Abstract

The deadly illness "smallpox" was proclaimed eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1980. Even if the illness has subsided, the variola virus that caused it has not since it has been well conserved in two high security laboratories—one in the USA and one in Russia. The World Health Assembly voted in 2011 to defer consideration of this issue until the 67th WHA in 2014. The discussion of whether to destroy the remaining stocks of the smallpox virus is still under discussion. A brief questionnaire-based survey was established during a one-day stem cell meeting to find out what different health care and life science experts, particularly students, thought about this issue. Only 66 of the meeting's 200 participants had completed the questionnaire. Most survey respondents (60.6%) supported keeping the virus around for future use, while just 36.4% supported eradicating it in light of the number of people it killed (36.4%). It has been possible to create DNA vaccines by combining plasmids containing the variola virus genesM1R, A30L, and F8L, which code for intracellular virion surface membrane proteins, with A36R and B7R, which code for extracellular virus envelope proteins, and putting them under the control of promoters from the cytomegalovirus or the Rous sarcoma virus. These DNA vaccines caused the same high titres of vaccinia virus-neutralizing antibodies to be produced in mice as were caused by the live vaccinia virus immunisation. A deadly (10 LD50) challenge with the highly pathogenic ectromelia virus left no effect on mice who had received the DNA vaccine. These findings imply that this vaccination ought to be effective in protecting humans against smallpox.