promises and cautionary tales of vaccination

December 14, 2020 11:59 AM

Joel Gunter and Vikas Pandey from the BBC find lessons on vaccination from the life of Waldemar Haffkine, a Ukranian Jewish microbiologist who developed cholera and plague vaccines in British-governed India in the 1890s: "Years of top-down medical programmes by the British government had sowed distrust among the population, and to many the very concept of vaccination was still alien. Haffkine's solution was to work with a team of Indian doctors and assistants, rather than the British - Drs Chowdry, Ghose, Chatterjee, and Dutt, among others. And he had a new trick up his sleeve in the world of vaccinology: publicly injecting himself to prove he thought his preparation was safe."
posted by ChuraChura (5 comments total)

A great (if somewhat bittersweet) story, well worth the read. Thanks for sharing this!
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:46 PM on December 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Really interesting. Fascinating to read that vaccine hesistancy is nothing new, and that good public communication has always been key to public health interventions.
posted by vincebowdren at 8:17 AM on December 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

Shows the importance of good record keeping, that contaminated forceps at delivery-site could be forensically fingered years later in a different country. Also important that nobody drops the ball forceps in a long complex trail from lab to arm. Thanks for sharing.
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:00 AM on December 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

That is an amazing story! I can't wait to talk about it with my dad, a retired epidemiologist.
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:35 AM on December 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

Interesting read, thanks! I was surprised to see my grandfather appear as the Lt. Colonel mentioned at the end of the article. He was director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (which included "The Parel Laboratory", now the Haffkine Institute) in Bombay for many years, where he discovered the vectors for African sleeping sickness (fieldwork in Uganda - it was feared this disease would spread to India) and leishmaniasis.

From the dates in the article, I don't think he can have been involved in the poor treatment of Haffkine. He was however the medical officer on the Younghusband expedition into (invasion of) Tibet which committed many war crimes and so like many British men of his day, is something of a mixed bag. I'm sending this to my dad who has written a short biography of his dad, and I am sure will be interested .
posted by Rumple at 1:14 PM on December 15, 2020 [3 favorites]