Althouse: "[S]omeone had to be the last person on Earth to contract smallpox, and Ali Maow Maalin went into the history books..."

December 10, 2013

"[S]omeone had to be the last person on Earth to contract smallpox, and Ali Maow Maalin went into the history books..."

"... as the last man on earth to catch wild smallpox. He died this year of malaria, after years of working to eradicate polio."

10 comments:

madAsHell said...: Yeah....small pox is gone.

Except for that vial in the government lab that's being kept for a rainy day.; 12/10/13, 9:02 AM
Anonymous said...: The answer in the Lab to a smallpox outbreak is to have some cowpox around in a lab to make vaccine.

There are two purposes for having smallpox around...

1. to use it as a weapon
2. to make a vaccine for the genetic engineered smallpox+ weapon; 12/10/13, 9:30 AM
David said...: Last KNOWN case.

The world is still a big place, with very obscure corners.

My younger children were not vaccinated, and it concerned me. Still does.

If there is an outbreak, we vaccinated old farts will have plenty of work available in the health care field.; 12/10/13, 11:08 AM
sykes.1 said...: As usual, physicians are totally ignorant about evolution and biology. Smallpox evolved, probably from cowpox, because a new niche opened up, namely human herdsmen. The niche is still there, and since the last people to get the vaccine are dying out, it will soon encompass all of humanity. So, in time either smallpox will revolve or something even nastier will show up. So, keep the virus in a secure lab so we can make vaccine.

By the way, the most likely person to spread smallpox is not some military but some environmentalist. Many of them already want to reduce the human population to a few million paleolithic hunter-gatherers.; 12/10/13, 12:00 PM
Anonymous said...: The poor fellow. All those diseases. It reminds me of a poster I saw on a telephone pole in my neighborhood on Sunday: Lost Dog,3 Legs, blind in left eye, missing right ear, broken tail, recently castrated, answers to the name “Lucky.”; 12/10/13, 12:07 PM
Clyde said...: Some people are just not meant to die in their bed of old age at 101.; 12/10/13, 1:41 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Note that he had small pox in 1977.

He died of malaria… in 2013.

He helped people with polio… in the interim.

3 different diseases.; 12/10/13, 2:23 PM
Kirk Parker said...: David,

"Last KNOWN case."

Very good point.

We lived in South Sudan in the early 80's--not too far away from Maalin's location. The significant date there was 1956, Independence. People who were born before then, or shortly after--perhaps up to '57 or '58, when the first civil war got really going--all had smallpox vaccination scars. Very few of those born afterward did. I never did trust the official line about eradication after seeing this first-hand.; 12/10/13, 4:31 PM
Anonymous said...: Janet Parker was the last known smallpox death but her small came from a lab; 12/10/13, 6:52 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: ...the last man on earth to catch wild smallpox. He died this year of malaria, after years of working to eradicate polio."

Let that be a lesson to him.; 12/10/13, 8:16 PM