curl-6 on 10 July 2014
The samples are from the 1950s and were, awkwardly, forgotten about and left to collect dust.
This comes more than thirty years after all samples of the disease, which has been eradicated in the wild, were supposed to have been moved to two high security labs, one in the US and one in Russia, because it's so dangerous.
During the 20th century Smallpox killed more people than all the century's wars combined, and if it escaped into today's unvaccinated population, the result could be catastrophic.
This discovery raises the rather scary question of how much of it is still out there and unaccounted for.
