A tall man with a distinct stoop and dark unruly hair that he kept having to brush back from his forehead stood up and sorted his notes in front of him on the table. He took a sip of water before beginning.
‘Colleagues, as you know, there has been no case of smallpox occurring naturally on the planet since 1977 when the last case, a man in Somalia died from the disease. The WHO declared the world free from the disease some two years later. True, there was one more death after the Somali patient that but that was a case of the genie getting out of the bottle — or should I say, the test tube, in a laboratory accident in Birmingham, England.
I think we all learned something from that tragedy. It stood out as a tragic demonstration of the ability of the virus to get out of containment. Ever since that time, the storage of live smallpox virus has been strictly controlled. Currently it is only stored at two places on Earth, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and the Russian State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology at Koltsovo in the Novosibirsk Region of the Russian Federation. Security at both establishments is of the highest order and containment facilities for the virus are as secure as man can make them.’
‘Even in Russia?’ asked a somewhat jaundiced American voice.
‘I appreciate your scepticism. Russian infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired these days but the Koltsovo institute is beyond reproach.’
‘So, if the virus is locked up safely at only two places on Earth and no one can get at it, why was the Iraqi soldier being vaccinated against the disease in the first place?’ asked one of the women present, a German lady in her late forties. The murmur in the room said that she had just asked the question many other people had been thinking.
Lang grimaced and said, ‘Frau Doctor Lehman has of course asked an intriguing question. Frankly, we don’t know. It may have been some routine procedure that no one ever got round to changing. That sort of thing often happens in a military environment where people are not encouraged to question things. Routine becomes tradition. Another puzzling thing is that the Iraqis have not yet acknowledged the defection of their man nor, I understand, the deaths of three more of their soldiers in the border incident that led to his escape.’
‘What exactly happened?’
‘I understand the sick man’s countrymen were intent on killing him when the border patrol intervened. I don’t have any more details,’ interjected the chairman.
‘Why would they want to kill a sick man if he was just suffering an adverse reaction to a routine vaccination?’
‘Maybe they didn’t know that’s what it was. Maybe they saw him go down with some awful disease and were frightened they might get it too so they took matters into their own hands.’
‘That’s possible if it was a local decision among border guards but if the order came from higher up maybe the Iraqis didn’t want anyone to know he’d been vaccinated.’
‘In that case we’d have to consider the possibility they’ve got their hands on the virus and intend using it as a weapon,’ said an American voice.
The German woman, Lehman, nodded vigorously at this.
‘That’s a bit of a leap, Hank,’ said the chairman.
‘I just don’t see how they could have got hold of it,’ said Lang. ‘There has been no breach of security at either of the holding establishments and there is no animal reservoir for the virus in the wild. It’s purely a disease of humans — that’s partly why we were so successful in wiping it out. That and the availability of such an efficient vaccine. I think we are worrying unnecessarily.’
‘Just for interest’s sake, how would smallpox rate as a biological weapon?’ asked an Asian man.
That’s really not my field,’ replied Lang. ‘But personally, I would find it almost too frightening to contemplate. Smallpox virus is one of the greatest killers the world has ever known. It’s been around for over two thousand years. It killed an Egyptian Pharaoh, several European crowned heads and countless millions of ordinary people before vaccination brought about its demise.’
‘Worse than anthrax?’
‘Just as deadly and more practical to use. Anthrax is an extremely effective killing agent but its difficult to protect your own forces against it and once you’ve used it it’s damned nearly impossible to get rid of. It lies around in the soil for decades. With smallpox you can protect your own people with a very efficient vaccine that is virtually free from side effects, kill the enemy and the virus will quickly die out again in the absence of a human host. It was generalised vaccination of the public that prevented them using smallpox as a weapon.’
‘But that was all stopped,’ said the German woman, provoking a long silence in the room.
‘Indeed it was,’ said the American man. ‘Vaccination against smallpox was stopped in the USA as long ago as 1971.’
‘Around the same time in the UK,’ added an English voice.
‘So two generations have grown up without protection against the virus,’ said the chairman.
‘But there is no virus to protect against,’ insisted Lang. ‘To all intents and purposes smallpox is extinct.’
The room fell to silence again. No one argued with Lang but there was no discernible agreement either. People were worried.
‘I wish we’d wiped the damned thing out completely when we had the chance back in ‘95,’ said the English voice.
‘Well we lost the vote on that one,’ said the chairman. ‘You’ll have to wait until the next scheduled date for destruction. If there’s no further delay, the only remaining stocks of smallpox virus will be destroyed completely in June, 1999.’
‘So what have all these scientists who objected to the 1995 destruction proposal been doing in the meantime if as you say live virus is only held at two places on earth?’
‘I assure you, very strict controls have been applied to any research involving smallpox. The virus had its DNA sequence determined so we actually know details of the entire blueprint for its existence. Once that was known it was possible to cut the DNA into defined linear fragments. Research labs are allowed to have access to individual fragments of the virus DNA, never the complete organism and never more than twenty percent of the fragmented DNA at any one time.’
What good is a bit of a virus?’
Lang smiled wryly and answered, ‘When we set out to sequence the virus we expected it to be fairly routine. As with all viruses we thought its genes would be concerned with the structure and propagation of itself. Only half of them were. The other half turned out to be human genes.’
There were several instances of raised eyebrows round the table, despite the scientific credentials of many present.
‘They were genes concerned with the human immune system. In short, the smallpox virus knows more about the human immune system than medical science does. That’s really what prompted the delay in destroying it completely. It can teach us a lot.’
‘I’m uncomfortable about having all these bits and pieces of virus floating
around.’
Lang shrugged and said, ‘It’s not as if just anyone could just join up the fragments to recreate a live virus. It would take a first rate molecular biologist, someone who had studied the entire genome and even then he or she would need a lot of luck. Having said that, if there was any evidence that someone was even contemplating trying such a thing we would step in immediately and put an end to it. Criminal charges would almost certainly be brought.’
‘And rightly so,’ said the chairman. ‘In the meantime, doing nothing is not an option for us.’
He paused and the others waited in silence for him to continue.
‘We are clearly not happy about the vaccinated man but I don’t think we could recommend a return to wholesale vaccination. There are risks associated with all vaccination programmes and we would have to justify them to the people who might suffer side effects.’
‘Perhaps a limited reintroduction might be in order?’ suggested one man. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’