Vaccine

A vaccine is a modified preparation of viruses, or bacteria. It is introduced into the body either orally or by a hypodermic syringe to induce the general reaction which produces immunity.

HISTORY

In 1767, a smallpox epidemic in Siberia wiped out thousands of people. The French philosopher Voltaire suggested to the Russian Czar Catherine II that she summon the Quaker doctor Thomas Dimsdale to inoculate her and her son against smallpox. He inoculated them successfully and as word spread the Russian peasants began requesting vaccinations for themselves and their children. The parents of the first child patient were ordered by Catherine to re-Christian him "Vaccinoff".

English country doctor Edward Jenner first successfully inoculated an 8-year-old child with cowpox virus to produce immunity to smallpox in 1796. Two years later, Jenner published a paper explaining his work. He named the process in which he used the cowpox sore, vaccination, which came from the Latin vaccinus, meaning "from cows."

Dr Edward Jenner performing his first vaccination. Painting by Ernest Board (early 20th century).

By the early 1800s Edward Jenner's cowpox vaccination had spread to most of Europe. Bavaria declared vaccination mandatory in 1807, and Denmark did the same three years later.

One of the first original American advocates for inoculation against severe disease was a slave named Onesimus. Before being forcibly brought to Boston in 1706, Onesimus lived in West Africa, where inoculation was a common practice. There, he had been deliberately infected with a small amount of smallpox to make him immune from a more severe version.

Onesimus told his owner, the New England Puritan minister Cotton Mather, about the practice. Mather was keenly interested in science, and after a smallpox outbreak began in Boston in 1721, Mather used this knowledge to advocate for inoculation in the population.

Benjamin Waterhouse was the first American physician to use this new treatment. However, several Boston clergymen and devout physicians formed a society that opposed vaccination. Some Christians objected to it in no certain terms as they believed that vaccination takes away the power of life and death from God.

In 1853, 30 years after Jenner’s death, a law was passed in England saying that every child had to be vaccinated against smallpox. By 1871, infant vaccination was compulsory and parents refusing to have their child vaccinated were fined and imprisoned if the fines were not paid.

An 1802 caricature by James Gillray depicting the early controversy surrounding Jenner's vaccination theory

Since smallpox and syphilis lesions look similar, many Civil War soldiers got syphilis attempting to vaccinate themselves against smallpox.

During the Franco-Prussian war of the 1870s, more than 23,000 French soldiers died of smallpox. But the Prussians vaccinated their soldiers — and only 297 died.

A second generation of vaccines was introduced in the 1880s by Louis Pasteur who developed vaccines for chicken cholera and anthrax. The difference between the smallpox vaccination and anthrax or chicken cholera vaccinations was that the latter two disease organisms had been artificially weakened, so a naturally weak form of the disease organism did not need to be found. Pasteur's discovery revolutionized work in infectious diseases.

Pasteur later developed a vaccine against rabies after five years of investigation.

In 1896, a bubоnіc plаgue epіdеmic struck Bombay, and the government asked Waldemar Haffkine, developer of the first chоlera vаccіne, to help. After three months of persistent work (one assistant had a nervous breakdown and two others quit), a vаccіne was ready, with Haffkine tеsting it on himself first.

The first polio vaccine was developed by Dr Jonas Salk  at the University of Pittsburgh and came into use in 1955. Salk declined to patent his polio vaccine as he believed it belonged to the world.

Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh where he developed the first polio vaccine.

The first mass-produced disposable syringe and needle was developed for Dr. Jonas Salk's mass administration of his new polio vaccine for one million American children.

The oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin and came into commercial use six years later.

The two vaccines have reduced the number of cases of polio reported each year worldwide from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to 22 in 2017.

The last natural case of smallpox was discovered in Somalia on October 26, 1977. The World Health Authority considers October 26th to be the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination the world has known.

After the coronavirus was detected in December 2019,  the genetic sequence of COVID‑19 was published on January 11, 2020, triggering an urgent international response to prepare for an outbreak and hasten development of a preventive vaccine. By December 2020, Tozinameran, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, had become the first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for national use. Before Covid-19, the record for the fastest vaccine development — for mumps — was four years. Most vaccines have required more than a decade of research and experimentation.

FUN SMALLPOX FACTS

Vaccines have helped reduce measles deaths globally by 78% between 2000 and 2008. In sub-Saharan Africa, deaths dropped by 92% in the same period.

Every dollar spent on the rubella, measles, and mumps vaccine saves the U.S. $23.30 in medical costs, according to CDC data.

1.5 million children die every year from diseases preventable by vaccines according to the World Health Organization.

In the Canadian provinces of Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba, it's illegal for non-vaccinated children to attend public school services.

Eight of the fifteen vaccines that are routinely recommended today were developed by an American microbiologist named Maurice Hilleman (August 30, 1919 – April 11, 2005). They are the ones those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria.

Vaccinations don't work on octopuses.

Source New York Times