Tag Archives: vaccines

A pandemic of emotions: Navigating vaccine hesitancy in a post-pandemic world

February 16, 2023

Nidhi Bhaskar Providence, Rhode Island   Photo by CDC on Pexels Four years before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was registering community members at a local health fair. An elderly man in line mentioned that he would never receive a flu shot because his healthy cousin had died of an aneurysm after receiving one. I spoke […]

“Killed By Vaccination”: the enduring currency of a nineteenth century illogic

March 15, 2022

Saty Satya-Murti Santa Maria, California, United States   Fig. 1. William Young’s 1886 pamphlet alleging that smallpox vaccinations slaughter and kill. Source: Wellcome Collection. In Public Domain. Vaccine misinformation and anti-vaccination conspiracy theories are not new but have acquired a combative energy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly all the arguments now raised against vaccination were […]

A return to The Plague

June 7, 2021

Bonnie Salomon Chicago, Illinois, United States   Cover of 1991 edition of The Plague by Albert Camus. For the past fifteen months, I have been reading and returning to Albert Camus’ 1947 novel, The Plague. Chronicling a fictional plague epidemic in Oran, Algeria, the narrator Dr. Rieux tells the saga of a city’s horrific struggle. […]

Doubled edged shield

December 30, 2020

Adil Menon  Cleveland, Ohio, United States   Jeryl Lynn Hilleman with her sister, Kirsten, in 1966 as a doctor gave her the mumps vaccine developed by their father. Unknown Photographer, distributed by Merck Sharp & Dohme. ca 1966. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of American History  Working my way through a biography of pioneering vaccine developer […]

Have we learned anything from 1918-1919 influenza?

June 1, 2020

Edward Winslow Wilmette, Illinois, United States   Actual daily deaths from influenza, September to November 1918. Monthly Bulletin of the Department of Health, December 1918. NYC Municipal Library. Source.  The 2020 viral pandemic (COVID-19),1 in spite of being caused by a novel virus family, bears striking epidemiological and social resemblance to the influenza pandemic of 1918.2 […]

How conflict and bureaucracy delayed the elimination of yellow fever

March 2, 2020

Edward McSweegan Kingston, Rhode Island, United States   Army Surgeon General George Miller Sternberg. US government photo. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. The Golden Age of Bacteriology (1876–1906) saw the emergence of techniques to cultivate bacterial pathogens and develop vaccines and anti-toxin therapies against them. The new bacteriologists rapidly identified the agents causing anthrax, gonorrhea, typhoid, […]

Blood donation in South Sudan

February 6, 2020

Ahmed Elhag Latham, New York, United States   Red Cross in South Sudan. The item to the far right in the photograph is the country’s national instrument the “tombour” (an African lyre). The item to the left is a handcrafted piece of Sudanese art which contains calligraphy. Photograph by the author. When discussing the many […]

Health, wellness, and their determinants

January 28, 2020

Travis Kirkwood Ottawa, Ontario, Canada   Original map made by John Snow in 1854. Cholera cases are highlighted in black. 2nd Ed by John Snow. Public Domain due to age. John Snow is often referred to as the father of modern epidemiology. His work is certainly worthy of this1 and present-day public health2 still strives toward […]

Physician: study thyself

March 24, 2017

Susan Hurley Victoria, Australia   Jesse William Lazear, an American physician who died in 1900 after a self-experiment. In 2016 one man died and five others suffered brain damage during a drug trial in Rennes, France.1 A similar disaster occurred during the 2006 London trial of a novel monoclonal antibody: six men experienced an immediate […]

Medical Autonomy and Vaccines: A Kantian Imperative

January 30, 2017

Justin M Le Blanc Philadelphia, United States   Image courtesy of Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images [email protected] http://wellcomeimages.org In The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant seeks to establish a concept of duty based solely on reason. He believed that one must not just act in “accordance with duty . . .” but […]