Vaccination bicentennial

Bruce P. Squires, MD, PhD
Editor-in-chief

Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996; 154: 1311

On May 14, 1796, country practitioner Edward Jenner inoculated 8-year-old James Phipps with material taken from a person infected with cowpox, thereby opening the curtain to a drama that continues to benefit the world yet perplex physicians to this day. Jenner's experiment was based on two observations: treatment of healthy people with pustule substance from someone with a mild form of smallpox was effective but often fatal, and milkmaids who had contracted the clinically mild bovine form of the pox were immune to the often fatal human disease. Jenner continued his experiment, which was grossly unethical by today's standards, by inoculating Phipps with pustule from a person with smallpox. Fortunately, the boy did not contract the disease.

To mark this anniversary the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, in Atlanta, with support from several United Nations health agencies, the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation and Pasteur Mérieux- Connaught has proclaimed 1996 the Year of the Vaccine to celebrate the world impact of vaccination.

Modern enthusiasts for evidence-based medicine would hardly have accepted the results of Jenner's one experiment; indeed, his findings were met with public and professional resistance, albeit short-lived. But the procedure now known as vaccination -- a wonderful historical term derived from the Latin vaccinus, of cows -- continues to be applied more or less successfully to prevent many infectious diseases. Smallpox has been eradicated worldwide, polio is on the way out, and measles is targeted for eradication by 1999. Challenges, particularly HIV infection and tuberculosis, still remain and grow as the wily microbials continually change and fortify their armour. Vaccination remains a vitally important measure for disease prevention, second only to safe water in its effect on the world population's health. But the battle is far from over.

| CMAJ May 1, 1996 (vol 154, no 9) |