No Long-Term Problems Associated With Two Vaccines
Vaccines have been loved and hated. Even Edward Jenner the discoverer of vaccination for smallpox in 1796 was considered a genius by some and a mad scientist by others. Many people doubted this vaccination could possibly protect them from smallpox. Some even spread rumors that people would die from the vaccine or start acting like and looking like cows. Jenner noticed that milk maids who all got a disease called cowpox from milking cows never got smallpox. He figured that something about the infection the milk maids got protected them from smallpox. So he obtained some of this cowpox material and injected it into people. He called his procedure vaccination naming it after the latin term vacca meaning cow. This wasn't an entirely new concept. People in India were vaccinating people many years prior to Jenner's discovery. However, many people were afraid of being injected with this stuff from cows. The vaccine was quite often contaminated and did have quite a few side effects. Sometimes the contaminants in the vaccine did cause some people to get sick and some even died.
However, in Jenner's time no one knew that microbes were the cause of many of the diseases that routinely killed them and their loved ones. Microbes and the concepts of microbial infections were not considered possible. They did not know how to prevent contamination of the vaccine. But even in those times Jenner demonstrated fewer people died of smallpox following vaccination.
Others believed that vaccination could be a wonderful thing and could protect their families from this deadly disease called smallpox. They considered taking the vaccine as less risky than getting smallpox. With time more and more people believed in vaccination. In time viral cause of cowpox was discovered and a pure vaccine made vaccinations much safer. Fewer side effects were noted and contamination of the vaccine was rare.
Due to vaccination the world is now free of smallpox since the last natural case occurred in Somalia in 1977. Side effects of this pure vaccine did occur. People with poorly functioning immune systems could develop a severe cowpox infection following vaccination. Nothing was perfect. However, millions of lives have been saved from smallpox over these past 200 years.
Vaccines do have risks. The debates in the 1960's and 1970's halted the vaccination of millions of children to prevent whooping cough (pertussis). This cellular pertussis vaccine (contains killed cells of the bacterium that causes pertussis; Bordetella pertussis) was reported to cause brain damage in some children (1 in 150,000). Unfortunately, within a few years of halting this vaccination program thousands of children started coming down with pertussis. Hundreds developed pneumonia and some even
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