I’ve always admired medical wizards who, in dire circumstances like the recent COVID-19 epidemic, somehow come up with ...

Columnist Patrice Apodaca talks to a pediatric infectious diseases expert about why measles outbreaks among children are a ...

George Washington confronted a smallpox epidemic with a belief in science—and a controversial plan. George Washington strikes a confident pose after the victorious Battle of Princeton in this ...

April 1789: A major smallpox epidemic breaks out. In April 1789, 15 months after the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay, a major smallpox epidemic broke out. The Europeans who’d arrived in 1788 had ...

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Glasgow was plagued by "frequent and devastating" outbreaks. Between 1783 and 1800, smallpox was responsible for 20% of all deaths in the city.

The last case of smallpox in the U.S. occurred in 1949. However, the disease persisted in many parts of the world. In the 1960s, the WHO agreed to a global vaccination program to eradicate smallpox.

image: Dr. Zhilong Yang, an associate professor in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, served on a national committee that studied the threat of a new smallpox outbreak.

The report says U.S. population changes and advancements in gene editing and synthesis technologies have drastically altered the potential for a smallpox outbreak or attack in recent years. It is now ...

To me, that has to be connected.” As the smallpox vaccine became widespread, the last U.S. natural outbreak of smallpox was in 1949. Then, health specialists looked to wipe it out globally.

Researchers studying a smallpox outbreak in Yugoslavia in 1972 in which 175 were infected and 35 died found that 105 people, or 60% of those infected, were previously vaccinated for smallpox.

Is that why we’re seeing a monkeypox outbreak now? Possibly. Scientists speculate that the end of widespread smallpox vaccination in the 1970s may have contributed to today’s outbreak.

The simulator is a data visualization tool designed to help governments around the world test and prepare for smallpox outbreaks. While vaccines eradicated smallpox some four decades ago, small ...