Like many of my generation, I bear on my upper arm a small souvenir of my very small contribution to one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of medicine. Rather faded now, it is the small circular scar caused by a smallpox vaccination I received as a child. I received that vaccination as part of a 20-year long global effort that finally eradicated the disease in 1980.
Evidence of smallpox has been found in Egyptian mummies, and throughout history it was endemic worldwide, occasionally breaking out in epidemics that would claim the lives of a third of those it infected. When introduced to the Americas through European contact, it literally depopulated the two continents, killing countless millions of Indigenous people and devastating entire civilizations. But variolation and vaccination (beginning in the 19th century) worked.
Smallpox is one of only two infectious diseases that we have been able to systematically and deliberately eliminate. The other one is rinderpest, a measles-like disease of cattle and related hoofed animals. We are also tantalizingly close to eliminating polio, but that disease is still present in conflict areas of Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The small pox vaccination was part of my generation’s contribution to ensuring not only our own health, but the health of others in our immediate community and across the planet. Those who choose to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a disease that has cost the lives of millions worldwide, are also making an important contribution to the health of everyone in our global society.