This seems wise.

[Bereta_Eder]

there was some medieval disaese I don't remeber what was called and certaintly not in english, and it was eradicated 99.9%.
the last active virus of the disease was in a research labaratory.

and there was a decision to be made, shall we completley destry the disease by destroying the only virus that was in the lab?

that would make it extinct on planet earth. possibly for ever,

or shall we keep it? but it was extremely lethat. it had killed millions in the past.


in the end it was decreed that it shoud be kept.

for scientific purposes

[Geronimo]

there was some medieval disaese I don't remeber what was called and certaintly not in english, and it was eradicated 99.9%.
the last active virus of the disease was in a research labaratory.

and there was a decision to be made, shall we completley destry the disease by destroying the only virus that was in the lab?

that would make it extinct on planet earth. possibly for ever,

or shall we keep it? but it was extremely lethat. it had killed millions in the past.


in the end it was decreed that it shoud be kept.

for scientific purposes

They probably weren't able to guarantee that it was extinct outside the lab and were worried about responding to an outbreak with no lab stocks. I think they should sequence the genome, destroy it and assume that if an outbreak happens from some unknown pathogenic refuge, they could always re-isolate the organism from the new victims. It just makes no sense to keep these things when it seems to disappear in the wild.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

-I believe Pickles is talking about Smallpox. It has since, IIRC, gotten back out in the wild, not from labs.

[EPW]

it's one thing to study and store viruses that are or were in the environment, it's quite another thing to enhance those viruses for...any reason really.

[Egbert]

it's one thing to study and store viruses that are or were in the environment, it's quite another thing to enhance those viruses for...any reason really.

Indeed. An extremely dangerous virus can escape in many ways. Earthquake, natural disaster, war, riots, building collapse, carelessness and so forth.