f human health. There seems to be a great deal of evidence to support the argument that foreign nations are spending military dollars on research and development of biological weapons like variola virus. A report in the New York Times conveyed that a secret U.S. government intelligence assessment complete in 1998, concluded that “Iraq, North Korea and Russia are probably concealing the deadly smallpox virus for military use” (Broad and Miller A1).
It is reports like the above one that make the U.S. hesitant to destroy all remaining stock of infectious variola because of the need to develop vaccines in case of bioterrorism. In fact, even during the height of perestroika, U.S. intelligence reported that the Soviet Union, under the approval of Mikhail Gorbachev, had undertook the most expensive program for developing biological weapons in the world “Gorbachev signed a secret plan for a new Soviet weapons program. The five-year, $1 billion plan authorized Russian military scientists to turn smallpox and other deadly microorganisms into instruments of war” (Alibek and Handelman A29). It is the fear and danger associated with such projects that have made the U.S. think twice about eradicating all the remaining infectious variola stock.
When it comes to non-military reasons and evidence for this group arguing to keep the variola stock in existence, there is plenty to go around as well. For instance, monkeypox, a member of the Orthopoxvirus to which variola belongs, has been combated to a large degree by studies that have been conducted on variola “The fact that mokeypox outbreaks are still occurring, and are not going to be eliminated,
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