Virology in order to immunize others. In 1717 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu observed the practice in Istanbul and attempted to popularize it in Britain, but encountered considerable resistance. In 1796 Edward Jenner developed a much safer method, using cowpox to successfully immunize a young boy against smallpox, and this practice was widely adopted. Vaccinations against other viral diseases followed, including the successful rabies vaccination by Louis Pasteur in 1886. The nature of viruses however was not clear to these researchers. In 1892, the Russian biologist Dmitry Ivanovsky used a Chamberland filter to try to isolate the bacteria that caused tobacco mosaic
Smallpox who might wish to use virus as means of biological warfare. Specific allegations made against Iraq in this respect proved to be mistaken. Concern has been expressed by some that artificial gene synthesis could be used to recreate the virus from existing digital genomes, for use in biological warfare. Insertion of the synthesized smallpox DNA into existing related pox viruses could theoretically be used to recreate the virus. The first step to mitigating this risk, it has been suggested, should be to destroy the remaining virus stocks so as to enable unequivocal criminalization of any possession of the virus. In