For smallpox as it existed in his time, perhaps. Remember that it took decades of effort to slowly box in smallpox with widespread vaccinations - and not only have many of those vaccinations worn off, but there are millions upon millions of children and young adults who have never been vaccinated - so any re-eradication process could take months or years.
However, if some idiot genetically engineers new traits into smallpox, then it could be a really nasty bioweapon.
How does he know?
But he's right about the spreading. Naturally humans lived with it for millienia without flu-like spreading. However, unnatural means of spread might be a problem.
No, actually he doesn't.
Ken Alibek, who directed bioweapons research for the Soviets, claims that at one point they were manufacturing over 10 tons of weaponized smallpox per year.
"There's no reason to believe that any of our enemies has smallpox virus. Nobody has any evidence that any of our enemies has smallpox virus as contrasted with 1972 when we knew our enemy did have smallpox virus," he said.
The good doctor would do well to familiarize himself with the story of the demon in the freezer.
The Bush Administration is getting ready to produce tens of millions of doses of smallpox vaccine and make it widely available to the public.
Now why do you suppose they would want to do that?
I think it's just as likely, if not more than likely, that this guy gets it:
Smallpox threat scares Sandia expert
Speaking to a gathering of emergency personnel and terrorism specialists in Albuquerque on Thursday, Zelicoff said he believes the Soviets engineered strains of smallpox that are airborne, resistant to vaccines and spread very rapidly.
"Those strains weren't destroyed," he said. "We don't have any idea where they are. The prime researcher working on them retired and spent the rest of his life in a country other than Russia.
"I'll leave it to your fertile imagination to figure out where that is."