Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, was officially declared eradicated through vaccination by the World Health Organization in 1980 following the last known case in Somalia three years earlier.

Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, was officially declared eradicated through vaccination by the World Health Organization in 1980 following the last known case in Somalia three years earlier.

Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1979 after a successful global vaccination campaign led by the World Health Organization. In Canada, routine smallpox vaccination of children ended in 1972.

But if smallpox has been eradicated, how could it be used as a bioweapon? Stocks of the virus do still exist, kept in two secure labs — one in the U.S. and one in Russia — for research purposes.

Global Smallpox Eradication worker vaccinating a group of local residents, Contonou, Benin, 1968. Image courtesy Centers for Disease Control (CDC). (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) ...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Frozen vials labeled “Smallpox” that were discovered in a freezer at a vaccine research facility in Pennsylvania “contain no trace of virus known to cause smallpox ...

403111 02: An electron micrograph of the smallpox is shown in this 1975 photograph. Drug company Aventis Pasteur announced March 29, 2002 that it would donate to the government 75-90 million doses ...

The fact of smallpox's survival three decades after its eradication through a global program of vaccination, even in maximum-containment, "biosafety level 4" laboratories at the U.S. Centers for ...

It was thought that the virulent disease smallpox has been around for millennia, but new research suggests it was much more recent. A team of researchers led by scientists at McMaster University ...

The smallpox virus samples were found in a building at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, that has been used by the Food and Drug Administration since 1972, according to the CDC.