Guarding against a nightmare scenario, FDA approves new drug to counter smallpox outbreak
Whenever the FDA approves a drug, companies usually tout the patient population that it’s going to help. That’s not exactly the case for the most recent approval to come through at the FDA, though.
Tecovirimat, or Tpoxx, treats smallpox, an often fatal infectious disease that was declared eradicated in 1980 by the World Health Organization. But strains of the virus that causes the ailment still exist — there are two known samples stored in labs in Russia and the US, and at least one previous discovery of forgotten vials — which, when unleashed, could cause a lethal pandemic. Add that to the possibility that terrorists can rebuild the virus using gene-editing techniques, and disaster scenarios abound.
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