I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it's just such a dramatic success.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Smallpox was the worst disease in history. It killed more people than all the wars in history.
In 1967, the world health community launched a global effort to eradicate smallpox. It took a coordinated, worldwide effort, required the commitment of every government, and cost $130 million dollars. By 1977, smallpox had disappeared.
Smallpox, which spreads by respiration and kills roughly one in three of those infected, took hundreds of millions of lives during a recorded history dating to Pharaonic Egypt. The last case was in 1978, and the disease was declared eradicated on May 8, 1980.
Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.
Universal vaccination may well be the greatest success story in medical history.
The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough.
The thing is I think vaccines are one of the greatest medical breakthroughs that we have. I'm a big fan and a great fan of the history of the development of the smallpox vaccine, for example.
You don't have to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the country if you have a couple of cases of smallpox cropping up.
The Ebola epidemic was the most frightening outbreak I have witnessed in my lifetime, and I believe it was necessary to react globally as strongly as we did.
I hope that some day the practice of producing cowpox in human beings will spread over the world - when that day comes, there will be no more smallpox.