Pressure Growing to Set a Date to Destroy Remaining Smallpox Stocks.

The article discusses stocks of smallpox virus maintained by laboratories in Russia and the U.S. and debate within the World Health Assembly (WHA), the governing body of the World Health Organization (WHO), on setting a deadline for destruction of those virus stocks. A deadline for doing so that was set by WHO in 1990 is said to have been postponed because of desires expressed in Russia and the U.S. to continue research on smallpox.