Definition for Smallpox virus
From Biology Forums Dictionary
Smallpox (also called variola) is the only disease that has been completely wiped out throughout the world. Smallpox is also potentially one of the most devastating biological weapons ever conceived.
Due to the success of an intense worldwide public health initiative, not one documented naturally occurring case of this highly infectious, deadly disease has occurred since October 26, 1977. (An unvaccinated hospital cook in Somalia was the last person to naturally contract smallpox.) The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared smallpox eradicated in 1980.
At that time, all remaining collected supplies of the smallpox virus were supposed to be destroyed or sequestered in two laboratories, one in the United States and one in Russia. Geopolitical events in the last decade and revelations concerning offensive biological warfare programs by certain foreign governments have raised concern that this virus may have fallen into the hands of other foreign states who might seek to use the virus as a biological weapon.
History of Smallpox
For centuries, smallpox affected political and social agendas. Smallpox epidemics plagued Europe and Asia until 1796, when Edward Jenner tested his theory of disease protection. He did this by inoculating a young boy with material obtained from a milkmaid who was infected with the milder cowpox virus. The success of that experiment led to the development of a vaccine (from vacca, the Latin word for cow). Afterward, the incidence of smallpox infection in Europe steadily declined.
- In the Americas, smallpox severely weakened the native population. They had never been exposed to smallpox, which the European explorers brought with them to the Americas in the 1600s. The British forces at Fort Pitt (later to become Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) purposefully gave smallpox-contaminated blankets and goods to Native Americans during the French and Indian Wars in an attempt to weaken the Native American resistance to colonial expansion. Due to this and through natural spread, the epidemic that followed killed half of the Native American population.
- Once the disease and its method of spread were understood more thoroughly, smallpox vaccination became mandatory in developed countries in the early 1900s. The development of the vaccinia virus, coupled with aggressive immunization, led to the eventual control and eradication of smallpox in 1977.
- Since the last documented "naturally occurring" case in 1977, only 2 deaths from smallpox have been reported (1978 in Birmingham, England). Both deaths were the result of laboratory accidents.