SMALLPOX—AN ANCIENT enemy, seemingly vanquished in one of the great achievements of 20th-century medicine. In an unprecedented global campaign to eradicate a disease by mass immunization, led by the United States and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under the auspices of the World Health Organization, a virus thought to have killed more human beings than any other infectious agent since the dawn of recorded history was wiped from the face of the earth by 1977.¹ In 1980, the World Health Organization certified smallpox as eradicated,² and smallpox vaccination was discontinued. By international agreement, stocks of smallpox virus would be voluntarily destroyed to avert accidental release and spread.³

A decade ago, it was revealed that despite signing the 1972 International Treaty to Abolish Biologic Weapons, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had maintained a huge, . . . [Full Text of this Article]