For centuries, the smallpox virus remained one of the most dreaded and deadly diseases to plague mankind. It is a virus that infected and killed the most privileged in society, such as King Louis XV of France, as well as the poorest populations around the globe. Its periodic outbreaks during the 20th century, most notably in India from 1926 to 1930, which left 423,000 people dead, provided the impetus for an all-out effort to eradicate this highly infectious disease. Due to the determined and passionate efforts of Dr. Donald A. Henderson and the World Health Organization, teams of courageous doctors traveled to every corner of the world immunizing children against this lethal disease. As a result, in the United States, routine vaccination against smallpox ended in 1972. Eight years later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization announced that smallpox had been eradicated throughout the world. A medical milestone, the successful elimination of smallpox remains one of the most important events of the last century.
Now, 20 years later, the world has learned that during the 1980s, the former Soviet Union developed the smallpox virus as a biological agent in one of its laboratories. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union and ensuing political and economic chaos heightened many people’s fears that the deadly virus could fall into the malicious hands of a powerful terrorist organization. Although the virus is difficult to manufacture as a biological weapon, this country and the world cannot afford to take a chance that a smallpox outbreak could reoccur somewhere on earth. With the emergence of deadly viruses, such as AIDS, Ebola, Lassa, Monkeypox and Marburg, which modern medicine does not possess any vaccinations to stop, the prospect that smallpox could be reintroduced into human civilization should give us all pause.
The remote possibility that smallpox could be unleashed in the United States or elsewhere has prompted the American government to commit to the production of the smallpox vaccine as a defense against bioterrorism. However, is it enough merely to stockpile the vaccine and use it only in the event of a major outbreak? Given the highly infectious nature of the disease, trying to control and stop the spread of smallpox at the onset of an outbreak could have dire consequences. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people could be infected. Furthermore, the impact on our society and economy would be catastrophic. It would be prudent for us to adopt a pro-active approach and begin to vaccinate our children, the elderly and those whose immune systems are weakened by disease and medications. Inoculating the most vulnerable in our society would at least mitigate the deadly spread of smallpox in the event of an outbreak. It’s time for us to acknowledge that although smallpox could be a grave threat to our civilization, we do have it within our power to prevent the return of this terrible and horrendous disease. Too many of our fellow human beings have fallen victim to this horrific scourge.
