The History of Vaccines Blog

Have you ever forgotten to buy milk when you go to the grocery store? How about missing someone’s birthday? Because of the fast-paced world we live in, there are always going to be things that we forget to do. Some of them are more important than others. Bills need to be paid on time or we get fees charged to us. Applications need to be filed on time or we could miss out on an opportunity. Vaccines need to be given on time to offer the best chances of their providing immunity. More

Memorial Day is the traditional start to the summer season in the United States. While having fun and being with friends and family are always at the top of the list of things to do during summer, being safe and staying healthy should also be on our minds. There are some things to be mindful of when heading outdoors to parks and forests. These things include preventing bites from ticks and mosquitoes, cooking and storing food properly, wearing proper sunscreen, swimming safely, and rabies.

Why rabies?

Rabies is a viral disease of mammals. While there are plenty of cases of rabies in animals in the United States, human cases are extremely rare, with one or two cases reported each year. This is because there is a robust public health system that responds to cases of possible and confirmed rabies exposure in humans. There is also a functioning veterinary health system -- and public policies -- that require immunization of household pets like cats and dogs. In the rest of the world, most of the 55,000 deaths from human rabies each year happen as a result of dog bites.[1] More

Rolling an iron lung across one of the busiest intersections in downtown Philadelphia attracts a sizeable crowd. As the moving crew pushed the machine down Independence Mall around lunchtime on May 17, clutches of students on field trips to see the Liberty Bell gathered around, shouting questions like, “What is that?” “Is that what Michael Jackson slept in?” “Is it a time machine?”

Australian filmmaker Sonya Pemberton was shooting footage for her documentary Jabbed: Love, Fear and Vaccines, to be shown later in 2012 on SBS in Australia, in the United Kingdom, and (perhaps in 2013) on PBS the United States. On her production company’s website, Pemberton describes her film: “Diseases that were largely eradicated forty years ago are returning. Across the world children are dying from preventable conditions because nervous parents are skipping their baby’s shots. And yet the stories of vaccine injury are terrifying, with rare cases of people being hurt, even killed, by vaccines. To vaccinate or not - how do we decide?” Here at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, her crew is shooting interviews with Paul A. Offit, MD, vaccine developer and College Fellow, as well as filming artifacts from the College’s Historical Medical Library and Mütter Museum collection, many of them already discussed on this website. More

The Secretary of Health of the state of Washington declared a pertussis epidemic on April 3, 2012, after the number of reported cases reached 640, compared to 94 cases reported in the same time period in 2011. Pertussis, or “whooping cough,” is a respiratory disease caused by the Bordetella pertussis bacteria. After a person becomes infected, it can take from 7 days to a month for pertussis symptoms to develop. The bacteria cause the disease by releasing toxins that lower the lungs’ ability to clear out respiratory secretions (mucus). After an initial period of a low-grade fever and mild cough, the cough becomes severe and occurs in episodes that prevent the patient from breathing properly, so much so that some patients turn blue during the coughing bouts and for a short time after.[1] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 27,550 cases of pertussis were reported to public health authorities in 2010. More