To remember smallpox hero Donald Henderson, roll up your sleeve.
Ahero of humanity left us last week, a doctor who forever will be known by what no longer haunts the world: smallpox.
Donald A. Henderson died in Baltimore at age 87, four decades after the U.S. government and the World Health Organization assigned him the Herculean task of ending one of humankind’s worst scourges.
During its 12,000-year rampage, which began with cave people and persisted into the late 20th century, smallpox killed at least 300 million and perhaps a half-billion people. Children suffered disproportionately: the disease killed about 80 percent of children and up to 60 percent of adults who got infected, while leaving other victims blind, maimed or otherwise disfigured.
The virus easily spread person to person and through common objects such as clothing and blankets. Patients experienced intense pain when the rock-hard, pelletlike rash erupted — an event ancient doctors graphically described as “the splitting.” Other symptoms included high fevers, muscle aches and convulsions, especially in young people.
A 1921 article in the science journal Colorado Medicine noted that Denver had seen recent cases, but a real outbreak had been halted thanks to widespread use of the vaccine — which had been discovered and proven in 1796 by British physician Edward Jenner (another medical hero whose name should be more widely praised). The same article said some Denver residents resisted inoculations because they feared the side effects, but the journal noted that the perils of getting the disease vastly outweighed the small percentage of bad reactions.
Today, though, smallpox has vanished, with the only two known virus samples contained in U.S. and Russian research labs. The world can in large part thank Dr. Henderson.
In 1966, Henderson began a global effort to identify smallpox outbreaks, rush vaccines to the location, and inoculate or isolate everyone who had come into contact with the infected patient — a practice he described as drawing a “ring” around the area where the disease had been found. The last smallpox case was identified in 1977, and by 1980 the World Health Organization declared smallpox vanquished. The dedicated effort took just 14 years to eradicate a disease people had feared for millennia.
Joining Henderson in the remarkable venture were other medical heroes such as William H. Foege, J. Michael Lane and an army of international volunteers. The “ring vaccination” technique since has successfully curbed polio and other contagious diseases.
How ironic that debate over vaccines continues in the 21st century. A small percentage of patients may react badly to some vaccines, but generally the dangers associated with getting contagious diseases that still exist — rubella, whooping cough and others — far outstrip the risks of inoculation for most patients. Research also has debunked any link between childhood vaccinations and autism.
To honor Henderson and his public health colleagues, most of us should, at the appropriate ages, keep rolling up our sleeves.