ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, May 25, 1996                 TAG: 9605290031
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: GENEVA
SOURCE: Associated Press 

SMALLPOX VIRUS STOCKS TO BE DESTROYED BY MID-1999

After years of scientific wrangling and nightmare scenarios of biological warfare, the World Health Organization agreed Friday to wipe out all traces of the deadly smallpox virus in the next three years.

At the U.N. health agency's annual meeting, a key committee gave the go-ahead to destroy all remaining stocks of the virus - held at high-security laboratories in the United States and Russia - by June 30, 1999.

The agency's 190 members will be asked to approve the decision Saturday, but that is regarded as a formality. They will have to give the final nod at their May 1999 session.

Known as the ``spotted death'' and the ``great fire,'' smallpox killed about 600,000 people a year in Europe from the 16th century through the 18th century.

Only after WHO organized a huge immunization campaign was the disease wiped out completely. The last recorded case was in Somalia in 1977.

For years, health experts have urged eliminating the laboratory stocks for fear the virus could escape. Others cautioned that if terrorists got hold of the virus, it could become a frightening weapon in biological warfare.

Over the past decade, WHO experts have set a series of dates for destroying about 400 samples of the virus locked in special freezers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and a smaller amount at Russia's State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology.

The deadlines were repeatedly postponed because of objections from scientists who said it was wrong to destroy an entire species of virus that might hold clues to fighting other diseases.

But with the development of harmless clones of DNA fragments, scientists are now confident they no longer need to keep the virus itself.

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