Name: Mark SchemeClass: 7D

Teacher: Mr. PasteurDate: 32/13/2039

Smallpox

This essay describe smallpox, a deadly disease that has effected the course of our history and killed millions of people. The study of smallpox has lead to improved scientific understanding of how disease are transmitted and has eventually led to it’s eradication.

Smallpox is a deadly disease that is spread by a virus. You can contract the disease through inhaling the virus through your nose or throat making it a very easy disease to contract. Once infected the virus spreads to the lungs then throughout the body in the lymphatic system, before forming blisters on the skin. Because these blisters are full of smallpox DNA, then when they burst they can lead to the disease spreading rapidly. Typically about 30% of people who contracted smallpox would die.

Before 1500, Smallpox was not found commonly in some parts of the world. When Europeans started to travel the world, they accidentally took the smallpox virus with them. When Europeans arrived in North America, the native population, who had not been exposed to the disease before, readily contracted the disease and it killed up to 90% of them, having a major effect on the colonisation of the area. Apart from accidentally spreading the disease, smallpox has been used as a weapon. One case involved covering blankets with the virus and sending them to the enemy, who would then contract the disease from them.

As long ago as the 12th century in China, it was noticed that people who contracted smallpox did not contract the disease again. Now we understand that this is a response from our immune system which can keep a memory of disease causing infections and rapidly get rid of them from our systems. From this people realised that you could protect people from smallpox by giving them a small dose of a powder made from smallpox scabs. This discovery has lead to the modern idea of vaccinations, which are now common and have lead to the eradication of smallpox and the control of many other diseases.

A program of vaccinations organised by the World Health Organisation has meant that smallpox is one of only two infectious disease to have been totally eradicated. The last known case of smallpox was in 1979, a massive step for a disease that was estimated to have killed 2 million people a year as recently as 1969. Since then a small amount of the virus has been stored for scientists to be able to do research. Some people believe that we should keep the remaining virus stock so that we can learn from it or use it to make make new vaccine from. Other people believe that we should destroy the last traces of the virus to avoid the danger of it accidentally being released or being stolen and used as a weapon.

Smallpox has been a deadly disease, killing so many people in some areas that it has changed history. Observations of the disease have led to vaccinations which have eradicated the disease. This is a great achievement for modern science and has benefited society greatly.

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"The Story of Smallpox, from Variolation to Vaccine | BabyCenter." BabyCenter | Homepage - Pregnancy, Baby, Toddler, Kids. Web. 23 Nov. 2011. <http://www.babycenter.com/0_the-story-of-smallpox-from-variolation-to-vaccine_10338724.bc>.