The Misappliance Of Science

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They're worried that we're developing a Bigpox virus, that's why

Debunked: US and Russia won't destroy their stocks of smallpox for fear of being unprepared for the other country renegging and launching a biological attack.

Cooler heads have always managed to prevail in the US and Russia when it come sto the subject of weapons of mass destruction, so the paranoia about being eradicated by biological attack seems quite overwrought as a rationale. Also, each country still possesses great nuclear arsenals to act as a deterrent, in case of attack, so it's not like destroying the smallpox stocks would leave anyone truly vulnerable to attack.

It would, however, be leaving us without any ability to study the virus forevermore, which much of the scientific community objects to, and rightly so. There's little chance for these stocks of smallpox to escape into the population, while there's the potential for learning a great deal about viruses by studying it.

Urbanlegends.com has several cites which can be found here. The publicly-given reasons for keeping the stocks are logical enough to discount any conspiracy-type theories of ulterior motives.

References:

• urbanlegends.com's smallpox cites