Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, August 30, 1993                   TAG: 9308300108
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SMALLPOX GETS DEATH PENALTY/ VIRUS' END PLANNED FOR END OF THE YEAR

The virus's death sentence comes 13 years after the World Health Organization declared that it had eradicated smallpox, a disease that killed, blinded and disfigured uncounted millions of people. The organization's global vaccination campaign broke the chain of person-to-person transmission of the disease, which occurred only in humans.

But while the disease is gone, some virus remains. What are believed to be the last remaining stocks of the smallpox virus have been kept frozen in liquid nitrogen in two closely guarded laboratories in Atlanta and Moscow. Armed with newly developed maps of the molecular structure of the virus, the World Health Organization, a U.N. agency based in Geneva, has called for simultaneous destruction of the remaining stocks by New Year's Eve.

Experts interviewed said it would be be the first time any species had been deliberately wiped out.

With only 18 weeks until the planned destruction, a last-minute debate among scientists over whether the stocks should be kept or destroyed could lead to a stay of execution. The American and Russian governments have the responsibility for destroying the virus stocks, probably by heating them to a very high temperature in an autoclave.

Even if the virus is destroyed, some stocks of the vaccine to protect against smallpox could be kept available. The vaccine is made from a virus different from the one that causes smallpox.

Wiping out smallpox was arguably public health's greatest triumph. It is the only disease ever eradicated. The health organization's committees have long held that destroying the smallpox virus is the logical final step in the eradication process, and at a meeting in 1990, they set Dec. 31, 1993, as the execution deadline.

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it plans to meet the New Year's Eve deadline. But Dr. Walter R. Dowdle, the centers' acting director, said, "It is fair to say we may have to delay it."