TEXTO:
Member states of the World Health Organization
(WHO), meeting in Geneva, have voted to postpone for a
further three years a decision on whether to destroy the
last remaining stocks of the deadly smallpox virus.
[5] Smallpox was eradicated in 1979 but two stocks
of live smallpox virus remain. For years the debate over
what to do with them has raged. In Geneva developing
countries argued it was high time to destroy all known
samples of a virus which in the past claimed millions of
[10] lives.
But the United States and Russia, the two countries
which hold the virus samples, wanted to keep them for
at least another five years saying that if smallpox ever
re-emerged, either by accident or even deliberately, the
[15] samples could be needed to create a vaccine.
That argument seemed finally after days of division
to sway member states, and they approved a
compromise — postponing a decision on destroying the
virus samples for another three years.
[20] And so the fate of one of the world’s deadliest
viruses is still not decided and the debate over whether
the world is safer with it, or without it, will continue.
<www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2011/05/ 110527witnsmallpox.shtm>. Acesso em: 13 out. 2014.
The argument of the countries that keep the smallpox virus samples against their destruction
