HC Deb 08 March 1976 vol 907 c110W
Mr. Patrick Jenkin

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if she will make a statement on her policy with regard to the preservation or destruction of stocks of smallpox virus in establishments for which she is responsible.

Dr. Owen

Limited diagnostic facilities need to be preserved until it is certain that the disease of smallpox has been eradicated from the world. Stocks of the virus, which are held for this purpose by the Public Health Laboratory Service, are kept to a minimum. Whether smallpox virus held in research laboratories throughout the world should be destroyed once smallpox as a disease of man has been eradicated is a matter on which the WHO's advice will be sought first and in the light of this advice decisions will have to be taken in this country.