Rinderpest, or cattle plague, was declared eradicated in 2011. But many research institutes still have samples of the rinderpest virus in storage. Disease experts want those samples destroyed.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.npr.org
I have written a lot about rinderpest, and covered it in my book on virus history, as well as covering the debate on whether or not smallpox virus stocks should be eliminated.
And if they haven’t yet, despite years of debate, why should rinderpest virus stocks?
Consider: we have an effective vaccine(s); we still have the related peste des petits ruminants virus knocking around, with vaccines to it – so why shouldn’t stocks of the live virus strains be preserved?
How many viruses have in fact made it out of fridges, and back into the world? Well, there was that purported 1977 H1N1 release in Russia/Mongolia…but can anyone think of another well-documented one? Just one?
The fact is that it is FAR easier to deliberately spread endemic viruses around – like foot-and-mouth disease virus – than it would be to reactivate and spread something from a lab freezer.
Rather let us conduct an inventory of who has what, consolidate it like they did with smallpox, and forget about the unknowable, which is obscure freezers in far-flung rural centres where no-one remembers what is there – and where powercuts have probably thawed the samples more than once.
See on Scoop.it – Virology News
ViroBlogy 
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