Killing a killer: what next for smallpox?

[...]the history of the many consequences of smallpox on humankind reads like a long litany of human misery and calamitous events, but is juxtaposed with the more noble accomplishments that began with the discovery of vaccination by Jenner in 1798 and culminated with the World Health Organization (WHO) certifying the world free of smallpox in 1980 [2]. [...]we find ourselves still wrestling with an issue that intermingles public health policy, philosophy, national security, and bioterrorism, and affects our perceptions of research ethics with extreme pathogens in general.