Smallpox 1718. In 1721, Cotton Mather and colleagues provoked controversy in Boston by inoculating hundreds. In 1796, Edward Jenner, a doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, rural England, discovered that immunity to smallpox could be produced by inoculating a person with material from a cowpox lesion. Cowpox is a poxvirus in the same family as variola. Jenner called the material used for inoculation vaccine, from the root word "vacca", which is Latin for cow. The procedure was much safer than variolation, and did not involve a risk of smallpox transmission. Vaccination to prevent smallpox was soon practiced all over the world. During the
Smallpox vaccine intensive care units, anesthesiologists, and health care workers in other settings who would be crucial first-line responders in the event of a bioterrorist attack using smallpox. Many healthcare workers refused, worried about vaccine side effects, but many others volunteered. It is unclear how many actually received the vaccine. In 2002, the Israeli Army, in a similar attempt at mass vaccination, found many soldiers unwilling to volunteer. In May 2007, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee of the FDA voted unanimously that a new live virus vaccine produced by Acambis, ACAM2000, is both safe and effective for use in