RIP William Foege, Leader in Small Pox eradication

[Astronuc]

William Herbert Foege passed away on January 26, 2026 at age 89, 2 months shy of his 90th birthday.

He was the 10th Director of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Foege#Personal_life_and_death

Obituary in NY Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/us/william-h-foege-dead.html

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/leader-in-smallpox-eradication-dr-william-foege-dies-at-89

https://sph.emory.edu/departments/global-health/foege-fellowship

Michael Lane was a colleague

Thread 'J. Michael Lane, leader in Smallpox eradication, Dies at 84'

Oct 22, 2020

NY Times obit here.
J. Michael Lane, the last director of the C.D.C.’s smallpox eradication bureau, lead a 13 year campaign to eradicate small pox which achieved success in 1977.
The WHO (not the band) declared small pox dead (in the wild) in 1980.

In his years of writing and lecturing on smallpox, Dr. Lane drew a vivid portrait of that unseen enemy, one of humanity’s oldest and most terrifying infectious diseases. Perhaps emerging from a rodent virus 10,000 years ago, it periodically swept around the world over the centuries, killing or blinding a third of its victims...

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