William H. Foege, eradicator of smallpox, dead at 89.

William Herbert Foege[1] (/ˈfeɪɡi/ FAY-ghee;[2] March 12, 1936 – January 24, 2026) was an American physician and epidemiologist who is credited with “devising the global strategy that led to the eradication of smallpox in the late 1970s”.[3] From May 1977 to 1983, Foege served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Foege also “played a central role” in efforts that greatly increased immunization rates in developing countries in the 1980s.  

This 6’7″ son of a Lutheran minister in Decorah, Iowa, is credited with banishing one of the most feared diseases in modern history: smallpox. He became interested in working in New Guinea when he spent  months in a body cast at the age of fifteen, and his technique of finding the infected patient and isolating him and inoculating those with whom the patient had interacted is credited with the successful campaign to eradicate the disease, as of the 1980s.

One of the methods Foege used to convince natives to come learn about the smallpox vaccination was to tell them that they could “come see the tallest man in the world.” Foege died at age 89 of congestive heart failure in Atlanta and expressed his opinion of Robert F.Kennedy Jr.’s stewardship of the Department of Health and Human Services saying, “Kennedy would be less hazardous if he decided to do cardiac surgery. Then he would kill people only one at a time rather than his current ability to kill by the thousands.”