SMALLPOX - THE FIRST EVER VACCINE

On May 14, 1796, Edward Jenner, an English country doctor from Gloucestershire, administered the worlds’ first vaccination as a preventative treatment for smallpox, a devastating disease that had killed millions of people over the centuries. As a young medical student Jenner had noticed that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox, never fell ill with smallpox. Cowpox is a disease that causes blistering on the udders of cows and only very mild symptoms in humans. Smallpox, on the other hand, caused severe skin eruptions and dangerous fevers with often fatal consequences.


Jenner thought that if the cowpox was somehow preventing smallpox maybe this protection could be deliberately induced. Seeking to prove his theory, on that historic day in May, he took the fluid from a cowpox blister and scratched it into the skin of an 8 year old boy called James Phipps. A single blister appeared at the inoculation site but James had no other adverse symptoms. On July 1, Jenner inoculated James again, this time with smallpox matter and no disease developed. The vaccine appeared to be a success and doctors all over Europe started using this amazing new idea to protect their patients from the dreadful disease that was ravaging communities at the time. This led to a drastic decline in new cases of smallpox.


In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scientists used this concept to develop new vaccines to fight many other deadly diseases including polio, whooping cough (pertussis), measles, tetanus, yellow fever, hepatitis B and many others. More sophisticated smallpox vaccines were also developed. The last known natural case of smallpox was recorded in Somalia in 1977. The last two lab related  cases of smallpox happened in the University of Birmingham Medical School with a medical photographer called Janet Parker dying from the disease on Sept 11, 1978.  Due to this incident the World Health Organization recommended  all known stocks of smallpox virus  be destroyed or moved to WHO approved labs certified to BSL-4 which represents the highest biosafety level.


In 1980 the WHO announced the eradication of smallpox worldwide - a first in history and due to an unprecedented intensive international collaboration.


In 1986 the WHO recommended destruction of all remaining stocks of smallpox virus but had to change the deadline several times due to resistance from the US & Russia. Since then there has been ongoing debate amongst international scientists and other officials about whether to finally and irreversibly destroy the two last remnants of the virus which reside in government labs in USA & Russia. These are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia and the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR) in Russia. There is also an international supply of the smallpox vaccine which is supposed to be under WHO control.


Advocates of final destruction maintain that there is no longer any valid reason for retaining the samples which remain a hazard . Opponents of final destruction argue that the samples are needed for further research, saying that the smallpox virus may still exist somewhere in the world outside of the two labs, and thus may re-emerge, particularly as a bio-weapon.  One would think that the current owners of the smallpox virus are the most likely to already have tried to develop ways of weaponizing this virus!