It’s difficult to comprehend just how great an achievement this was, so let’s make a comparison. Suppose we’d achieved world peace in 1973. How many deaths would have been prevented? That timescale includes the killings by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, the two Congo wars, the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If you add up all the wars, genocides and terrorist acts that have occurred since 1973, the death toll is a staggering 12 million. Prior to its eradication, smallpox killed 1.5 to 3 million people every year, so by preventing these deaths for over forty
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