The Philosophy of Disease Eradication

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Abstract
Concept of disease eradication, emerging from superstitution through technologic period of boundless optimism, is tempered by revelations of subtle mechanisms of agent survival and transfer. But pessimism is illogical in view of brilliant achievements such as eradication from areas of Brazil of yellow fever mosquito vector (1925) and of fulminant malaria (1940). Use of DDT in U.S. reduced endemic typhus from 5400 cases in 1944 to about 50 currently, and malaria has been eradicated as an endemic disease. World efforts had eradicated malaria (by Jan. 1960) from 18 countries or territories with 108 million population. Eradication goal leads, at least, to higher order of control and, at best, to global extinction of target organism, the supreme victory of preventive medicine.

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