From historical safety concerns, like the Cutter Incident in 1955 or the withdrawal of the first rotavirus vaccine in 1999, to improvements in vaccine safety and the control, elimination, and eradication of vaccine-preventable diseases, understanding the history of vaccines can help you understand how important vaccines really are to us all.
The Hedda Get Bedda doll is sometimes used to push the myth that vaccine-preventable diseases, like measles and chicken pox, aren’t that serious, helping folks justify their decisions to skip or delay vaccines and leaving their kids unprotected.
Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine in 1955, an inactivated vaccine that we still use today.
Benjamin Franklin regretted that he had not protected his son against smallpox.
