Here's a look at smallpox, a contagious and sometimes fatal infectious disease. The most severe and most common form of the smallpox virus is known as variola major. Smallpox is transmitted through ...

More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, people are getting used to the idea that the virus isn't going to disappear. Scientists predict that COVID will likely become endemic, a permanent part ...

Last fall, anthrax occupied most of our bioterror nightmares. This year, our anxiety has refocused on an even more frightening biological threat, one that researchers ...

Smallpox was certified eradicated in 1980, but I first learned about the disease's twisty, storied history in 1996 while interning at the World Health Organization. I was a college student fascinated ...

Rahima Banu, a toddler in rural Bangladesh, was the last person in the world to contract variola major, the deadly form of smallpox, through natural infection. In October 1975, after World Health ...

Scientists went to extraordinary lengths to eradicate smallpox from the world. Rahima Banu is now recorded as having the last known... How Rahima came to hold a special place in smallpox history — and ...