Dead viruses tell no tales

A "kumbabhishekam" is in the works for a temple in the old country. In grandmother's village.  That temple is dedicated to the god(dess) who, according to the believers, protected them from the dreaded small pox.

Belief and faith continue despite the knowledge that it is not any god or goddess who protects the people or curses them with pox. It is not any god who worked to eliminate small pox; recall this post from a few months ago after reading Dr. D.A. Henderson's obituary?  About how he worked in godawful conditions in India to wipe the virus off the face of the earth?

No, this post is not to beat up on faith.  This being a new year, I want to celebrate. By noting something extraordinary.

It took a major Ebola epidemic that led to more than 11,000 deaths, but we now finally have a successful Ebola vaccine candidate in development. If approved, the vaccine would vastly reduce the likelihood of ever seeing another major Ebola outbreak.

You can imagine my excitement here--given my posts here on the urgency to address the awful disease.  I urged here, and on Facebook, to donate to MSF for their phenomenal service during that epidemic.  Thrilled I am with this news.

[The researchers] decided to try something called "ring vaccination," a public health method used to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. It involves immunizing the immediate contacts — friends, family, housemates, neighbors — of a person who falls ill with a virus to create a protective ring around them to stop transmission.
As soon as a new Ebola case was diagnosed, the researchers traced all their contacts for a total of 117 clusters (or "rings"), each made up of about 80 people. They then randomized the rings of people to get the vaccine either right after their friend or family member had been diagnosed or after a three-week delay.
Their preliminary results were so positive that the researchers changed the trial design so that everyone got the vaccine immediately, including children.

Yep, the same public health method that was used by Dr. Henderson in his remarkable war against small pox.

It is remarkable how such progress happens despite all the horrible politicians and governments.  One can only imagine how much the world would have been a better place if only we humans had at least a little bit of an understanding of our fleeting existence here and, therefore, our priorities.  Oh well; stupid is as stupid does!

I hope this Ebola vaccine delivers what it promises.  And I wish that the success will energize the search for something like a vaccine that can stop dead another dreaded ailment--malaria.

For now, this news about the Ebola vaccine is good enough for me to wish you all a happy new year!

Join me in saying thanks

There is one page in the Economist that I always check out first.  It is the last page.

When you have been reading a magazine long enough, you check out your favorite sections first.  I start with the last page of the Economist.  What's there?  An obit essay.

Yep. About somebody who died.  Almost always, the person who died would have done something wonderfully constructive.  Sometimes, the obit is to be thankful that an awful person is no more. It is in this latter category that I hope to read about Mugabe really, really soon.

When it is about a constructive contribution, often the person is one who is not really a household name. Which is all the more that I love that last page.  Like this time.  It was about Donald Ainslie (“D.A.”) Henderson.  Up until I read this, I had no idea about this Henderson!

As a teenager, Henderson became obsessed with smallpox after the virus re-visited New York City, which panicked the residents. 

He wanted to study the causes, spread and suppression of epidemics. Rather than serve in the army he joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Communicable Disease Centre in Atlanta, for what he called “firefighter” training. As soon as a disease broke out anywhere in the world, he would dash to tackle it—becoming a proper “shoe-leather” epidemiologist, as opposed to a “shiny-pants” desk-bound sort. When he was hauled away from his anti-smallpox work in west Africa and sent to Geneva for the WHO in 1967, at 38, he wasn’t thrilled. But if they wanted the world rid of the virus in ten years, he would give it his best shot.

From the stories I have heard from my father and grandmothers, smallpox was one mighty enemy that people feared.  A cousin of my father's was a typical survivor, with scars on his face as evidence of the battle.  By the time we kids came along, the worry was only about chickenpox.  We owe it all to Dr. Henderson and his “surveillance-containment” towards "Target Zero":

Problems rose up constantly. In Ethiopia, rebels attacked the vaccinators. Afghanistan brought deep snow and no maps. In Bangladesh trucks could not cross the bamboo bridges; in India mourners had to be stopped from floating smallpox corpses down the Ganges. He experienced most of this himself, frequently decamping from cramped Geneva armed with “Scottish wine” (his favourite medicine) to urge on the troops. Out in the trenches he also faced the full horror of what he was fighting. At a hospital in Dhaka the stench of leaking pus, the pustule-covered hands stretched towards him, the flies clustering on dying eyes, convinced him anew that he had to win this war.

The last recorded case was in 1977.  A decade after he was appointed to the job, Henderson did rid of the world of this monster.

To borrow from Einstein, we are standing on the shoulders of giants who made our lives so easy.  

Thanks, Dr. Henderson.