William Foege, who has died aged 89, was the epidemiologist responsible for devising a successful vaccination strategy in the ...

His containment strategy helped wipe out the disease in the 1970s, one of the world’s greatest public health triumphs. He ...

A Nov. 15 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) from the liberal group Occupy Democrats includes side-by-side images of a child infected with smallpox and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect ...

It all started with an unremarkable trip to grandma’s house in 1970. But two days into the visit, something went terribly wrong. The 9-month-old grandson fell ill. First, a fever. Then, a nasty rash.

In a world of wild talk and fake news, help us stand up for the facts.

Throughout the course of human history, one infectious disease (Figure 1) may account for more deaths than any other, perhaps all others combined. Smallpox mortality falls between 20% and 50%. Until ...

On May 8, 1980, forty-five years ago, the World Health Organization, a part of the United Nations, announced that officials had eradicated smallpox from the world’s population. The last case occurred ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. The Louisiana Purchase was still two years ...

Smallpox was certified eradicated in 1980, but I first learned about the disease's twisty, storied history in 1996 while interning at the World Health Organization. I was a college student fascinated ...

If you watched the riveting HBO miniseries on founding father John Adams, you surely recall the scene in which his wife, Abigail, inoculates her young children against smallpox by inserting pus from ...

If you’ve watched the HBO miniseries on founding father John Adams, you probably recall the scene in which his wife Abigail inoculates her young children against smallpox by inserting pus from an ...