Radiotopia.

From PRX.

From PRX is Radiotopia.

This is Radio Diaries.

I'm Joe Richman.

Vaccines have been in the news recently.

Over the past few weeks,

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

changed vaccination recommendations for kids and pregnant people.

And gutted an influential committee that recommends which shots Americans should get.

Some experts worry that the changes could lead to outbreaks of diseases

that the U.S. has long had under control.

So this week, we're revisiting a story we did a couple years ago

about the world's very first vaccine,

and the disease it helped eradicate.

Smallpox was around for thousands of years.

Some of the earliest known evidence of the virus can be found on the mummified bodies of ancient Egyptian pharaohs.

It was a horrible and visible disease. Patients would

develop painful sores all over their bodies. The most deadly form of smallpox, called

Varyola Major, killed almost a third of the people it infected. Survivors were often scarred for life.

But thanks to a vaccine, smallpox was eliminated from the U.S. in 1949.

A few years later, public health workers around the world came together to try to stamp out the disease once and for all.

...