shtfplan.com / Mac Slavo / July 18th, 2017
The Eradication of smallpox was arguably one of the greatest medical achievements of the modern era. A disease which killed at least 300 million people in the 20th century alone, was snuffed out after decades of hard work by scientists and doctors, and after over a billion dollars (adjusted for inflation) was spent on vaccination campaigns.
Unfortunately, this achievement could be easily undone with modern technology, and at a tiny fraction of what it initially cost to eradicate smallpox. Last week it was revealed that a team of Canadian researchers managed to synthesize an extinct strain of smallpox, by piecing together several mail order samples.
The horsepox virus the Canadian team created is not a threat to human health — or even the health of horses — should it ever escape from a lab. And it’s not the first virus created by putting pieces of DNA together in the right sequence.
Still, the news that a team headed by David Evans, a professor of medical microbiology and immunology, had accomplished this feat — at a relatively low cost of about $100,000 plus labor — was a bit of a wakeup call. The news was first reported Thursday in Science Magazine.
The post Why Smallpox Will Make A Comeback: Canadian Researchers Spend Only $100,000 To Reconstitute Extinct Virus appeared first on Silver For The People.
