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Donald "D.A." Henderson, a physician, educator, and epidemiologist who led the World Health Organization's campaign to eradicate smallpox, died at 87 years of age on Aug. 19, 2016.
Smallpox was responsible for an estimated 300–500 million deaths during the 20th century. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year.
After vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox in 1979. Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest, which was declared eradicated in 2011.
Key to the eradication effort, given an insufficient supply of vaccine to inoculate everyone, was "surveillance-containment":
This technique entailed rapid reporting of cases from all health units and prompt vaccination of household members and close contacts of confirmed cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Henderson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox
2014 Interview: http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-special-henderson/ or use YouTube.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Friday August 26 2016, @02:52PM
But that goal is out of reach for the foreseeable future due to the middle east as they don't trust the vaccinations.
Well I hope they like Polio instead.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday August 26 2016, @03:04PM
I can't really blame them for not trusting vaccinations. Unlike American anti-vaxers where the problem is simply stupidity; the middle east is aware of CIA program(s) where vaccinations are actually for some other sinister purpose. Good job CIA! Undermine trust in vaccination for an entire region of the world. In one particular case a fake vaccination program was actually to collect DNA samples to track down Osama Bin Laden.
I have no love for Osama. But I instantly have deep distrust when I hear "the ends justify the means".
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @03:38PM
But I instantly have deep distrust when I hear "the ends justify the means".
It's fine, and indeed good to distrust it. Just don't complete dismiss it. That's good in theory, but in reality things aren't always so clean.
For example, the UK during WW2, they had cracked German military codes. As such they knew that the Germans were going to bomb a city. You are left with the choice of evacuating the city or not. If you evacuate the city or otherwise increase aerial defenses, you risk letting the Germans know their codes are cracked, which would gravely undermine the war effort and possibly lead to a German victory. If you do not evacuate the city, hundreds of civilians will die. What do you do?
Regardless of your choice, I'm sure you can at least accept that a legitimate argument could be made that the ends of defeating the Third Reich justifies the means of sacrificing a few hundred civilians.
Of course the same argument can be made to justify anything bad ("we need to commit genocide against the Jewish people, for the greater good of the Third Reich") so being suspicious is good... but that it is frequently misused doesn't mean that the argument is fundamentally bad.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday August 26 2016, @03:56PM
For example, the UK during WW2, they had cracked German military codes. As such they knew that the Germans were going to bomb a city. You are left with the choice of evacuating the city or not. If you evacuate the city or otherwise increase aerial defenses, you risk letting the Germans know their codes are cracked, which would gravely undermine the war effort and possibly lead to a German victory. If you do not evacuate the city, hundreds of civilians will die. What do you do?
Move to America.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 26 2016, @04:17PM
Yes, I know there are difficult choices sometimes.
I don't think inflicting diseases on a whole region of the world, because they now distrust vaccines, for valid reasons to distrust, was worth it just to catch Osama Bin Laden.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spook brat on Friday August 26 2016, @04:48PM
There are some intelligence agencies with rules about this kind of thing, kinda like having an institutional conscience. Rules like:
* never impersonate a doctor/medical specialist
* never impersonate clergy
The reason for these rules is that getting caught doing so has easily foreseeable, immediate, long-term negative consequences for the entire global community.
I dare say that the polio virus and the injuries/paralysis/deaths associated with it are a greater threat to regional stability than any one man. Worse, it's not only the polio virus eradication being harmed: that CIA op harmed the effectiveness of all medical treatment in the region.
The arrogance with which the CIA attempted this, under the premise of, "well, we just won't get caught, so no problem" is staggering in its naivete. I have to wonder whether their Old Guard of cold-war operatives have all retired, or if this is how they ran their business back then, too...
Some means cannot be justified, as they have their own ends that will take you places you never want to go. Impersonating doctors in a vaccination campaign is one of them.
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(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @07:24PM
There are some intelligence agencies with rules about this kind of thing
But if you told us which ones, they'd have to kill you?
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Friday August 26 2016, @10:01PM
There are some intelligence agencies with rules about this kind of thing
But if you told us which ones, they'd have to kill you?
Touché!
I can vouch for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and its subsidiaries in the various branches of the U.S. Military, that's all. YMMV with other U.S. agencies, all bets are off when you jump to other nations. There are a few I'd suspect of similar shenanigans, but I'll be polite and keep idle rumors to myself.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 26 2016, @11:49PM
Thank you for the answer and for being a good sport.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2016, @07:07AM
* never impersonate clergy
lol
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday August 26 2016, @04:37PM
Yup, and that's completely illegal under international treaties, too, for precisely the reasons you mentioned. Not that illegality has ever stopped the Central Idiocy Agency.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday August 26 2016, @09:24PM
Some Americans, I'm sure, are also aware of the CIA program(s). Some may even be aware of the Tuskegee experiment [wikipedia.org], the Guatemala syphilis experiment [wikipedia.org] or even other programmes [wikipedia.org] in which people were given injections of dioxin, plutonium, etc.:
From the 1950s to 1972, mentally disabled children at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York were intentionally infected with viral hepatitis, for research whose purpose was to help discover a vaccine. From 1963 to 1966, Saul Krugman of New York University promised the parents of mentally disabled children that their children would be enrolled into Willowbrook in exchange for signing a consent form for procedures that he claimed were "vaccinations." In reality, the procedures involved deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of patients infected with the disease.
Some anti-vaxxers keep going on about the contamination [nih.gov] of polio vaccines with SV40 [wikipedia.org] (short for "simian virus 40"), an honest mistake that was corrected all the way back in 1978!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 29 2016, @01:55PM
Anti-vaxxers are not looking for a rational reason. They are looking for a rationalization. An excuse. Any excuse will do. A decades old mistake is good enough. If not that, then something fictional, made up, will do just as well.
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(Score: 1) by butthurt on Monday August 29 2016, @03:06PM
Of course. That's why I made those things up.