WHO Gives a Cautious Green Light to Smallpox Experiments.

The article presents a report on the World Health Organization (WHO) advisory committee, which has given its blessing to limited genetic manipulation of the smallpox virus. If the recommendation is accepted by WHO director-general Jong-wook Lee and the World Health Assembly next year, it would mark the first time since smallpox was eradicated that scientists would be allowed to genetically modify the virus. Once smallpox was wiped out in 1979, the known remaining viral stocks were transferred to two high-security labs at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and later the VECTOR research center in Koltsovo, Russia.