This group was appointed by WHO on the recommendation of the meeting of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication in December 1978 (see below), to continue investigations into possible animal reservoirs of variola virus and determine the importance to humans of monkeypox and whitepox viruses. It was reported that application of the relatively new technique of restriction endonuclease analysis had shown that all the 'whitepox' viruses and some of the white variants of monkeypox virus isolated in the Moscow laboratory were indistinguishable from variola virus. However, none of a large number of white variants isolated from monkeypox virus by Dr K. R. Dumbell in London had the restriction endonuclease maps or phenotypic characteristics of 'whitepox' virus. Plans were made for continued research on these problems.