Smallpox as a Bioweapon?

Bioterrorism is one of the biggest threats to public health today. The fact that there are people out there who possess the power to release a dangerous virus to the American people is very scary. It was a great success to find a vaccine that cured smallpox but the fact that it is no longer commonly used could directly lead to a terrorist attack. We have to understand that the U.S. has plenty of enemies in the world that know how lethal an attack with bioweapons could be and would surely unleash it under the right circumstance. This would create an epidemic of smallpox if it were unleashed in the right urban locations and there would not be much we could do about it.

I personally don't believe that there will be an attack like this on the U.S. If there was it would surely change the landscape of the entire world. The implications of an attack of that magnitude would change so many things worldwide including foreign relations, the economy, politics, there is so many things that would become unstable. While I don't believe that it is going to happen that doesn't mean that we should be unprepared. We understand that it is a threat and could happen so building up a response sooner rather than later can't hurt. A resurgence of Smallpox would be devastating for our country and I think that having a plan for if it were to happen is a really good idea.

There has been plenty of times that a break through in public health that have led to unexpected consequences. The first thing that pops into my head is teaching sex education in schools. While I believe it is important that kids are taught sex education it has not done much to help the fact that teen pregnancy is still a major problem in this country. Kids are still experimenting if not more so than before they were learning about sexuality in schools.