The second disease eliminated on Earth

June 29, 2011 • 4:22 am

These are true triumphs of human endeavor: we’ve completely eliminated two diseases from the face of  the Earth.

You know one of them already: smallpox, declared defunct in 1979.  But what’s the other?

As The New York Times reported yesterday, it’s rinderpest, a word that means “cattle plague” in German.  But it didn’t just kill cows: it affected many artiodactyls, including giraffes, buffalos, and gnus (wildebeests).  It was—the last case was reported a decade ago—caused by a virus that’s spread largely by contaminated water, had an almost 100% mortality rate in unexposed herds, and is thought to be closely related to the measles virus, which mutated to rinderpest about a thousand years ago.

Next week the disease will officially be declared an ex-virus, singing in the choir invisible.

The story of how it was vanquished is a fascinating mixture of history, testifying to the diligence of politicians, immunologists, and, especially, the field workers who did the dirty work of vaccination:

“The way we previously did it was really mindless,” said Dr. Peter L. Roeder, who directed the final eradication drive after working on the two earlier ones. “We’d get up before dawn to drive long distances. We’d be wrestling the animals to the ground, it’d get stinking hot, and pretty soon the locals would get fed up and walk away.”

The cattle were nervous and hard to handle, and no wonder, he said: They lived day and night with their owners and now were being roped and tackled by white men wearing khaki and reeking of unfamiliar soaps and deodorants.

“But someone local, dressed as a local, with mutton fat rubbed in his hair, could walk among them and stick in a needle and barely be noticed,” Dr. Roeder said. “We’d be lucky to get 20 percent immunity in a herd; our local guys could get 90, 95 percent.”

Here’s a short video describing the battle:

29 thoughts on “The second disease eliminated on Earth”

  1. Very good news

    However it’s more accurate to claim that “we’ve completely eliminated two diseases (in the wild) from the face of the Earth” for US and Russian smallpox stocks have been spared the chop until at least 2014, when further discussions will resume regarding destruction of the countries’ variola stockpiles

    Also it can’t ever be known for sure that A.N.Other isn’t also holding stocks

    1. You beat me to it.

      Contemplating the fact that there are human beings (let alone governments of modern nations) who would even consider re-loosing such a virus as a weapon led me to completely lose all hope for the species.

  2. Does this count as reducing biodiversity? I wonder how we should decide between eliminating viruses and eliminating species like the Passenger pigeon, or (say) the Tsetse fly?

    1. Why not be plain, avoid linguistic trickery and just say, “Yes, we’re reducing biodiversity, and in this case, good riddance”? To say ‘biodiversity is typically good’ or ‘all else being equal more biodiversity is good’ is not presumably to say ‘Biodiversity is always and everywhere an unqualified, on balance good.’

  3. I’ve heard that the next disease to die might be a parasite, the guinea worm, since it basically only requires public health measures to treat (like not washing your infected leg in drinking water), and is slowly fading away.

  4. I don’t get it. How can it be eradicated when at also effects wild animals in Africa? Wouldn’t reintroduction into the domesticated herds at some future point in time be possible? That reintroduction might be with the current form of the virus into an unprotected herd or with a mutated form of the viris and not controllable by the existing form of the vaccine.

    1. As I understand it, the virus is eliminated worldwide. That means no virus in domestic animals, and no virus in wild animals. No rinderpest virus on Earth.

      I don’t know how elimination of the virus in wild animal populations was acheived, but I suspect the vast majority of the virus was in cattle herds relatively isolated from major populations of wild artiodactyls, and transmission between domestic Bos primigenius and wild Syncerus caffer (et cetera) was rare enough to allow wild virus stocks to die out without frequent re-infection from domestic herds.

      I’m curious if that is the case, though, the above is just speculation by me. But I’m certain that when they say “the virus is eradicated” they mean all virus on Earth, regardless of host population.

      1. This FAO report from yesterday states:

        Although the rinderpest virus no longer circulates amongst live animals, it is still kept in a number of laboratories. The immediate post-eradication priority is to guard against reappearance of the disease in animals as a result of accidental or deliberate release from laboratories.

        “Rinderpest is the first animal disease to be eradicated by mankind and the second disease in general after smallpox. We must also focus our attention on measures to be taken to ensure that this result is sustainable and benefits future generations. To do this, a post-eradication strategy should be put in place to prevent any recurrence of the disease”, Diouf said.

        FAO, OIE and their partners are determined to implement internationally agreed procedures for confining such virus stocks in highly bio-secure laboratory facilities.

  6. There should be a kids’ cartoon about an Irish Elk named Artie O’Dactyl.

  7. Can we eradicate misquitos and black flies sometime soon? I am less concerned about the impact to the environment than the impact to my enjoyment of the back yard (or any outdoor activity). Please?

      1. I didn’t for a moment think it was a good thing to allow smallpox to infect people – I was interested in how you assess the impact on the environment.

        Getting rid of rinderpest sounds like a good idea, but will it result in larger herds of cattle which will over-graze?

        If you got rid of (say) mosquitoes, would particular species of birds decline or go extinct?

        Tricky stuff.

        1. Wasn’t that topic around a few months back? IIRC some researchers had looked into it, and precisely the mosquito was essentially not of importance for any food web. I.e. very little diversity would be risked or lost if that particular species was eradicated.

          1. Well, hell, what are we waiting for?!

            But…do you mean the taxon as a whole, or just one mosquito species? ‘Cause if it is the latter, there would still be plenty of skeeters around…

  9. Fascinating: Via Pope Clement XI and based on his personal physician’s recommendations, in 1713, “priests were ordered to stop relying on prayer alone and to preach from the pulpit that all herds with any sick members were to be slaughtered and buried in lime, while healthy herds were to be kept isolated. Any layman who resisted or cheated was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Any disobeying priest was to be sent to the galleys for life.”

  10. Should we be “eliminating” these naturally occurring diseases? Isn’t that a bit arrogant?

    2. To make that argument you need to posit some role the virus plays in the ecosystem beyond turning artiodactyls into compost.

  12. It’s sad to hear that poliomyelinitis is on the rise again – I was hoping the damned disease would be long gone by now.

    1. IIRC, we were very near to eradicating it; then political issues intervened, the effort ran aground, and the virus promptly reasserted itself. So sad.

      1. Yep, and (per one of the people who was a key player in development of the Salk vaccine, who was once chair of the department I was once in) one of the things further confounding efforts is that the basis of polio’s spread – particularly its episodic nature with dramatically uneven local geographic distribution – is still not understood.

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