The Creation of the First Vaccine The history of vaccinations starts in 1796 with the story of an English country doctor named Edward Jenner, who performed the very first vaccination the world had ever seen. (Baxby). By transferring some pus from a cowpox lesion that was on a servant’s hand, Jenner successfully inoculated an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. Six weeks later, Jenner confirmed his belief that he was successful in inoculating the boy when he noticed that, although there were two sites on Phipps’s arm with smallpox, the boy was completely unaffected by this, as well as subsequent, exposures. Based on twelve very similar experiments and several additional case histories he had since the 1770s, Jenner published his Inquiries into …show more content…
Indeed, some have called this controversy “the most significant setback for the cause of immunization since the smallpox vaccine debates of the previous century” (Baker, 4003). The paper’s publication, coupled with the fact that the pertussis vaccination at the time contained bacterial cells and was considered retrogenic, which lead to a widespread fear amongst parents. The United Kingdom’s Department of Health and Social Security found the pertussis vaccine to be particularly harmful to infants less than six months of age, well below the age at which the DTP immunization was being administered at the time (1981). Thus, it was not those children that received the vaccination that received the benefit of the immunization, but rather it was the younger infants that older children might be in contact with that were benefitted because of the provided herd immunity. The very serious complications thought to be associated with pertussis vaccine therefore seemed too risky to many parents who felt that their children were being put at risk for the sake of protecting someone