Today the anti vaccine groups have caused demonstrations, damage to vaccine centres, and heckled men women and children wanting to be vaccinated against coronavirus .
No more so than the extreme right wing freedom rally staged by lorry drivers in Canada, running their engines to stay warm and polluting the air that other people breath. True Freedom for all or just for a selfish few ?
The practice of immunisation dates back hundreds of years. Buddhist monks drank snake venom to confer immunity to snake bite and variolation (smearing of a skin tear with cowpox to confer immunity to smallpox) was practiced in 17th century China. Edward Jenner is considered the founder of vaccinology in the West in 1796, after he inoculated a 13 year-old-boy with vaccinia virus (cowpox), and demonstrated immunity to smallpox. In 1798, the first smallpox vaccine was developed. Over the 18th and 19th centuries, systematic implementation of mass smallpox immunisation culminated in its global eradication in 1979.
Louis Pasteur’s experiments spearheaded the development of live attenuated cholera vaccine and inactivated anthrax vaccine in humans (1897 and 1904, respectively). Plague vaccine was also invented in the late 19th Century. Between 1890 and 1950, bacterial vaccine development proliferated, including the Bacillis-Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination, which is still in use today.
In 1923, Alexander Glenny perfected a method to inactivate tetanus toxin with formaldehyde. The same method was used to develop a vaccine against diphtheria in 1926. Pertussis vaccine development took considerably longer, with a whole cell vaccine first licensed for use in the US in 1948.
Viral tissue culture methods developed from 1950-1985, and led to the advent of the Salk (inactivated) polio vaccine and the Sabin (live attenuated oral) polio vaccine. Mass polio immunisation has now eradicated the disease from many regions around the world
Attenuated strains of measles, mumps and rubella were developed for inclusion in vaccines. Measles is currently the next possible target for elimination via vaccination.
Despite the evidence of health gains from immunisation programmes there has always been resistance to vaccines in some groups. The late 1970s and 1980s marked a period of increasing litigation and decreased profitability for vaccine manufacture, which led to a decline in the number of companies producing vaccines. The decline was arrested in part by the implementation of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation programme in the US in 1986.
The legacy of this era lives on to the present day in supply crises and continued media efforts by a growing vociferous anti-vaccination lobby.
The past two decades have seen the application of molecular genetics and its increased insights into immunology, microbiology and genomics applied to vaccinology. Current successes include the development of recombinant hepatitis B vaccines, the less reactogenic acellular pertussis vaccine, and new techniques for seasonal influenza vaccine manufacture.
Today the anti vaccine groups have caused demonstrations, damage to vaccine centres, and heckled men women and children wanting to be vaccinated against coronavirus .
Milton Keynes Protestors, against a vaccine saving lives to immunise people against the 4th biggest killer in the UK. 180,000 to date. 20 million infected in 2 years, 2 and a quarter million currently ill. The knock on effect on waiting lists for other ailments, because of insufficient hospital beds and staff to meet demand. The knock on effect from excess deaths caused by a lack of prompt treatment.
UK and Global protests, as people are fed a diet of disinformation and speculation.
No more so than the extreme right wing freedom rally staged by lorry drivers in Canada, running their engines to stay warm and polluting the air that other people breath. True Freedom for all or just for a selfish few.
So what is freedom? Freedom to infect other people as you deliver your cargo, or stop off at a service centre for toilets, showers and a bite to eat. Is that real freedom. If it is, what is the freedom from disease of the people you are infecting and maybe causing their deaths? Is your trucker freedom going to pay for a family’s future that loses their mother or father because of your so called freedom?
Same principle applies to any anti vax protests. Freedom is irresponsibility. If you want your freedom from society find a desert island. After all the New World was founded by migrant settlers from Europe that were persecuted because of their strange faiths. Britain had more freedoms before Boris Johnson started eroding them, not just with lockdowns and public health precautions, but by living and working in other countries, getting educated in other countries. Freedom of travel, expression, freedom from poverty, crime, corruption, and responsible freedom to save lives. Freedom of choice, but what about the freedom of choice for others, that your decisions affect? Freedom of choice for the decisions you make for your children. Don't they have a choice too? Freedom. Yes freedom to be in your own bubble, not listen to experts, and maybe listen to whackos instead. Except you do not stay in your own bubble and you try to disrupt and disinform others. In that regard you are no different or better than a lying politician. You cannot criticise a lying politician because you spread lies and falsehoods yourself.
Pity there is no vaccine for stupidity and ignorance.
https://www.immune.org.nz/vaccines/vaccine-development/brief-history-vaccination
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