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0:00
My name is Michael Kinch from
Washington University
in St. Louis.
I'm going to speak today
about a brief history
of vaccines and
anti-vaccine responses.
0:12
The fundamental themes
of today's talk are,
first of all, that memories
tend to be very short.
Second of all, people tend to
fear things that they
don't understand.
Putting this together,
vaccines are frequently
misunderstood,
both in how they function and
in the good that they do.
This is largely because we've forgotten
the threat of infectious diseases.
The paradox here is that a
fear of infectious diseases,
which, as we will see has been a primary
driver throughout human history,
this fear has abated largely due to the
development and adoption of vaccines.
Vaccines themselves
are now regarded by
some people as being more
dangerous than the
diseases they prevent.
That, again, is a combination of fear
of things that people don't understand,
combined with our short memory,
or our failed memories,
about the fact that
infectious diseases have been
one of the biggest problems
throughout history.
1:14
If we look back
on what have been
the major causes of death
and disease in people,
the answer to this, throughout
most of human history,
has been infectious diseases.
Pandemics are, frankly,
a natural phenomena.
They arise in nature
every decade or two.
There have been many examples.
Arguably, the worst disease,
as we will soon see,
is something called smallpox,
which was readily
spread in the air,
causing a very horrific
disease that could
take out entire
villages and regions.
Other significant
infectious diseases
include the bubonic plague,
as well as a myriad of
childhood infectious diseases
including diphtheria, measles,
tetanus, whooping cough and others.
The result of these infectious diseases
was high infant mortality in particular.
Children oftentimes died
at a very young age,
but also adults tended
to not live very long
and they often, and generally would
succumb to infectious diseases.
You had a high birth rate
and a high death rate
combined with a short lifespan for
those who were able to reach adulthood.
Infectious diseases are still highly
problematic in much of the developing world,
and there are high rates of
both vaccine preventable
and unpreventable
infectious diseases
in the developing world.
However, in the developed world,
the combination of
vaccines and hygiene
has largely caused infectious
diseases to be a thing of the past.
