Should Smallpox be Made Extinct?

A few decades from now, we may make a brutal,calculated decision to totally eradicate a particular form of life. We already are 99 percent of the way along that path.

Even conservationists, who publicly deplore the extinction of innumerable species of animals and plants through neglect, ignorance, or financial greed, have applauded this conscious, murderous act to be carried out by a UN agency.

I speak of smallpox virus. Since 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been systematically obliterating this devastating parasite from vast tracts of the globe.The last case of smallpox in South America was recorded in 1971,the last in Indonesiain 1972, and in Pakistan,1974. Nine months ago, a triumphant WHO announced that the few remaining traces of infection in Ethiopia and Somalia have been stamped out. So ends the greatest public health crusade in history.

But WHO's fieldworkers have not simply conquered one of the most vile, maladies ever known to man.By vaccinating human populations, they made life impossible for a particular microorganism. As a result, smallpox virus is no longer at large among Homosapiens. It is confined to glass phials in the deep-freezes of medical laboratories throughout the world. My question is: When we feel sure that smallpox is indeed extinct in nature, should those final stocks of virus be committed to flame? I guess they will be.Commonsense supports the idea. But let's look at the implications.

All arguments deployed by wildlife enthusiasts in their efforts to protect endangered whales, turtles, and butterflies apply just as forcibly to smallpox virus. As at hreatened species, it is absolutely unique. Once extinct, it can never be recreated by laboratory scientists.Smallpox virus has formed an "ecosystem" with man in the past, and while we seem to have decimated it with impunity, there could be long term ill consequences of which we are naively unaware. Finally, although an electron microscope is required to see it, smallpox virus is not anunattractive piece of life. Microbiologists gain aesthetic pleasure from peering at the most virulent of germs, this one included.

It is, of course, the nastiness of smallpox virus that makes talk ofconservation seem laughable, if not lunatic. Its lethal power, rather than man's military might, explains why Hernando Cortez, with less than6 00 men, was able to conquer the great Aztec empire in the early 16th century.The invisible germ spread like wildfire, reducing the population of central Mexico from some 30 million to three million. In modern times, before the WHO initiative got underway, no other virus was so feared as a cause of disfigurement and death.

Putting aside conservation arguments (valid though they are) what possible could there be for retaining such horrendous material? Just two. First,it's conceivable that smallpox will return and that the present-day virus could be useful in fighting the disease.The germ will not be required for vaccination that is done with a related virus (vaccinia), which certainly will be maintained in laboratories for all time.But it might prove valuable as a tool for studying a resurgent form of smallpox. Once the WHO campaign has abolished the disease from nature, such a tool could come from only one source. A million-to-one chance exists that the virus is incarcerated in a desiccated burial vault or similar location, which has allowed it to survive without being transmitted from person to person.Unlikely, but possible.

Second, we could find numerous applications for smallpox virus in a totally different field.As the discipline of genetic manipulation forges ahead, hereditary material from diverse sources will be used to fabricate novel organisms valuable in medicine, agriculture and other fields.Every living crealure, plant, and animal on earth will become a vital genetic resource. In years to come, the irreplaceable DNA of smallpox virus may prove beneficial in areas that cannot before seen today.

These arguments will doubtless be eclipsed by the public's concern for maintaining a horrendous germ in national deep-freezes. WHO has said only that the number of laboratories holding smallpox virus will be reduced.

It seems certain to go further, however, making not just a dread disease but also a unique life-form totally extinct.That will be a spectacular historical decision.No other microorganism has been so methodically eradicated before. And the odds against it happening again (however mighty the WHO's battalions) are overwhelming.

1978 article on the state of the smallpox virus, driven to extinction by the United Nations, asks whether it should be preserved in deep freeze for science?