In 2018, the first drug to treat smallpox, TPOXX (tecovirimat), made by SIGA Technologies, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The fatal disease has been systematically eliminated from the world. The last recorded smallpox death was in 1978. However, one laboratory in America, and other in Russia, store samples of the variola virus under high security, in case the disease might somehow re-emerge. For example, in 2014, several vials of variola were discovered in a storeroom in a government lab in Maryland. It might also be engineered for bioterrorism by modern gene-editing techniques. The U.S. government stockpiled two million treatments—just in case.«