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Speaker 1: We heard a lot about coronaviruses over the past few years,

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Speaker 1: really a lot, maybe too much, definitely more than we

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Speaker 1: ever expected to hear, But we heard a lot less

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Speaker 1: about other viruses. And viruses are amazing. Viruses are older

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Speaker 1: than animals, they're older than plants. Some scientists think viruses

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Speaker 1: may be the origin of all life on Earth. Viruses

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Speaker 1: have been infecting humans, sometimes invisibly, sometimes with terrible consequences,

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Speaker 1: for as long as there have been humans. The story

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Speaker 1: of viruses is the story of humanity survival as a species,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to tell some of those viral stories

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Speaker 1: on this podcast. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is Incubation,

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Speaker 1: a show about the other viruses. It's about science and

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Speaker 1: about culture. It's about how viruses attack people and how

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Speaker 1: people fight back. On each episode of Incubation, we're going

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Speaker 1: to tell the story of one virus, and we're starting

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Speaker 1: off with one of the deadliest viruses in history, smallpox.

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Speaker 1: Smallpox stalked humanity for thousands of years. It gave people

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Speaker 1: rashes and blisters all over their bodies, and often it

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Speaker 1: killed them. Smallpox killed hundreds of millions of people, but

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Speaker 1: we humans fought back in profound and brilliant ways. Our

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Speaker 1: episode today starts with the story of Edward Jenner, a

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Speaker 1: doctor in the British countryside, and it ends centuries later

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Speaker 1: with thousands of people working together to wipe smallpox from

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Speaker 1: the face of the earth. My first guest today is

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Speaker 1: Gareth Williams. He's the author of Angel of Death, the

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Speaker 1: Story of Smallpox, and Gareth he knows a lot about

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Speaker 1: Edward Jenner.

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Speaker 2: He was a great fields naturalist, and he also worked

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Speaker 2: out something about the migration of birds, which was completely

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Speaker 2: unknown before that. People thought that swallows went off and

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Speaker 2: hid in mud under riverbanks and things like this.

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Speaker 1: I read that he built a hydrogen balloon that flew

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Speaker 1: twelve miles, That he played the violin, that he wrote poetry.

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Speaker 2: He did all the above. He played the flute I

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Speaker 2: think rather bet, and he played the fiddle. He sang.

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Speaker 2: He had a good singing voice. I can recite one

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Speaker 2: of his poems if you'd like it.

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Speaker 1: Of course, give it to me, okay.

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Speaker 2: That he wrote it when a man called doctor Weight

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Speaker 2: died and doctor Weight had made medicinal gingerbread biscuits gingerbread nuts,

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Speaker 2: which not only tasted good but actually killed intestinal worms,

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Speaker 2: talking about tapeworms and things that around to twenty feet

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Speaker 2: or more. So here's a put on the death of

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Speaker 2: doctor Weight. It begins with the Latin names of the

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Speaker 2: worms Ascarides, Tearies, Lumbricki, and all he Kyle sucking insects

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Speaker 2: that tremblingly crawl. No more be afraid You're quite safe

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Speaker 2: in our gun, for Dr Waite has finished making his

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Speaker 2: gingerbread nuts.

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Speaker 1: So in addition to writing poems about nuts, non trivially,

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Speaker 1: Jenner also invented the first vaccine in human history. Let's

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Speaker 1: talk about that. That's really what we're here to talk

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Speaker 1: about today. He's born in seventeen forty nine. He's growing

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Speaker 1: up in England in the you know, second half of

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Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds. What would his experience of smallpox have.

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Speaker 2: Been in Jenner's day? If you got smallpox and you

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Speaker 2: had roughly a one in three chants of getting it

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Speaker 2: during your lifetime, then you had about a one in

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Speaker 2: four chance of being killed by it. He went to

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Speaker 2: boarding school when he was eight. Both his parents had

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Speaker 2: died by then, and he had to be protected against

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Speaker 2: smallpox which had broken out nearby.

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Speaker 1: And this thing happens to him where somebody, if I

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Speaker 1: understand right, cuts open his arm and puts dried out

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Speaker 1: pus from a smallpox patient into the cut on Jenner's arm.

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Speaker 1: What's going on there?

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Speaker 2: This was what was called variolation. And variola is the

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Speaker 2: Latin word for speckled or spotted. It's the old name

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Speaker 2: for small pox, and it's the name of the virus

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Speaker 2: that causes small pox, of Variola virus. And in brief,

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Speaker 2: varilation was giving healthy people, usually children, the real thing

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Speaker 2: in the hope that the artificial infection wouldn't kill them

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Speaker 2: and that it would somehow leave them protected against future

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Speaker 2: attacks of naturally acquired small pox. It was about a

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Speaker 2: one in fifty mortality, so very very much lower. You

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Speaker 2: got a little bit of small pox pus from one

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Speaker 2: of those revolting blisters that covered people in the tens

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Speaker 2: and thousands, and you would scratch a little bit of

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Speaker 2: that revolting fluid into the skin on the arm of

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Speaker 2: a healthy child.

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Speaker 1: Does it work?

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Speaker 2: It's mad, bad, crazy, dangerous, sounds completely counterintuitive. The amazing

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Speaker 2: thing is it did work, very much so. And the

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Speaker 2: other thing is that if you were variolated, even if

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Speaker 2: you survived while you had your artificial dose of smallpox.

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Speaker 2: You have the real thing. So even though you might

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Speaker 2: get over it in two or three weeks, you could

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Speaker 2: spread it to other non immune people, you know, people

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Speaker 2: going back into the community, causing little mini outbreaks of

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Speaker 2: smallpox and killing lots of other people bi collateral damage.

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Speaker 1: Wow. So okay, So this is the world. Jenner is

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Speaker 1: born into the world where you can either get smallpox

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Speaker 1: and a good chance of dying from it if you

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Speaker 1: get it, or if you're sort of lucky in a

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Speaker 1: weird way, you can get variolated and have a non

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Speaker 1: trivial chance of getting and dying of smallpox and maybe

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Speaker 1: spreading it to other people. That was it. Those were

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Speaker 1: the options.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: How does he go from being an eight year old

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Speaker 1: boy getting very related to inventing the first vaccine in

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Speaker 1: the world.

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Speaker 2: Okay, if you want the conventional story, yeah.

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Speaker 1: I feel like you're gonna give me two stories. One

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Speaker 1: is it Jenner classic, So give me Jenner clas.

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Speaker 2: The Jena classic is he is a medical apprentice in

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Speaker 2: his early teens and he meets a milkmaid small pox

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Speaker 2: has reappeared nearby, and she allegedly says to him, look, Gov,

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Speaker 2: you don't need to worry about me having that, because

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Speaker 2: I've had cowpox and that means that I can never

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Speaker 2: ever catch smallpox. And this was complete news to January,

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Speaker 2: never come across it. But it was also complete news

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Speaker 2: to all his teachers. It simply wasn't part of conventional

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Speaker 2: medical knowledge. It was common knowledge in the farming community.

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Speaker 1: It was folk knowledge that had not sort of crossed

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Speaker 1: over to kind of high brow medical knowledge.

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Speaker 2: A lot of people didn't want to believe it because

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Speaker 2: it had come up from the peasantry.

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Speaker 1: Interesting, so you're saying, that's kind of the classic tale.

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Speaker 1: Do you think it's true.

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Speaker 2: I'd like to believe it's true. The alternative story is

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Speaker 2: that one of Jenna's medical colleagues in Thornbury was actually

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Speaker 2: a variolator, very successful one, and he noted, apparently independently,

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Speaker 2: that some people that he valulated the varulation didn't take.

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Speaker 2: In otherwords, there was no sign that they'd caught this

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Speaker 2: artificial dose of smallpox. And this man is called John Fuster.

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Speaker 2: And story B if you like, is that it was

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Speaker 2: actually Feusta who made the original observation. Jenna was a

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Speaker 2: close friend of his, and Jenna may have decided to

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Speaker 2: pick up on it. Feusa didn't want to pursue it

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Speaker 2: because he was making so much money as a valulator.

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Speaker 2: He didn't see the need for any particular improvement.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so Jenner has this idea, whether it's from the

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Speaker 1: milkmaid or from his colleague, this idea that cow pox,

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Speaker 1: which we should say is not a deadly disease in humans, right,

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Speaker 1: can protect humans against a smallpox. What does he do

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Speaker 1: with this idea.

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Speaker 2: Well, he doesn't do anything with it for over thirty years.

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Speaker 2: He goes off he finishes his medical studies in London.

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Speaker 2: In seventeen ninety six, he gets the idea of collecting

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Speaker 2: cases of people who've had cowpox and look to see

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Speaker 2: if they appeared to be protected against smallpox. And he

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Speaker 2: collects a number of cases and the story appears to

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Speaker 2: be true. And then he moves beyond that to actually

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Speaker 2: test the hypothesis that giving somebody an artificial dose of

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Speaker 2: cowpox will protect them against smallpox. The killer and his

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Speaker 2: first guinea pig is his gardener's son, James Phipps. And

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Speaker 2: the ethics might be regarded as a bit dodgy, because

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Speaker 2: back then, if you were the gardener's son, then you

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Speaker 2: were effectively the property of the Lord of the manor

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Speaker 2: III Jenna, and he introduced cowpox into the arm of

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Speaker 2: James Phipps, who was eight years old. And what Jenna

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Speaker 2: did was to find a case of cowpox with a

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Speaker 2: lovely juicy cowpox blister on the back of her hand.

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Speaker 2: He stuck a lancid in that collected the juice and

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Speaker 2: scratched the cowpox juice into the arm of James Phipps,

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Speaker 2: and that all went well. The lad got a bit

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Speaker 2: of a local reaction, he got a bit of a fever.

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Speaker 2: Two weeks later he was back to normal. So Jenna

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Speaker 2: now has to test his hypothesis to see if the

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Speaker 2: lad is protected against smallpox. The killer gave him a

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Speaker 2: small dose of smallpox and it didn't take So that,

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Speaker 2: if you like, was the Eureka moment.

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Speaker 1: So he just invented the first vaccine in the history

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Speaker 1: of the world, a vaccine against maybe the most deadly

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Speaker 1: infectious disease. Truly one of the great discoveries in the

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Speaker 1: history of medicine and the history of public health. What's

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Speaker 1: the first thing he does to try and tell the world.

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Speaker 2: Well, he writes it all up as a paper and

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Speaker 2: he sends it off to the Royal Society, and amazingly,

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Speaker 2: the Royal Society reject the paper.

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Speaker 1: They reject his paper, They reject the guy just invented vaccines.

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Speaker 2: Well, they probably wouldn't have appreciated the full significance. But

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Speaker 2: you're right. It is one of the great pinnacle publications

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Speaker 2: in the history of medicine and science.

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Speaker 1: But he doesn't give up. What's he doing next?

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Speaker 2: He writes it up as a pamphlet. It's always known

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Speaker 2: as The Inquiry, okay, and it was published by private

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Speaker 2: printer in Soho came out in September seventeen ninety eight.

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Speaker 2: Jenna did not attempt to hide or make secret his invention.

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Speaker 2: He wanted everybody to know. He wanted everybody to do

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Speaker 2: it because he wanted to conquer smallpox.

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Speaker 1: But you're saying he could also have not published it

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Speaker 1: and just tried to sell vaccination himself and be the

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Speaker 1: sort of soul purveyor of it.

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Speaker 2: That's exactly it. His aim was to spread the word

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Speaker 2: as widely and as quickly as possible. It really takes

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Speaker 2: off and people recognize the value of vaccination immediately, and

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Speaker 2: within a few months it's on the continent of Europe,

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Speaker 2: it's widespread across England. It's making its appearance in North America.

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Speaker 1: You said within months, within months, months, within This is

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Speaker 1: an era when there's obviously no electronic communication. They're going

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Speaker 1: to have to put the inquiry on a ship and

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Speaker 1: sail it across the ocean. But you're saying it spreads

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Speaker 1: basically a media in.

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Speaker 2: That absolute absolutely.

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Speaker 1: What do we know about how many people are being vaccinated?

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Speaker 1: How widespread it is, Like, tell me more about that.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's still the preserve of the rich and wealthy

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Speaker 2: who could afford to pay for medical services, so it's

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Speaker 2: not widespread and philanthropic, but in terms of geographical reach

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Speaker 2: it is very impressive. Reaches Switzerland very quickly. The inquiry

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Speaker 2: reaches the King of Spain and he arranges for the

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Speaker 2: divine gift of vaccination to be sent out to all

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Speaker 2: the Spanish colonies and the Caribbean, South America around the

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Speaker 2: back of the world.

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Speaker 1: So this is all happening in his lifetime, right, He's

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Speaker 1: seeing this happen.

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Speaker 2: Well, Jenna works very hard actually trying to spread the word.

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Speaker 2: He is always one of the great saints of medicine.

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Speaker 2: But he wasn't a perfect man. In any sense. And

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Speaker 2: one of the things that he got wrong quite early

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Speaker 2: was to be able to connon himself into thinking the

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Speaker 2: vaccination was absolutely per effect, whereas in fact it did

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Speaker 2: have side effects. For example, you could get a farmyard

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Speaker 2: infection from kyle pox having get scratched into your arm.

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Speaker 2: And the other thing was that it needed to be topped.

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Speaker 1: Up, meaning like a booster, you needed what.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely so other countries were giving boosters in the early

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Speaker 2: teenage years. And again if smallpox broke out again, say

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Speaker 2: in Germany, then people nearby would be revaccinated again. So

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Speaker 2: that was one of the things that he got tragically wrong.

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Speaker 1: What's the end of his story.

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Speaker 2: He gets gifts and accolades from all over the world.

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Speaker 2: He gets diamond ring from the Empress of Russia. He

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Speaker 2: spent his declining years, if you like, after his wife died,

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Speaker 2: being the vaccine clerk to the world. That's the way

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Speaker 2: he described himself. He was sitting in his office writing

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Speaker 2: letters back to all the fan mail that poured in

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Speaker 2: from across the world. He was able to look around

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Speaker 2: the world and see a world that was already changed.

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Speaker 1: By the way, how does it come up with the

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Speaker 1: name vaccine?

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Speaker 2: Well, the name was actually coined by somebody else. It's

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Speaker 2: from the Latin vaca, meaning cow, and Louis pasteur. When

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Speaker 2: he invented his rabies vaccine and various other vaccines, he

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Speaker 2: suggested that all such immanising or protective preparations should be

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Speaker 2: called vaccines in honor of Jenna. So that's why we

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Speaker 2: call them all vaccines today.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for your time. Was a delight to talk

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Speaker 1: with you.

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Speaker 2: Pleasure. Thank you for yours.

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Speaker 1: Edward Jenner died in eighteen twenty three. In the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: his vaccine would serve as the inspiration for one of

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Speaker 1: the most ambitious public health projects in the history of

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Speaker 1: the world, to wipe out every single case of smallpox forever.

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back. In the first half of the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, Edward Jenner's vaccine continued to spread, but huge

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Speaker 1: swaths of the population remained unvaccinated, and hundreds of millions

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Speaker 1: of people continued to die of smallpox. The world had

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Speaker 1: become smaller and more connected. Air travel was taking off,

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Speaker 1: and smallpox was happy to hitch a ride. Even countries

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Speaker 1: that thought they'd eliminated smallpox found out that they could

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Speaker 1: only keep it at Bay for so long. A smallpox

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Speaker 1: scare grips Great Britain. In the wake of five deaths

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Speaker 1: attributed to the disease that was all but wiped out

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Speaker 1: in Western nations, tens of thousands throughout the nation line

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Speaker 1: up at health centers to be inoculated.

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Speaker 2: The outbreak of a bad.

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Speaker 3: Disease is checked by modern medical science.

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Speaker 1: In the middle of the twentieth century, leaders around the

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Speaker 1: world cooked up an audacious plan to drive the smallpox

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Speaker 1: virus to extinction, to eradicate it from the face of

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Speaker 1: the earth. Donald Hopkins directed the smallpox eradication campaign in

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Speaker 1: Sierra Leone in the late nineteen sixties, just as the

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Speaker 1: global eradication project was getting started. When he arrived in

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Speaker 1: Sierra Leone, the West African nation had the highest smallpox

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Speaker 1: rate in the world. You get to this country, what

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Speaker 1: do you see on the ground?

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Speaker 4: Well, I see, first of all a beautiful country, and

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Speaker 4: then I'm introduced to the health workers that I'm going

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Speaker 4: to be working with and find that they are very capable,

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Speaker 4: very enthusiastic. I'm young and very optimistic as well. Yes,

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Speaker 4: people were dying, but the upshot of that was that

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Speaker 4: people were eager. Most people were eager to get vaccinated,

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Speaker 4: and so we did not have a problem of trying

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Speaker 4: to persuade people to cooperate with the program, and that

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Speaker 4: made things a lot easier.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, easier, but this is still a country where there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of places that are just hard to

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Speaker 1: get to, right. I mean, are there any particular instances

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Speaker 1: you remember that were that were especially challenging.

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Speaker 4: So in the summer of nineteen sixty eight, it's the

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Speaker 4: rainy season in sily On, we get a message that

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Speaker 4: there's an outbreak in this area southeast of the capital

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Speaker 4: area called Moyamba. So I went there with a driver

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Speaker 4: and a couple of the Sierra Leone and public health workers.

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Speaker 4: And the village where that we were summoned to visit,

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Speaker 4: in fact, was about a forty five minute trek from

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Speaker 4: the nearest road. I'm afraid of snakes, and this was

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Speaker 4: a This was a trek through the forest.

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Speaker 1: You're like Indiana Jones, You're wearing a hot.

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Speaker 4: No hat I had. I had a full head of

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Speaker 4: hair then, so I didn't I didn't have to wear

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Speaker 4: a hat. But to we get into this get into

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Speaker 4: this village, and there are lots of people with smallpox,

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Speaker 4: including most notably a newborn infant only a few days old,

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Speaker 4: that was lying on a mat between its mother and

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Speaker 4: the mother's co wife.

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Speaker 1: When you say co wife, what does that mean?

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Speaker 4: That means that they were both married to the same man. Okay,

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Speaker 4: and the child had not been vaccinated. But both of

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Speaker 4: these two women were in the full throes of smallpox infections,

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Speaker 4: and so that infant had been exposed. Fortunately, I had

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Speaker 4: vaccine with me. I was able to vaccinate the infant,

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Speaker 4: and later about ten days later, when I came back,

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Speaker 4: I saw that the vaccination was taken and that baby

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Speaker 4: was saved.

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Speaker 1: And just to just because you know, I've never seen smallpox, thankfully.

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Speaker 1: When you say that two women were in the throes

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Speaker 1: of infection, what did they look like?

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Speaker 4: Well, it's hard to see people suffering so much, because

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Speaker 4: it's not only that people their bodies are swollen. They're

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Speaker 4: covered in all of these pustules. But it's very painful.

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Speaker 4: People describe it as feeling as if your skin was

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Speaker 4: on fire. Smallpox caused a generalized rash over most of

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Speaker 4: the body. It was most intense over the face, the hands,

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Speaker 4: and the feet. But in this instance you could see

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Speaker 4: these raised pimples first you get little bumps that turn

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Speaker 4: into blisters that then fill with puffs, which then these

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Speaker 4: blisters break, and if you're lucky and survive the broken

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Speaker 4: blisters and puffs, that all dries up, and gradually, over

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Speaker 4: the course of two three weeks the scabs drop off.

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Speaker 4: But all of that is infectious, and people when they're

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Speaker 4: just even before the rash starts, when they start feeling

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Speaker 4: headache fever, they're already breathing out smallpox virus onto other people.

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Speaker 4: And so the challenge is the situation like that, to

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Speaker 4: vaccinate as many people who do not yet have smallpox

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Speaker 4: as quickly as you can.

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Speaker 1: So, okay, So you get to this village. You see

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Speaker 1: these two women and the baby. The women are clearly sick.

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Speaker 1: You vaccinate the baby because the smallpox vaccine can actually

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Speaker 1: help people who are in the early stages of an infection.

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Speaker 1: What do you do next? What else is happening in

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Speaker 1: this village?

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Speaker 4: In this sensance, we learned very quickly that two weeks before,

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Speaker 4: a very prominent man in that village who was head

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Speaker 4: of a secret society, had gotten smallpox and had died.

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Speaker 4: Because he was so prominent, people came from other villages

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Speaker 4: to visit him when he was ill, and people came

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Speaker 4: for his funeral.

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Speaker 1: This is a giant alarm bell. It's very bad news

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Speaker 1: for you. In nineteen sixty.

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Speaker 4: Eight, very very bad news, because we also began learning

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Speaker 4: when I was there. What we were seeing was that

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Speaker 4: many people had come from other villages as well surrounding

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Speaker 4: this village, and so this was a much bigger outbreak

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Speaker 4: than what we were expecting.

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Speaker 1: So tell me about what containment meant at this time

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Speaker 1: in this context.

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Speaker 4: Yes, when we first began working in the smallpox program,

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Speaker 4: the strategy was to mass vaccinate eighty percent or more

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Speaker 4: of the population. The containment surveillance strategy was developed where

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Speaker 4: the strategy became find out where the current cases of

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Speaker 4: smallpox are go there, give priority to vaccinating people in

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Speaker 4: those households and that village and nearby villages, so called

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Speaker 4: ring vaccination, because if you could do that, you could

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Speaker 4: stop the virus from spreading to other people. That was

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Speaker 4: a much more efficient way of getting after the virus

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Speaker 4: to stop transmission. Because now you're looking to vaccinate three

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Speaker 4: four five percent of the population rather than eighty percent

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Speaker 4: of the population.

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Speaker 1: It's like you draw a circle, a big circle around

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Speaker 1: the village where the infection is and you vaccinate everybody

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Speaker 1: inside that circle. So it's like you're surrounding the virus

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Speaker 1: with immune people.

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Speaker 4: That's exactly what you're doing. And the radius of that

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Speaker 4: circle was at least five miles.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so you have your information right, you have your

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Speaker 1: epidemiological surveillance, you have your your ring on a map.

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Speaker 1: What do you do?

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Speaker 4: We then come back with several other vaccinators and have

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Speaker 4: a plan to assign different groups to go to each

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Speaker 4: of these villages and make sure that everyone there is vaccinated.

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Speaker 1: And you just show up in a village where if

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Speaker 1: your briefcase full of a vaccine and say here we are,

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Speaker 1: come line up.

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Speaker 4: The villagers had had warning, and in fact, we discussed

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Speaker 4: with the village chief and the senior people in the

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Speaker 4: village to agree on a mutual time when was most

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Speaker 4: convenient for them for us to come back and make

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Speaker 4: sure everybody was vaccinated. It had to give them notice

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Speaker 4: in advance, because otherwise, if you just show up, people

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Speaker 4: are out on their farms, which could be two or

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Speaker 4: three miles away in many different directions, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: So how long does it take you to with your

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Speaker 1: team go to all of the villages inside this ring

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Speaker 1: and vaccinate everybody.

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Speaker 4: That took a matter of a few days fast, so

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Speaker 4: each team only had to go to one or two villages,

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Speaker 4: and so we were able to get there in a

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Speaker 4: few days and get them vaccinated, and we were able

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Speaker 4: to stop that particular outbreak in only three or four

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Speaker 4: weeks max. Wow.

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Speaker 1: So it worked.

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Speaker 4: It worked. Not only worked in Sierra Leone, but when

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Speaker 4: we sent a telegram back to CDC headquarters to let

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Speaker 4: them know what had happened, they were ecstatic. And of

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Speaker 4: course this was one of the first big demonstrations of

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Speaker 4: the power of this new ring vaccination strategy, and so

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Speaker 4: it electrified the entire global smallpox eradication program to see

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Speaker 4: that this worked so well in Sierra Leone, which had

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Speaker 4: so much smallpox.

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Speaker 1: So we have the good news. What did you do next?

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Speaker 1: How long were you in Siri Leone? What happened next?

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Speaker 4: Ord? I was in Siri Leone for a total of

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Speaker 4: two years.

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Speaker 2: That was.

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Speaker 4: I left sierri Leone in August of nineteen sixty nine.

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Speaker 4: Smallpox was gone from Sierra Leone by April May of

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Speaker 4: nineteen sixty nine.

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Speaker 1: So by the time you left, you and your team

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Speaker 1: had eradicated smallpox from one of the worst affected countries

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Speaker 1: in the world.

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Speaker 4: And that was a big exclamation point. I was then

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Speaker 4: forever optimistic that smallpox was gonna go. It was then

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Speaker 4: to me just a matter of time.

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Speaker 1: It's really striking to me that we or you, you

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Speaker 1: and your colleagues eradicated smallpox more than forty years ago now,

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Speaker 1: and we humanity haven't succeeded in eradicating anything else yet.

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Speaker 1: I know we're getting close on polio, but we've been

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Speaker 1: close on polio for a while, and yes, it's not

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Speaker 1: gone yet. Was smallpox unanomaly?

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Speaker 4: Yes, smallpox is anominally Unfortunately, nothing else is like smallpox.

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Speaker 4: Eradication means you have to get to whatever disease you're

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Speaker 4: targeting everywhere wherever it exists. And it's going to exist

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Speaker 4: in some places where it's a big problem, people care

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Speaker 4: about it, they are motivated to work against it. But

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Speaker 4: it's also going to exist in some areas where it's

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Speaker 4: a trivial problem, where people have much bigger things to

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Speaker 4: worry about than that targeted disease. But you're going to

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Speaker 4: have to get them on board as well, because as

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Speaker 4: long as it exists, anywhere. It's unsafe for people everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Doctor, it was a real delight to talk to you.

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Speaker 1: Let me say thank you for your work. I'm very

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Speaker 1: grateful to live in a world with no smallpox.

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Speaker 4: Well, thank you, I am too.

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Speaker 1: Donald Hopkins is currently the Special Advisor for guinea worm

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Speaker 1: Eradication at the Carter Center. Thanks to my guest today

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Speaker 1: Gareth Williams and Donald Hopkins. Next week we'll tell the

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Speaker 1: story of the race for the polio vaccine, and we'll

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Speaker 1: try to figure out why polio and other viruses have

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Speaker 1: turned out to be so much harder to eradicate than smallpox.

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Speaker 3: We need to ensure that we have we have a

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Speaker 3: full momentum for this last push, the final push to

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Speaker 3: reach that last child in that last village of these areas.

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Speaker 1: Incubation is a co production of Pushkin Industries and Ruby

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Speaker 1: Studio at iHeartMedia. It's produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang, Ariela Markowitz,

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Speaker 1: and Amy Gaines McQuaid. Our editors are Julia Barton and

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Speaker 1: Karen Schakerjie Mastering by Anne Pope, fact checking by Joseph Fridman.

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Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Katherine Gerardeau and Matt Romano. I'm

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Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein. Thanks for listening.