A00094 - Techonomy 22: Larry Brilliant, the Eradication of Smallpox, and the Innovation That Must Save the World: Part One

As most of you know, I attended the Techonomy 22 conference that was held in Sonoma, California, from November 13-15.  The theme for this conference was "Innovation Must Save the World" and, indeed, many technological innovations were discussed during the three days there.  However, for me, the highlight of the Techonomy 22 conference was a session entitled "Global Health & Global Warming - What's the Connection?" which may advance a different perspective of what "innovation" is needed most in the world.  In this session, my Amherst College classmate (and Techonomy founder) David Kirkpatrick interviewed Larry Brilliant, one of the doctors involved in the eradication of smallpox from the planet, and I was in awe.  To understand my wonderment, I remind you of the Book of the Month for July 2021, Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer.  You can find some of my notes set forth in the email below.  However, of particular significance are the passages that appear on pages 58-60 which read as follows::

"There is an unfortunate tendency in a culture so obsessed with the creative destruction of technology start-ups, to assume that institutions are the enemy of innovation.  If we want new ideas and progress and breakthrough technologies, the story goes, we need agile free agents who will move fast and break things, not ponderous, bureaucratic institutions.  But viewed on a truly global scale, it is hard to find an entity that has done more to improve the lives of Homo sapiens over the past seventy years than the World Health Organization.  And out of all the WHO's achievements over that period, one stands head and shoulders above the rest: the eradication of smallpox.

"After thousands of years of conflict and cohabitation with humans, the naturally occurring variola major virus infected its last human being in October 1975, when the telltale pustules erupted on the skin of a three year old Bangladeshi girl named Rahima Banu Begum.  Begum lived on Bhola Island, on the southern coast of Bangladesh, at the mouth of the Meghna River.  WHO officials were notified of the case and sent a team to treat the young girl. and to vaccinate all the individuals on the island who had come in contact with her.  She survived her encounter with the disease, and the vaccinations on Bhola Island kept the virus from replicating in another host.  Four years later, on December 9, 1979, after an extensive global search for other outbreaks, a commission of scientists signed a document proclaiming that smallpox had been eradicated.  In May of the following year, the World Health Assembly officially endorsed the WHO findings.  Their proclamation declared that "the world and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox," and paid tribute to the "collective action of all nations [that] have freed mankind of this ancient scourge."  It was truly an epic achievement, one that required a mix of visionary thinking and on-the-ground fieldwork spanning dozens of different countries.  And yet the popular awareness of smallpox eradication pales beside that of achievements like the moon landing, despite the fact that eliminating this ancient scourge had a far more meaningful impact on human life than anything that came out of the space race.  Just think of how many films and television series have celebrated the heroic, one-giant-leap-for-mankind daring of astronauts, and how few have chronicled the far more urgent -- but equally daring -- battle against lethal microbes.  

"The comparison between smallpox eradication and the space race is intriguing for another reason: because in many ways the battle against variola major was a triumph of global collaboration rather than competition, despite the fact that it took place during the Cold War.  One of the early seeds of the project was planted in a 1958 speech at a gathering of the WHO in Minneapolis, delivered by Dr. Victor Zhdanov, deputy minister of health of the Soviet Union, calling for all the partner nations to commit to the then audacious goal of eradicating smallpox.  Zhdanov began his talk by quoting a letter from Thomas Jefferson had written to Edward Jenner in 1806, which predicted that Jenner's smallpox vaccine would ensure that "future nations will know by history only that the loathsome small-pox has existed."  In the subsequent two decades -- through the downing of Frances Gary Powers's spy plane and the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam war -- the United States and the USSR would somehow find a way to work productively together on smallpox eradication, a reminder that global cooperation on crucial issues in human health is possible even in times of intense political disagreement."

88888

More in Part Two.

Peace,

Everett "Skip" Jenkins

Fairfield, California 
December 6, 2022

-----Original Message-----
From: skipjen2865@aol.com
To: 
Sent: Sat, Jul 24, 2021 5:05 am
Subject: Notes from Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer: Onesimus

In all likelihood, one hundred years from now, this year, 2021, will be remembered as the year when the Olympics were belatedly held due to a global pandemic that ravaged the world.

Oddly enough, this year, a hundred years after the fact, Americans remembered a massacre that occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 and some actually began to reflect on how the tragedies of the past do indeed impact what occurs in the present.

It is also not lost on me that two hundred years ago, in 1821, a college was founded in central Massachusetts that I, and many others, became quite fond of, and which has sparked a flame of inquiry that still burns within many of us today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amherst_College

It struck me as perhaps no coincidence, that all these events occurred in years ending in 21 and that the discussion of Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer looks at an epidemic that occurred some three hundred years ago which has medical and social lessons that still need to be learned for today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1721_Boston_smallpox_outbreak

One of the social lessons that needs to be learned pertains to the issue of race that continues to plague this country.  As Extra Life  points out, the medical procedure -- variolation -- which saved so many lives during the 1721 Boston smallpox epidemic was first given to Cotton Mather by his slave Onesimus.  For his great service in providing this knowledge, Onesimus was allowed to repeatedly endure conversion sermons and to continue to work extra hard to obtain his freedom.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onesimus_(Bostonian)

I do note with interest that in 2016, some three hundred years after he gave his variolation knowledge to Mather, a Boston publication named Onesimus Number 52 on its list of the best Bostonians of all time.  I suppose I should feel good about this belated recognition but, for various reasons, this seems to be far too little, far too late.

Peace,

Everett "Skip" Jenkins