Tag Archives: Smallpox

J. Michael Lane, a globe-trotting epidemiologist who waged a 13-year war against the scourge of smallpox and led the final drive for its global eradication in 1977, when the last known vestige of the disease was snuffed out in East Africa, died on Wednesday at his home in Atlanta. He …

The evolution of the deadliest virus in human history — smallpox — is only partly understood. Like the novel coronavirus and many other disease-causing viruses, smallpox seems to have originated in animals, probably rodents, and spilled over to humans, probably thousands of years ago. In the 20th century alone it …