Smallpox is likely the worst infectious disease of all time killing an estimated 300 million people in the 19th century alone. It is a terrifying killer, with a death rate as high as 33% and the survivors carrying lifelong scars. British medical doctor, Edward Jenner, is credited with inventing smallpox vaccination - the world's first immunization. On May 14th 1796, Jenner collected secretions from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid and rub them at the scratches he made on the skin of an eight-year-old boy. Then about a month later, he injected the boy with secretions from a lesion on a smallpox patient. The child did not get smallpox, he was immune. Jenner termed his technique vaccination, which comes from the Latin term for cow, vacca. Medical doctors began vaccinating people with special two prong needles and eventually smallpox was eradicated worldwide. The last case was documented on October 26th 1977. Eradication represents one of the greatest triumphs of modern medicine, but smallpox virus itself still exists. Stocks are kept frozen in secure laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta Georgia and in the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia. Imagine you are assigned to be a part of a team tasked to determine what to do with the world's remaining stores of smallpox virus. Given that this is a public health problem related to the field of microbiology and infectious disease control and prevention, address the following: Should laboratories keep them? Or should they be destroyed? In other words should we intentionally make a species extinct forever? What facts do you need to make an informed decision? If the decision were to be made today, how would you vote?
Smallpox is likely the worst infectious disease of all time killing an estimated 300 million people in the 19th century alone. It is a terrifying killer, with a death rate as high as 33% and the survivors carrying lifelong scars. British medical doctor, Edward Jenner, is credited with inventing smallpox vaccination - the world's first immunization. On May 14th 1796, Jenner collected secretions from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid and rub them at the scratches he made on the skin of an eight-year-old boy. Then about a month later, he injected the boy with secretions from a lesion on a smallpox patient. The child did not get smallpox, he was immune. Jenner termed his technique vaccination, which comes from the Latin term for cow, vacca. Medical doctors began vaccinating people with special two prong needles and eventually smallpox was eradicated worldwide. The last case was documented on October 26th 1977. Eradication represents one of the greatest triumphs of modern medicine, but smallpox virus itself still exists. Stocks are kept frozen in secure laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta Georgia and in the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia. Imagine you are assigned to be a part of a team tasked to determine what to do with the world's remaining stores of smallpox virus. Given that this is a public health problem related to the field of microbiology and infectious disease control and prevention, address the following: Should laboratories keep them? Or should they be destroyed? In other words should we intentionally make a species extinct forever? What facts do you need to make an informed decision? If the decision were to be made today, how would you vote?
