Looking through the landmark article list, all are obviously notable but some are really stickouts. Yes, dear younger readers, there was once such a disease, and what a terrible scourge it was. Yet, in 1963 there was an outbreak in Sweden from a case brought from Indonesia, telegraphing the interconnectivity of humans and infectious diseases in our global village. That experience helped stimulate Sweden to join with the United States to lead in global smallpox eradication, the last human case being reported in the MMWR in 1978. For the future, there is plenty still on CDC's plate.
Death is normal.
Many public health measures, once data are in and truth is known, must be brought about by law change. We can never expect such necessary coercion to be uniformly popular, but it is required from time to time. In a sense it is ironic that we may have come full circle with infectious diseases, especially new or changed, or unknown, or unpredictable, or even unknowable, as global microbial threats again rear their ugly heads and tempt CDC to take a swing at them. CDC will swing, and we all will be very proud and comfortable that CDC and its stellar publication MMWR are still around, going strong and unequivocally in the public's best interest. Of historic significance, the stellar leader of CDC during 1993-1998, David Satcher, MD, now travels from his native Alabama through Los Angeles, Nashville, and Atlanta to take on the challenge of becoming the new Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service and Assistant Secretary of Health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.