History of Vaccines Blog

It's time to look around the world and see what news are out there about vaccines... Read More...

This quick video (under 1 minute) sums up the history of the rabies vaccine. Did you know that Louis Pasteur was not a physician? Can you imagine a non-physician today administering an experimental vaccine in his own private lab? Read More...

Thailand and Indonesia are facing increased rates of cases and outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Most of these are directly caused by vaccine refusal based on religious edicts about vaccination. While many of the world's major religions encourage or do not openly oppose vaccination, there is still some confusion as to whether or not religious practice or religious law approves some or all vaccines. The Dakar Declaration on Vaccination made it very clear that, from an Islamic point of view, vaccines are necessary for the health and wellbeing of children in particular and the community in general. Still, the concepts laid out in the declaration has not reached Muslim believers in remote places of Southeast Asia. At least not yet... Read More...

It's time to sit down, relax and catch up on all the vaccine-related news you might have missed this week... Read More...

It's that time of the week again, to catch up with all the news from around the world in the world of vaccines. Read on to read about a pharmaceutical company changing strategy and possibly affecting millions of children, a change in the recommendation for vaccination against hepatitis A that will affect hundreds of thousands of Americans, and other interesting news and opinion... Read More...

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician, virologist and expert on infectious diseases, spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on October 29, 2018. The talk was well-attended. Unfortunately, a group of anti-vaccine activists were there. They filibustered the question-and-answer portion of the event, and some of them even tried to push certain conspiracy theories. Here's my write-up of the event... Read More...

It's Friday, so it's time to go around the news and gather for you the most notable headlines regarding vaccines. Sit back, grab your favorite beverage, and read on... Read More...

There are anti-vaccine people, and then there are anti-vaccine people. That is, people who are against vaccines don't all fall into one neat category. They are parents and caregivers who are skeptical of the claims and the science behind vaccination for one reason or another. However, the "common anti-vaxxer," whom I define as someone who has nothing to gain from being anti-vaccine and who has genuine questions about vaccination, needs to be understood and listened to. Understanding how the common anti-vaccine person thinks can help us do a better job of educating the public about the history, science and benefits to public health that vaccines have been for centuries. When we can do so effectively, we can re-classify the common anti-vaccine person into a new category... Read More...

"It had been so long since anyone had seen this disease, the British had forgotten how to prevent it. When we create such effective solutions, we can forget how serious the problems were." In this week's video, It's Okay To Be Smart from PBS talks about how we know that vaccines work, and why we know that they do. The first couple of minutes show a historical perspective on scurvy and how the British forgot that vitamin C (ascorbic acid) prevented scurvy. They didn't take any citrus fruits with them on an expedition to the South Pole, and... Well, you'll see. The same thing is true with vaccines. They have been so effective over their history that many of us have not seen an actual person with, say, polio. (There has not been a case of polio acquired in the United States since 1979.) So check out the video... Read More...

Grab a cup of your favorite drink and sit back to read the latest news in the world of vaccines and vaccine science. This week: More children in the United States are not vaccinated. A small, but vocal group of parents shut down a vaccine education program in Arizona. A state senate race in California now includes a debate on vaccination mandates. A vaccine researcher and parent of an autistic child explains in an interview why vaccines didn't cause his child's autism. Some students are asking for exemptions to vaccine requirements at a university in Texas. Read More...