Before covid-19, two centuries of vaccination and mistrust

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–This content was published on 08 December 2020 – 08:04
08 December 2020 – 08:04

(AFP)

The vaccination campaigns are going to start just one year after the appearance of covid-19. An unprecedented speed that raises hope to end the crisis but fuels the usual mistrust of vaccines.

A journey through more than two centuries of advances and suspicions.

– 1796: Jenner’s idea –

With highly contagious pustules, smallpox was a terrible scourge for centuries. In 1796, the English physician Edward Jenner had the idea of ​​inoculating a form of the benign smallpox virus into a child to stimulate his immune reaction. The process worked. The “vaccination” was born.

– 1853: 1st compulsory vaccination –

In the United Kingdom, the smallpox vaccine was mandatory for children from 1853. This requirement generated virulent opposition. The detractors alleged the “danger” of injecting products from animals, “religious reasons” or “attack on individual freedoms”.

Beginning in 1898 a “conscience clause” was introduced into British law to allow recalcitrant people not to get vaccinated.

– 1885: Pasteur and rabies –

At the end of the 19th century, Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine against rabies from an attenuated strain of the virus. In 1885, a successful injection was made to Joseph Meister, a boy who had been bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies.

In this case there was also mistrust. Pasteur was accused of wanting to enrich himself by making a “laboratory rage”.

– 1920s: BCG, diphtheria, tetanus … –

After the typhus vaccine that was developed at the end of the 19th century, the 1920s saw the multiplication of vaccines against tuberculosis (BCG, 1921), diphtheria (1923), tetanus (1926) and pertussis (1926). .

Also in the 1920s, aluminum salts began to be used as an adjuvant to increase the effectiveness of vaccines. This will also be a source of suspicion for vaccine naysayers, particularly in France.

– 1944: flu shot –

The first flu vaccination campaign took place in 1944-1945 to protect American soldiers who came to fight in Europe.

Thirty years later, the first major flu vaccination campaign in the United States “ended in 1976 in disaster,” science historian Laurent-Henri Vignaud reminds AFP. The recrudescence among those vaccinated with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare disease of the nervous system, “led to the suspension of injections.”

– 1980: smallpox eradicated –

The last natural case of smallpox was diagnosed in Somalia on October 26, 1977. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared this disease eradicated on May 8, 1980 thanks to the worldwide effort undertaken after the Second World War. In the 20th century alone, it caused some 300 million deaths, more than armed conflicts.

– 1998: false study, real distrust –

In 1998, a study published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet suggested a relationship between MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccines and autism.

It is discovered that it is a “fix” of the author Andrew Wakefield. But neither the official denial of the magazine nor the subsequent works demonstrating the absence of a link failed to quell the fears. This study continues to be routinely cited by vaccine naysayers.

– 2009: H1N1 vaccination failure –

In 2009, the H1N1 flu pandemic, caused by a virus from the same family as the 1918 flu, sounded the alerts at the WHO. Vaccination campaigns were organized but the epidemic was less severe than expected, causing only 18,500 deaths.

Millions of doses had to be destroyed and reproaches to mismanagement reinforced distrust of vaccines in many countries, where “anti-vaccines” highlight cases of side effects even though they are very rare.

2020: Polio and the Plot Theory –

Officially eradicated since August 2020 in Africa thanks to the vaccine, polio is resistant in Asia, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where this disease causes paralysis in children.

The failure of the vaccination campaigns is mainly explained by the distrust of rural populations and the belief in conspiracy theories against Muslims.

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