Comment Re:Duh. (Score 1) 248
The paper you are referring to mentions modifying cowpox to become virulent, not rebuilding smallpox from scratch. In fact that is not mentioned at all and that is for a reason - it cannot be done at present. Anyone who says they can rebuild it better put their money where their mouth is and do it with cawpox which is similarly sequenced. Not that they will be able at the tech level of today.
Read the paper again - it goes through how many things we do not know about how smallpox works - the proteins which nobody knows how they work, the inhibition of immune system, etc. By the way, the relationship to HIV is also of considerable interest and there is potential benefit to the humanity as a whole if we find how to study it. If being vaccinated against smallpox or having had smallpox actually confers at least some level of HIV resistance... Hmm... That is an interesting thought... To say the least...