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curl-6 on 27 March 2012
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Rath said:
curl-6 said:
Rath said:
curl-6 said:
Stefl1504 said:
Rath said:

Yes, letting your immune system practice on measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, polio, tetanus etc. would be a great thing /sarcasm

It's true that exposure to germs strengthens your immune system, however exposure to deadly diseases kills/cripples people. Also the vaccines haven't fallen behind - smallpox is now only in labs, polio is nearly gone too and measles, mumps and rubella have all been drastically reduced.

@ bolded, smallpox still being existent in labs is actually pretty dangerous, if it ever got loose it would be one hell of a catastrophy... but it is a good biological weapon nowadays :D - the human of today sadly never encountered the smallpox, so we do not have anything that can harm the illness... its like being a native american first encountering european diseases... well probably not that bad since the smallpox isn't gone that long... well to the point... they should just kill them all (the smallpox ;P)! KILL IT WITH FIRE!

It's still dangerous, true, but think of the lives that have been saved by it's eradication. As recently as 1967, 2 million p[eople wer dying of it every year, and that was even WITH widespread vaccination in many countries. It's been 35 years since the world's last case of smallpox, so even wihout factoring in population growth or anything since then, that's 70 million lives saved.


He's not complaining about the fact that it's been removed from the human population - he's complaining about it still existing at all.

I kind of agree with him, though there is scientific interest in examing smallpox samples still I'm not sure it's worth the risk...

I don't trust Russia with it given their habit of screwing around with biological weapons, but the US stocks are very carefully handled. They actually only work with a section of the virus's DNA at a time, not a whole virus. (The whole ones are kept locked away under constant guard)

What makes smallpox especially valuable as an object of study is that it uses so many tricks to fight and evade our immune systems that if we can figure out how they work we can potentially cure many other diseases.

The WHO apparently disagrees and thinks they should be destroyed.

Well, I think the WHO is wrong. 

The DNA of smallpox has been sequenced; it could be synthesized from scratch by an advanced enough lab with the right peope and knowledge, so destroying all remaining stocks, (assuming Russia wouldn't secretly keep stocks, and I don't trust them not to) would do nothing but rob of us the opportunity to learn about the virus and use this knowledge to save lives.