Vaccination: 5 Things You Didn't Know

For all of recorded history, smallpox has been the great scourge of civilization, arguably killing billions over time. After all, multiple estimates put the death toll from smallpox in the 20th century alone as high as 500 million -- and the World Health Organization declared it to be eradicated in 1980. Smallpox was the original target of inoculation and later vaccination efforts, and stands today as the method's greatest success story.

However, since the earliest days of vaccination at the turn of the 19th century, there has been a strong and vocal anti-vaccine movement. The declaration by the World Health Organization in June of 2009 of H1N1 as a global pandemic -- the first such designation in 41 years -- has further fueled both sides of the battle, and that's not to mention the rising tide of opposition to some vaccines under the pseudoscientific claim that they cause certain childhood disorders, such as autism.

As controversy erupts over priority lists for the H1N1 vaccine, and while that unproven link between vaccination and autism gains celebrity steam, we present five things you didn't know about vaccination.

1- The average immune system can handle 100,000 vaccinations

The first thing you didn't know about vaccination is that, academically speaking, the human immune system can handle an enormous number of vaccinations with ease -- about 100,000, in fact.

Currently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommend that by the age of two, a child receive 10 vaccinations in a total of 26 doses. Yet this figure of 100,000, reached by Paul Offit, professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania and the anti-Christ of the anti-vaccine movement, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics and set off a firestorm of controversy. Offit himself regrets coming up with the figure, simply because it makes him sound like a monster wielding 100,000 needles ready to stick each little child, but he nonetheless “sticks” by the figure. He told Wired magazine, "The 100,000 number makes me sound like a madman," but his colleagues had asked him to determine what the threshold might be for the average immune system, and he produced the answer. "In that article, I was being asked the question," he responded, "and that is the answer to the question."

2- Government-mandated vaccination began in 1840

The early work of vaccine pioneers such as Edward Jenner truly came to fruition in 1840 when the British government passed the Vaccination Act of 1840, which initially provided free smallpox vaccinations for the country's poor.

However, with the passage of the Vaccination Act of 1853, smallpox vaccination suddenly became compulsory for all children in the first three months of life, and furthermore, the Act carried with it a fine or imprisonment for parents who didn't have their children vaccinated. The addition of this criminal element outraged the English public and set off a series of violent riots and protests in various towns, effectively launching the anti-vaccine movement, which persists to this day.

3- Vaccines in the pipeline include malaria

Another thing you didn't know about vaccination is that it has a scourge of the developing world in its cross hairs.

According to the World Health Organization's (WHO) World Malaria Report 2008, there were an estimated 247 million malaria cases among 3.3 billion people at risk in 2006, which led to the deaths of approximately one million people, most of them children under the age of 5. In August of 2009 the WHO's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety published a report on the progress of the most promising candidate among a number of potential malaria vaccines, known as RTS,S/AS01, citing that its acceptable safety profile had allowed it to move into phase III clinical trials that began this past May.

4- Vaccination laws created the "conscientious objector"

Would-be soldiers have been claiming “conscientious objector” status for decades as a means of avoiding fighting in a conflict in which they do not believe, but few of them were aware of the fact that the legal concept of a "conscientious objector" is a product of the anti-vaccine movement.

After years of riots and fierce opposition to government-mandated vaccinations, the British Vaccination Act of 1898 was passed. This act bowed to pressure by the anti-vaccine movement by removing the criminal penalties associated with not having one's children vaccinated, provided parents got a certificate of exemption that claimed they objected to vaccines as a matter of conscience. Thus was born the legal concept of a conscientious objector.

5- One scientist developed most of the vaccines in use today

The last thing you didn't know about vaccination is that one man is responsible for most of them, and there's a great chance you've never heard of him.

American microbiologist Maurice Hilleman, whose name is virtually unknown to most of the public, is responsible for having developed about three dozen vaccines during his amazing career, including eight of the 10 currently mandated vaccines. On his death in 2005, outlets including the Washington Post didn't hesitate to credit Hilleman with having "saved more lives than any scientist in the past century.”

[Excerpt From AskMen]