Virus - Applications - Weapons

Weapons

For more details on this topic, see Biological warfare.

The ability of viruses to cause devastating epidemics in human societies has led to the concern that viruses could be weaponised for biological warfare. Further concern was raised by the successful recreation of the infamous 1918 influenza virus in a laboratory. The smallpox virus devastated numerous societies throughout history before its eradication. There are officially only two centers in the world that keep stocks of smallpox virus – the Russian Vector laboratory, and the United States Centers for Disease Control. But fears that it may be used as a weapon are not totally unfounded; the vaccine for smallpox has sometimes severe side-effects – during the last years before the eradication of smallpox disease more people became seriously ill as a result of vaccination than did people from smallpox – and smallpox vaccination is no longer universally practiced. Thus, much of the modern human population has almost no established resistance to smallpox.