Does smallpox still pose a threat? ❙❙❙Public Health

terrible effectiveness of smallpox as a biological weapon was demonstrated in the 1760s, when British troops deliber-ately distributed blankets that had been used by patients with smallpox among the Iroquois.1 The resulting epidemics wiped out many tribes. Four decades later, the threat of smallpox as a biolog-ical weapon was substantially dimin-ished by the development and dissemi-nation of an effective vaccine. Two centuries later, in 1979, after an un-precedented global effort to support worldwide vaccination, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated. The last naturally occurring case occurred in Somalia in 1977.1 In 1980 the World Health Assembly recommended that all countries cease smallpox vaccination. All remaining known laboratory samples of the virus went either to the US Centers for Dis-ease Control and Prevention, in At-lanta, or to the Institute for Viral Preparations, in Moscow. The speci-mens in Moscow were subsequently moved to the more secure Russian Stat