Table of Contents
Why have a whole chapter on smallpox? The reader will know when he reads this chapter and portion of the next. For almost the whole of my career at the laboratory bench—excepting my time as a pathologist during my army service—I worked on poxviruses. Initially, with Macfarlane Burnet at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, I worked on infectious ectromelia, which we were able to rename ‘mousepox’. From 1950 until 1965, I spent most of my time working and writing about myxomatosis, and have written and lectured about it, off and on, ever since. In 1957, I began work on the genetics of vaccinia virus as a simpler laboratory model, with the ultimate goal of studying the genetics of virulence in myxoma virus. This gave some very interesting results, but the problem was much too complex to be solved by the techniques then available. In 1967, I was appointed Director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research and gave up research at the bench and the supervision of research students.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Intensified Smallpox Eradication Program was initiated in 1967, and in 1969 WHO set up a small committee of scientists expert in the laboratory study of poxviruses, called the ‘Informal Group on Monkeypox and Related Viruses’. I was appointed a member of that committee and served as rapporteur at its first meeting in Moscow in 1969 and Chairman for the meetings in 1976, 1978 and 1979. I missed the meetings in 1971 and 1973.
Clearly, as countries appeared to have succeeded in stopping transmission of smallpox within their jurisdictions, there needed to be an independent assessment of these claims, and International Commissions for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication were established. In April 1977, I served on the International Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication in India, where I was appointed rapporteur for the final meeting. In March 1978 I was a member of the International Commission for Certification in several African countries, including Malawi. There were 23 such International Commissions and a few less formal investigations that needed to be consolidated; in October 1977 a large ‘Consultation on the Worldwide Certification of Smallpox Eradication’ was established, and I was appointed Chairman of the Consultation and later, in December 1978 and December 1979, of its successor, the Global Commission for the Certification of the Smallpox Eradication. At its second and final meeting, the Global Commission affirmed that smallpox had indeed been eradicated and produced a substantial report which contained 19 recommendations for WHO responsibilities post-eradication. As Chairman of the Commission, I presented the report and its recommendations to the 33rd World Health Assembly in May 1980, where it was approved unanimously. To put this work into context, I set out below a brief account of the disease and efforts to control it before describing my own involvement in this program.