Fears within the US administration were heightened following wide circulation of The Cobra Event, a fictional account of a bio-terrorist attack on New York. The book, published in the late-1990s, mentions smallpox as a real threat. A small UK biotechnology company, Peptide Therapeutics of Cambridge, will make a stockpile of smallpox vaccine to be used on civilians if the virus is ever released. Plans are under way to produce a separate batch for the military. Peptide plans to market the vaccine to other governments, including Israel.
Smallpox is highly infectious, fatal in a third of cases.
It is estimated to have killed 500m people in the first 75 years of the 20th century. The disease was eradicated using a modified form of a vaccine developed by Edward Jenner, a British scientist, in 1796. Jenner made a vaccine using scabs from the hands of milkmaids after noticing that they rarely suffered from the facial scarring associated with smallpox. The disease probably resided in cow udders. Peptide's vaccine, which should be ready in 2004, is based on the related vaccinia virus strain.