvirus researcher (Inger Damon)--that we should exhaust the study needed for related viruses before destroying.
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