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dinated and specific contingency plans between the power companies and the large power users to strengthen the sense of security." The Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (SOCMA), which represents a number of the smalland medium-sized chemical makers of concern to CSHIB, says it has assistance programs already under way. "SOCMA has long been working to educate its members about the Y2K problem," according to SOCMA President Edmund H. Fording Jr. And most of SOCMAs more than 300 member companies are expected to be Y2K compliant by mid-1999. The CSHIB report recommends that one federal agency be made responsible for developing a clearinghouse of Y2K information provided by public and private entities. And it says the government should shield organizations providing information from lawsuits. The report also recommends that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, and other safety agencies develop new outreach campaigns to increase Y2K awareness at small- and mediumsized firms. And it says instrumentation and control vendors should increase their communication efforts. David Hanson
A smallpox dilemma An Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel has released a study describing valuable research that could be done if smallpox virus stocks stored in the U.S. and Russia were not destroyed. IOM's findings are expected to weigh heavily in the deliberations of an interagency panel now struggling with the question of which option— retention or destruction of the U.S.'s frozen cache of virus—to recommend to President Bill Clinton. The secured stocks of the virus are set to be destroyed on June 30 unless the 190 member countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) declare otherwise at their May assembly in Geneva. Since 1996, Russia has made it very clear that it willfightvigorously for retention of the virus. The U.S. has been less decisive. In 1996, it favored destruction but was willing to reconsider that position if other countries had good reason for delay. In 1997, along with the U.K, France, and Italy, the U.S. said it was undecided. Over the years, suspicion has been 8
MARCH 22,1999 C&EN
growing about the existence of clandestine stocks of the variola virus—the pathogen that causes smallpox. Such stocks raise the specter of the virus's use as a terrorist weapon, and some scientists advocate retention so that antiviral drugs and a more widely applicable vaccine against smallpox can be developed. Other scientists argue for destruction, claiming such action would raise the stakes against those rogue nations or groups that would deploy the virus. The last known case of smallpox was in 1977, and in 1980 the disease was declared eradicated worldwide by WHO. The smallpox virus is so infectious and so deadly that since then, if the literature is any indication, little authorized research has been conducted on the securely stored stocks. The IOM panel did not recommend that the stocks be retained—that was not its charge. It did conclude that if the stocks were preserved, research on the live virus could yield new antiviral agents and vaccines, better detection and diagnosis technologies, and a more complete understanding of viral pathogenesis and the human immune system. When most of the world's stocks of smallpox virus were destroyed in the 1980s, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, in Atlanta, retained about 400 strains collected by the U.S., the U.K, Japan, and the Netherlands. About 120 strains were shipped to a scientific institute in Moscow. These were then moved to the State Research Center for Virology & Biotechnology (known as VECTOR), near the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. VECTOR was a Soviet facility for developing and producing biological weapons and part of the larger entity known as Biopreparat, the civilian cover for the secret Soviet biological weapons programs. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin acknowledged that the Soviet Union continued to make biological weapons, even after it joined the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention outlawing development and production but not basic research on these agents. Ken Alibek, formerly the first deputy director of Biopreparat, who defected to the U.S. in 1992 and is now program manager for medical biodefense at Battelle Memorial Institute, Arlington, Va., believes "it would be a significant mistake to destroy the virus. Antiviral products need to be tested against the live virus." But, he says, "it is necessary to create an international lab under United Nations auspices to conduct work on the smallpox virus."
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