Bob H. Reinhardt, The End of a Global Pox

On the jacket, Reinhardt’s monograph is described as something different. Instead of ‘offering a “biography” of the disease or employing a triumphalist narrative of a public health victory’, he provides us with a more nuanced tale of national interests, global politics and qualified successes. The author achieves this, and in doing so gives great insights into the evolving nature of the United States’ relationship with smallpox since the Second World War. The book centres on the concept of smallpox being a ‘suitable candidate’ for global eradication. Chapter 1 shows how this was not inevitable. Despite the biological and technological ‘suitability’ of smallpox, it was malaria that America first targeted. Fears of the spread of communism and the burden of disease in areas with American business interests made malaria a bigger priority. By the 1960s, however, new opportunities arose just as malaria eradication was shown to be increasingly unlikely. Chapter 2 describes US involvement in the Smallpox Eradication and Measles Control Program (SMP) in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). The newly-independent world became a political battleground for the States and the Soviet Union, and health care technology was one of the weapons used to curry favour and influence. It also provided young professionals with the Centre for Disease Control an opportunity to cement their professional statuses. SMP allowed public health officials and pharmaceutical companies to experiment with drugs, technologies and techniques that would become central to later eradication efforts

Biological warfare · Economic growth · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public health · Smallpox · Sociology · Vaccination · Victory · World War II · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History of Science and Medicine · Medicine · Law · Virology