Does the govt. still store measles or smallpox?

Deadly smallpox was in at least two of the vials NIH employees found in unused storage room, the CDC says. Smallpox has been eradicated since the 1980s. read more

There may be some other unrecorded samples around. In 2013 cloned variola DNA was found in a South African laboratory and in 2014 six vials of smallpox virus discovered at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. Numerous labs around the world have measles virus strains that are used in the production of vaccine. read more

Samples of the smallpox (variola) virus are kept, deep frozen in liquid nitrogen, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repository in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. They have 451 different variola samples. read more

There is a vaccine against smallpox that was a key tool in the eradication of the disease. This vaccine does not contain the variola virus which causes smallpox, but a closely related virus called vaccinia. When this vaccine is given to humans, it protects them against smallpox. read more

The government is stockpiling the drug to be used in the event of a bioterrorist attack alongside the smallpox vaccine. Smallpox is a highly contagious disease caused by the virus Variola. For thousands of years, smallpox was a serious threat, killing about thirty percent of people infected. read more