Smallpox virus retention debate  The smallpox virus retention debate has been going on among scientists and health officials since the smallpox virus was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1980. The debate centers on whether or not the last two remnants of the virus known to cause smallpox, which are kept in tightly controlled government laboratories in the United States and Russia, should finally and irreversibly be destroyed. Advocates of final destruction maintain that there is no longer any valid rationale for retaining the samples, which pose the hazard of escaping the laboratories, while opponents of destruction maintain that the samples may still be of value to scientific research, especially since variants of the smallpox virus may still exist in the natural world and thus present the possibility of the disease re-emerging in the future and/or being used as a bio-weapon. The last cases of smallpox occurred in an outbreak of two cases, one of which was fatal, in Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1978. A medical photographer, Janet Parker, contracted the disease at the University of Birmingham Medical School and died on September 11, 1978. In light of this incident, all known stocks of the smallpox virus were destroyed or transferred to one of two World Health Organization reference laboratories which had BSL-4 facilities—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States and the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in Koltsovo, Russia. Since 1984, these two labs have been the only ones authorized by the WHO to hold stocks of live smallpox virus. In 1986, the WHO first recommended destruction of all Smallpox samples, and later set the date of destruction to be 30 December 1993. This was postponed to 30 June 1999, then again to 30 June 2002. Due to resistance from the U.S. and Russia, in 2002 the World Health Assembly agreed to permit temporary retention of the virus stocks for specific research purposes. Destroying existing stocks would reduce the risk involved with ongoing smallpox research; the stocks are not needed to respond to a smallpox outbreak. Some scientists have argued that the stocks may be useful in developing new vaccines, antiviral drugs, and diagnostic tests. A 2010 review by a team of public health experts appointed by the WHO, however, concluded that no essential public health purpose is served by the American and Russian laboratories continuing to retain live virus stocks. The latter view is frequently supported in the scientific community, particularly among veterans of the WHO Smallpox Eradication Program (1958–79).