Forgotten vials of smallpox found in FDA storage room

Federal researchers stumbled upon several forgotten vials of smallpox last week that they believe date back to the 1950s. The vials have been sitting in a Food and Drug Administration laboratory in Maryland, properly labeled but located in an unused storage room where they've apparently sat unnoticed for decades. That could have been a major problem: smallpox has been eradicated from the globe, and because of international agreements, samples of the virus are only supposed to reside in two specific locations — one in the US and one in Russia.

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