Smallpox historical perspective

Up until 1977, smallpox has been a very prevalent part of human history. The disease is estimated to be at least 16,000 years old and played a major role in the history of Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, etc. The first clinical evidence of the diseases was found in an Egyptian mummy, Ramses V. Smallpox has also been used as a weapon throughout history. The most recent example was the weaponization of smallpox during World War II.

Biological weapon
In World War II, scientists from the United Kingdom and the United States were involved in research into producing a biological weapon from smallpox. Plans of large scale production were never carried through as they considered that the weapon would not be very effective due to the wide-scale availability of a vaccine.

The first smallpox weapons factory in the Soviet Union was established in 1947 in the city of Zagorsk, close to Moscow. It was produced by injecting small amounts of the virus into chicken eggs. An especially virulent strain (codenamed India-1967 or India-1) was brought from India in 1967 by a special Soviet medical team that was sent to India to help to eradicate the virus. The pathogen was manufactured and stockpiled in large quantities throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during its testing in the 1970s. General Prof. Peter Burgasov, former Chief Sanitary Physician of the Soviet Army, and a senior researcher within the Soviet program of biological weapons described this incident:
 * “On Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea, the strongest recipes of smallpox were tested. Suddenly I was informed that there were mysterious cases of mortalities in Aralsk. A research ship of the Aral fleet came 15 km away from the island (it was forbidden to come any closer than 40 km). The lab technician of this ship took samples of plankton twice a day from the top deck. The smallpox formulation— 400 gr. of which was exploded on the island—”got her” and she became infected. After returning home to Aralsk, she infected several people including children. All of them died. I suspected the reason for this and called the Chief of General Staff of Ministry of Defense and requested to forbid the stop of the Alma-Ata—Moscow train in Aralsk. As a result, the epidemic around the country was prevented. I called Andropov, who at that time was Chief of KGB, and informed him of the exclusive recipe of smallpox obtained on Vozrazhdenie Island.”

A production line to manufacture smallpox on an industrial scale was launched in the Vector Institute in 1990. The development of genetically altered strains of smallpox was presumably conducted in the Institute under leadership of Dr. Sergei Netyosov in the middle of the 1990s, according to Kenneth Alibek, although this has never been proven due to the classified nature of the program


 * Chimera (virus)

Famous victims
Famous victims of this disease include Date Masamune of Japan (who lost an eye to the disease), Ramses V, the Shunzhi Emperor and Tongzhi Emperor of China (official history), Mary II of England, Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria and Peter II of Russia. Guru Har Krishan 8th Guru of the Sikhs in 1664, Peter III of Russia in 1744 and Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Joseph Stalin, who was badly scarred by the disease early in life, often had photographs retouched to make his pockmarks less apparent.

Families prominent in history often had several people fall victim to the disease. For example, several relatives of Henry VIII survived the disease but were scarred by it. These include his sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland, his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, and his daughter, Elizabeth I of England in 1562. His son and heir Edward VI died very shortly after apparently recovering from the disease. Some scholars assert that his death may have been due to complications from smallpox. A more distant relative Mary Queen of Scots contracted the disease as a child but had no visible scarring. Deaths from smallpox often impacted dynastic succession. Louis XV of France succeeded his great-grandfather through a series of deaths of smallpox or measles among those earlier in the succession line and himself died of the disease in 1774.

Smallpox in popular culture
Smallpox 2002, a drama involving a fictional worldwide pandemic of smallpox unleashed by a lone bio-terrorist, was broadcast on the BBC on 5 February, 2002. Shown just months after the September 11th terrorist attacks and the anthrax scares that followed, the film drew widespread criticism in the press, based mainly on the belief that an outbreak on that scale could not be caused by a single person's touch, and the film-makers were accused of deliberately trying to provoke fear in the minds of viewers. The book Code Orange, a teen realistic fiction book was also written about the smallpox epidemic of 1902 in Boston