Most people, unless they are well versed in veterinary science, likely are unfamiliar with rinderpest, a virus that killed cattle and other wildlife by the millions and as a result sometimes drastically affected human life as well. Notice the past tense.
Rinderpest no longer is a threat. Late last week, a United Nations agency announced that the disease was gone. It is only the second disease – smallpox was the first – ever eliminated from Earth. Its eradication is a tribute to those who employ science for the benefit of mankind and to the international community that supported the effort to eradicate the virus.
Rinderpest, German for “cattle plague,” does not affect people directly, but it has nonetheless created hardships for millennia. The disease, with a mortality rate of about 80 percent, struck cattle, water buffalo and other animals needed for meat, milk, plowing and pulling. Because humans depend so heavily on such animals for sustenance, a rinderpest outbreak could have devastating societal consequences. More than a third of the population of Ethiopia, historians say, is thought to have died after a famine that followed a 19th century rinderpest outbreak.
The origins of rinderpest are unknown, though scientists and historians generally agree that it probably started in Asia. There’s evidence that it was present in Egypt 5,000 years ago and that it spread to Europe through cattle trading. The Americas and Australia were spared the disease. Infected animals likely would have started dying on ship and would have been killed before making landfall. If not, they certainly would have been quarantined upon arrival.
Eliminating any disease is fiendishly difficult. Scientists say eradicating rinderpest was no exception.
For thousands of years, the only method available to end the spread of the disease was to slaughter or quarantine vast numbers of animals. That was never efficacious.
Efforts to produce an effective vaccine failed, too, until the mid-20th century. Then, a British veterinary pathologist, employing the same techniques used to develop polio vaccines, produced a successful vaccine. Even then, it took decades to eliminate rinderpest through massive vaccination programs and diligent monitoring of animals. The effort was costly and labor intensive, but one that will produce universal, long-term benefits.
The elimination of the disease, to be announced officially next year by the World Organization for Animal health, does not end scientific involvement with rinderpest. Virologists still must determine how much virus, tissue from infected animals and vaccine to keep on hand for research and other purposes. The practice is necessary, but caution is advised. A laboratory accident or an act of terrorism could initiate the public return of the deadly virus that so many individuals and nations worked so cooperatively to eliminate from the Earth.