I'm always for more research and especially research that will clarify why smallpox is such a highly lethal disease compared to monkeypox, which has not appeared to be so compared to vaccinia which is actually the vaccine given to prevent smallpox, which is not very different from smallpox. I think those issues are very important issues. They get at the heart of what makes a virus pathogenic, or what makes a virus dangerous to humans and those issues do need to be clarified and figured out. Perhaps that's hardly surprising since he chaired the committee that 17 years ago was able to pronounce smallpox gone from the face of the earth. In his view, the monkeypox argument for keeping the smallpox virus is unconvincing.
Smallpox is a much more dangerous virus if it ever got loose, than monkeypox.
Monkeypox is after all, in the wild now, and can't be got rid of. And that investigation into monkeypox was prepared by Rae Fry.