The final leader in the global campaign to eradicate smallpox, J. Michael Lane, died of colon cancer on October 21 at the age of 84, multiple news outlets report. Lane became the director of the Global Smallpox Eradication Program at what is now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1973, seven years before the World Health Organization declared the virus to be eradicated—the only pathogen to hold that distinction.
“I worked with Mike for a half-century,” William Foege, a former director of the CDC’s smallpox program, tells The New York Times. “He was extremely important to the success of the smallpox eradication program. He worked in many countries, and ran the whole program from Atlanta. He figured out the complications of administering the vaccine. And he was a great teacher.”
In 1961, Lane earned a medical degree from Harvard University, and he followed that up with a ...
