Stay of Execution 推迟销毁天花病毒标本

By Imogen Foulkes, BBC News, Geneva

Some scientists want to keep the virus alive in case they need to create a vaccine

媒体英语会带大家一起学习 BBC 撰稿人在报道世界大事时常用到的单词和短语。

Background: 世界卫生组织成员国在日内瓦开会并投票决定将销毁致命性天花病毒标本的决定再延迟三年。

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 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 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.

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.