Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, if you're down,
Speaker 1: He'll pick you up. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Voban,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And today is going to be
Speaker 1: part one of a two part series we're doing on
Speaker 1: one of the most important life saving technologies of the
Speaker 1: past couple of centuries. Yeah, we're talking vaccines saving literally
Speaker 1: millions countless lives, you could say, because there's no way
Speaker 1: of knowing. I'm pray the other but but clare might
Speaker 1: have all gotten better anyway, probably not all of them.
Speaker 1: Probably probably not, but maybastically speaking, maybe a few. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, we know that millions of people are
Speaker 1: alive today because of vaccines. Yeah, and we wanted to
Speaker 1: cover it because it's been an interesting journey seeing how
Speaker 1: the public relationship with the science of vaccines has changed
Speaker 1: over my lifetime. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, vaccines just being um, being a kind of
Speaker 1: uncontroversial part of medicine as far as I knew, maybe
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of whatever controversies may have existed, then,
Speaker 1: I think they were relatively controversial, uncontroversial for the entire
Speaker 1: span of their existence up until like the nineties, at
Speaker 1: least at least unless you kept like the first few
Speaker 1: decades of vaccination, in which case there was some contention.
Speaker 1: But well that's because they didn't work once they were
Speaker 1: established from that point forward. Yeah, people really didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of contentious things to say until the nineties.
Speaker 1: But we'll go into that probably more in part two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but one of the things that's interesting to look at
Speaker 1: from our perspective on vaccines is that I think the
Speaker 1: public has sort of lost track of the progress of
Speaker 1: vaccines in the future or projections about vaccines, because we
Speaker 1: live in a climate now where news stories about vaccines
Speaker 1: tend to be about the political controversy people who, you know,
Speaker 1: activist groups who are opposed to vaccines for some reason,
Speaker 1: instead of about what new things vaccines could do in
Speaker 1: a medical sense. Right. Yeah, So we've got a lot
Speaker 1: to say about vaccines, and in this episode we're really
Speaker 1: going to be looking it's it's it's almost like it's
Speaker 1: a stuff you missed in history class episode instead of
Speaker 1: forward thinking episode. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking about the future
Speaker 1: of vaccines, and by the future we mean the past
Speaker 1: right in part one. In part one, Yeah, in part two,
Speaker 1: we're going to go into some of the new techniques
Speaker 1: that are being developed in some of the new ways
Speaker 1: that this sort of technology is going to continue to
Speaker 1: change our lives. Uh and you know. But but right
Speaker 1: in this first episode, would like to clear up a
Speaker 1: little bit of the confusion perhaps about what vaccines are,
Speaker 1: how they work, how they have worked, and what they
Speaker 1: are doing for us right now. Yeah, exactly, So we
Speaker 1: have to have a basic understanding to work from. So
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, if you want to take a
Speaker 1: super bird's eye view, vaccines essentially are a method of
Speaker 1: teaching our immune systems how to respond to specific pathogens,
Speaker 1: specific disease carrying microbes. Yeah. I tend to think about
Speaker 1: vaccines sort of at two levels of resolution. One of
Speaker 1: them is the specific sense, in which most of the time,
Speaker 1: especially with with infectious diseases, there it's referring to using
Speaker 1: a damaged, you're killed version of that disease in order
Speaker 1: to teach your body's immune system how to respond to it.
Speaker 1: But then there's also a broader sense of looking at
Speaker 1: the concept of vaccination as essentially a preventative measure in
Speaker 1: medicine that gives you resistance or immunity to a condition
Speaker 1: or disease before you get it. Yes, and inoculation, it's
Speaker 1: pre therapy. And also it's it's not just for the individual, right,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about vaccination, this is really for the
Speaker 1: good of large groups of people because often we're talking
Speaker 1: about diseases that can be contagious. Now, not all diseases
Speaker 1: that you would get vaccinations for our contagious, but several
Speaker 1: of them are, and you would like to have a
Speaker 1: vaccinated population to prevent that kind of outbreak it reaching
Speaker 1: an epidemic, you know, proportion if possible. And just just
Speaker 1: to be clear, when I'm saying diseases that aren't contagious,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about human to human contagion. Right. Some diseases, uh,
Speaker 1: you you catch from other sources, like malaria is spread
Speaker 1: through mosquito bites, but not through human to human contact.
Speaker 1: And we don't have a vaccine from malaria. Yes spoiler
Speaker 1: alert from part two, but yes, exactly, we do not
Speaker 1: yet have a vaccine from malaria. And there's very good
Speaker 1: reasons why we have not yet developed one. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in part but we did have one shingles. Yes,
Speaker 1: shingles being the same actual virus that causes chicken pox,
Speaker 1: but the shingles variant is not not human to human contagious.
Speaker 1: If I were to develop shingles, I would not be
Speaker 1: able to pass it on to my coworkers here. I
Speaker 1: would just be in a lot of discomfort. Uh So,
Speaker 1: there are different types of diseases, and both bacterial and
Speaker 1: viral diseases are are represented among the vaccinations that we
Speaker 1: can get. It's not just one or the other. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about antibiotics. That's typically something you would use
Speaker 1: for a bacterial infection, but only something you can use
Speaker 1: bacterial infection, right, So in this case, vaccines could be
Speaker 1: used for either um and when in the case of malaria,
Speaker 1: that's parasitic. But again we'll talk about that more in
Speaker 1: portant too. So you might think, all right, well, how
Speaker 1: far back to this does this idea date? Well, I'd
Speaker 1: imagine that before we had vaccines, somebody had to have
Speaker 1: observe that for some diseases, most people only got them once,
Speaker 1: And in fact that did happen, and one of the
Speaker 1: earliest records we have dates back to four twenty nine
Speaker 1: b c E. And that was when a Greek historian
Speaker 1: whose name I am going to spell and then attempt
Speaker 1: to say it's throucidities. Throucidities, is that it? Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: never ever heard it before. Come on, he's probably talking
Speaker 1: about smallpox in Athens, right, And look, I was a
Speaker 1: Shakespearean scholar. I had little Latin and less Greek, so uh,
Speaker 1: thucidities then, at any rate, thlucidities observed in four nine
Speaker 1: b C that people who were exposed to smallpox and
Speaker 1: recovered did not seem to get it again, whether they
Speaker 1: were around lots of people at small pox or not. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was this idea that kind of eventually evolved.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that evolved in different places around
Speaker 1: the world, more or less at around the same time.
Speaker 1: We don't have a record of it originating in one
Speaker 1: part of the world and then spreading, like the knowledge
Speaker 1: spreading of how to make a practical application of this knowledge.
Speaker 1: It may very well be that it independently was developed
Speaker 1: in various areas around the world more or less than
Speaker 1: the same time frame, but there do seem to be
Speaker 1: ancient civilizations that figured out how to make use of
Speaker 1: this observation, not just kind of, hey, that's an interesting
Speaker 1: fact you can only get smallpox once, but thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe if we, you know, kind of scrape off somebody's
Speaker 1: smallpox scabs and jam them up your nose, that might
Speaker 1: help you similar to that, Not quite that level, but yes,
Speaker 1: uh so far off. This is the predecessor to vaccination
Speaker 1: that is called vary elation. Are generally called vary elation.
Speaker 1: There are some other names like ingrafting that will talk
Speaker 1: about later there it's essentially the same thing. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: read this showed up in like China and India, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Africa. Yeah, it happened. Happened to show up in
Speaker 1: a lot of different places all around again the same
Speaker 1: general time frame. But vary elation involves pretty much what
Speaker 1: you were talking about. You would take someone who has
Speaker 1: not yet been infected by a disease like smallpox, and
Speaker 1: you would end up scratching their skin and then introducing
Speaker 1: some infected material, usually scabs or possibly pus, from someone
Speaker 1: who already had contracted a weakened version of small box.
Speaker 1: Someone who was had a mild case. Someone yeah, who
Speaker 1: was surviving. Yeah, who had it but was doing okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: someone had it enough to have some scabs. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a basic symptom of smallpox. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's not like, oh, well they've got smallpox,
Speaker 1: but don't worry, they have the non scabby kind. It
Speaker 1: was at any rate, it was It was taken from
Speaker 1: people who had the mild cases because the thought was, well,
Speaker 1: it's more likely to be less deadly than the people
Speaker 1: who had really uh you know, debilitating and often fatal
Speaker 1: cases of smallpox. So then they would expose the cut
Speaker 1: to the healthy person, healthy person to this infected material,
Speaker 1: essentially rubbing the infected material, sometimes using a lancet to
Speaker 1: introduce infected material in underneath the skin, essentially injecting it
Speaker 1: into the bloodstream of the uninfect in person. The uninfected
Speaker 1: person then would become an infected person. This was the
Speaker 1: process of going from uninfected to totally infected. But it
Speaker 1: would normally result in another mild case, and more often
Speaker 1: than not, certainly more often than someone catch catching the
Speaker 1: disease naturally through person to person contact or whatever. Um
Speaker 1: would recover and so then once they recovered again, yeah,
Speaker 1: no matter what how powerful the strain was, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: get that particular disease again, specifically smallpox, and the Chinese
Speaker 1: were regularly performing vary elation treatments by one a d
Speaker 1: and this spread probably outward from these individual communities, not
Speaker 1: necessarily from uh you know, from from east to west,
Speaker 1: although that did eventually happen, but much much later. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the Chinese physicians what they would typically do is a
Speaker 1: lymph from a patient who had a mild case of
Speaker 1: this disease and put that in a bottle and the
Speaker 1: lymph would dry out, and they would usually wait a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks before they would use it. And this
Speaker 1: actually had the effect of either killing or rendering inert
Speaker 1: most of the virus inside that sample, which is a
Speaker 1: basic idea that's used in vaccines today, is using either
Speaker 1: UH attenuated or dead versions of the pathogen. And just
Speaker 1: so happens that they were doing it and and it worked,
Speaker 1: was an effective treatment belief for them. Yeah, So, if
Speaker 1: we if we fast forward to the early seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: that was when UH inoculation, this idea of introducing infective
Speaker 1: material and a healthy person to prevent them from catching something.
Speaker 1: Later so you say early seventy. That sounds like we're
Speaker 1: not to Jenner yet. No, we're not degener yet. There
Speaker 1: was a lady by the name of a lady as
Speaker 1: in a peer by the name lady Mary Wortley Montague.
Speaker 1: Is lady on the same level as what lord? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: is that a level or is that just a general?
Speaker 1: It's a peerage, is part of the peerage. Um. So
Speaker 1: she was the wife of a British ambassador to Turkey
Speaker 1: and observed while in Turkey this practice of very elation.
Speaker 1: She brought it back to England. She called the practice
Speaker 1: in grafting. And she had a very um personal reason
Speaker 1: for for practicing this. Her brother had died from smallpox,
Speaker 1: and she herself had had caught smallpox. Survived, but she
Speaker 1: was terribly scarred by it. She was someone who had
Speaker 1: been renowned for her beauty in her youth, and she
Speaker 1: was determined to make certain that her children did not
Speaker 1: suffer the same fate as her brother or herself, and
Speaker 1: so she used this approach. Um. In this version, you
Speaker 1: would take pus from a blister that was formed on
Speaker 1: a you know, if someone who had smallpox had developed
Speaker 1: and preferably a mild case of it and then introduced
Speaker 1: it into the bloodstream of an uninfected person using a lancet.
Speaker 1: So it again ended up kind of catching on. It
Speaker 1: wasn't infectious or anything, but it did catch on in
Speaker 1: England and was over time a pretty popular way of
Speaker 1: treating people so that they would not catch smallpox. But
Speaker 1: it came with some slight drawbacks. Yeah, as you may
Speaker 1: be able to imagine anyone who heard, you know, heard
Speaker 1: us described this process and immediately went that's a really
Speaker 1: good way to catch lots of other diseases from somebody.
Speaker 1: And in fact it was a good way. So if
Speaker 1: you were person the person who is suffering from a
Speaker 1: mild case of small pox also happened to be suffering
Speaker 1: from something like syphilis or tuberculosis, then there was a
Speaker 1: strong possibility you were prubbing their bodily tissue into your
Speaker 1: bodily to issue. Yeah, hey, that just sounds like even
Speaker 1: more vaccines, right, Probably didn't work that word that way
Speaker 1: for tuberculosis or syphilis. No, not all diseases are are
Speaker 1: ones that you can use this particular approach to to
Speaker 1: become immune to those diseases. Well, yeah, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: follow that if you had a particularly weak version of smallpox,
Speaker 1: that your versions of those other diseases would be weak
Speaker 1: strains as well. That's also true. So yeah, this this
Speaker 1: was an issue. Now we skip ahead to six, and
Speaker 1: that's where we get to Edward Jenner, who is often
Speaker 1: credited as being the person who quote unquote discovered vaccines.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of a misnomer, a little bit
Speaker 1: of misinformation, but usually any time you say that a
Speaker 1: single person discovered a thing, it's it's sort of ignoring
Speaker 1: the hundreds of years of scientific history right back to
Speaker 1: their discovery. I think the best we can say is
Speaker 1: that Jenner was the first to really apply the scientific
Speaker 1: method you staying a hypothesis to prove the underlying uh
Speaker 1: foundation was sound. Yeah, and don't get me wrong, like
Speaker 1: he did amazing work, like especially considering that it was
Speaker 1: sevent y'all. Yeah, and he he threw in his personal
Speaker 1: like fortune is probably being too too grand a word.
Speaker 1: He put a lot of his time and money into
Speaker 1: this to the point where he was, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: not doing so great and as far financially speaking while
Speaker 1: he was working on this, but he believed in it wholeheartedly.
Speaker 1: So he continued to pursue it. Uh, he had been
Speaker 1: inoculated against smallpox when he was a kid using the
Speaker 1: very elation technique. Yeah. But so there is a distinction
Speaker 1: to make with jennerous technique versus the very elation technique, right,
Speaker 1: which is the very elation technique says, let's take a
Speaker 1: weak version of smallpox and give it to you and
Speaker 1: hope it doesn't kill you or make you really sick,
Speaker 1: and you'll become immune. Jenner found a sort of run
Speaker 1: around this, right, He was like, well, what if we
Speaker 1: took a similar disease that doesn't really hurt humans? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, cow pox does create some pretty nasty pustules,
Speaker 1: but tends to usually, it doesn't last that long, and
Speaker 1: it's rarely serious. It's kind of alone the lines of
Speaker 1: like a chicken pox for someone who's young, right. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously as you get older, if you have never had
Speaker 1: chicken pox, it can be a more serious health hazard.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, he had heard these tales about dairy
Speaker 1: maids who had suffered cow pox but then never ever
Speaker 1: suffering from smallpox, even if they were exposed to it um.
Speaker 1: And so he started to form this hypothesis that perhaps
Speaker 1: whatever caused cow pox was similar enough to smallpox that
Speaker 1: if you were to expose someone to it in this approach,
Speaker 1: they would then be immune to smallpox as well, which
Speaker 1: would be incredibly helpful. Right, So he ended up taking
Speaker 1: infective material from a woman named Sarah Nelms who was
Speaker 1: a dairy maid who was suffering cow pox and uh
Speaker 1: and ended up uh introducing into the blood stream of
Speaker 1: a young boy named James Phipps, and then later used
Speaker 1: the vary elation technique to introduce smallpox to the boy's
Speaker 1: blood and he was completely unaffected. He didn't get sick.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it was taking the the very
Speaker 1: elation approach, like still trying to safely introduce a mild
Speaker 1: case of smallpox to the boy to see if in
Speaker 1: fact he would have the symptoms, because often people would
Speaker 1: have symptoms for a short while, recover and then they'd
Speaker 1: be immune. The boy never even developed symptoms, thus showing that, oh,
Speaker 1: this cow pox approach is working. Now did the boy
Speaker 1: know what was going on here? Yeah, this this is
Speaker 1: a little bit less controlled. Either way, vary elation would
Speaker 1: have been the method to in oculate him against smallpox.
Speaker 1: So it turned out that you know, even if it
Speaker 1: even if the cow pox thing hadn't worked. This is
Speaker 1: this was the accepted way to inoculate someone against smallpox. Um.
Speaker 1: Probably still a little ethically questionable today, but but you know,
Speaker 1: the point is that the entire past is ethically questionable. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so uh, you know, keep in mind Jenner himself,
Speaker 1: he was not just a physician, not like a country
Speaker 1: doctor or anything. He had actually studied under some of
Speaker 1: the most famous surgeons in England at the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and had even studied other fields of science, including biology.
Speaker 1: He had helped classify species that were brought back by
Speaker 1: Captain Cook after Cook's first voyage. Yeah. So he was
Speaker 1: very much involved in the scientific community. And he wrote
Speaker 1: up a paper about how he used cow pox to
Speaker 1: inoculate against smallpox, and and uh ended up submitting it
Speaker 1: to the Royal Society, but they rejected the paper. They
Speaker 1: did not think that it was worthy of publication. And
Speaker 1: so he would end up self publishing a booklet, uh,
Speaker 1: something that I can come traditions still kept alive today, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: And I'll show you His booklet had a catchy title.
Speaker 1: It was an inquiry into the causes and effects of
Speaker 1: very early vaccinate a disease discovered in some of the
Speaker 1: western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the
Speaker 1: name of cow pox. That just sprawls right off the tongue.
Speaker 1: It does. Oh wow, I'm putting this together in my
Speaker 1: brain right now, and I've never realized it before. Spanish
Speaker 1: for cow is voca, probably connecting to Latin voca meaning
Speaker 1: cow meaning. The word vaccine comes from the word for
Speaker 1: cow cow poxes uh in Latin is vaccinia. So he
Speaker 1: named the process vaccinations. Vaccination refers specifically to using cow
Speaker 1: pox to protect against smallpox, but has been since broadly
Speaker 1: applied to this procedure for all sorts of different diseases.
Speaker 1: But yes, originally it all had to do with cow
Speaker 1: pox and smallpox, uh, which I thought. I tried to
Speaker 1: throw in at least one little cool truth nugget that's
Speaker 1: gonna really get you, you know, right, right right and
Speaker 1: right in the thinking parts. That was my goal at
Speaker 1: any rate. Um. So, Jenner faced a little bit of
Speaker 1: opposition to his approach because obviously, anytime you come up
Speaker 1: with a different method of doing something than the standard method,
Speaker 1: there's inertia to overcome, right, But other physicians physicians soon
Speaker 1: began to employ this vaccination technique, and by eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: the practice had spread from UK to Europe and even
Speaker 1: to America. Thomas Jefferson himself became an advocate for vaccinations
Speaker 1: after Professor Benjamin Waterhouse of Harvard University demonstrated its efficacy.
Speaker 1: So Waterhouse had received a sample that ultimately came from
Speaker 1: Jenner of the cow pox um Uh, material that could
Speaker 1: be used for vaccinations. Uh. It got to him by
Speaker 1: way of another scientist. But that's how it got over
Speaker 1: to America. And Jenner continued to push for vaccination, often
Speaker 1: again at his own expense, but eventually was recognized by
Speaker 1: a British parliament for his contributions to the health and
Speaker 1: welfare of the nation, and they ultimately awarded him with
Speaker 1: about thirty thousand pounds sterling, which was no small sum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's not it. That's not a joke right now. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's a healthy dose of cash right now. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, an enormous sum of money. Uh.
Speaker 1: And by eighteen forty, vaccinations had completely replaced vary elation
Speaker 1: in the UK. In fact, vary elation had become prohibited.
Speaker 1: So you could only go forward with vaccination at that point. Um.
Speaker 1: And again, Jenner was not the first guy to try
Speaker 1: this out. There were some other records that predate his work,
Speaker 1: but he was the first to apply the scientific method
Speaker 1: to establish that, in fact, this was a sound method
Speaker 1: of preventing disease. But this is still before we had
Speaker 1: realized that diseases are caused by germs. Germ theory was
Speaker 1: not a thing, which means that there was still the
Speaker 1: risk of cross contamination where you could still introduce something
Speaker 1: like syphilis or tuberculosis in this process just because people
Speaker 1: weren't sterilizing equipment, equipment. Essentially, it was it wasn't until
Speaker 1: like the eighteen fifties that germ theory really caught on,
Speaker 1: like like really really took hold. So, which is so
Speaker 1: crazy to me thinking that that's that it was that late. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so yeah, And I mean you you can read
Speaker 1: accounts in the Civil War of doctors who just didn't
Speaker 1: take to that whole idea of washing up between patients,
Speaker 1: I mean, just gonna get hands bloody again. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, you know, this is uh still was
Speaker 1: quite an issue here. But but we also had debates
Speaker 1: that raged on other elements of vaccinations, and they went
Speaker 1: on well after or the eighteen hundreds. So, for example, UH,
Speaker 1: there was the debate about the merits of a live
Speaker 1: culture of whatever the pathogen is, whether it's viral or bacterial,
Speaker 1: versus a dead sample, a dead or or inactive sample,
Speaker 1: and depending upon the vaccination, that actually does make a
Speaker 1: big difference. But a big debate that was right on
Speaker 1: this this very very subject was between Jonas Salk, who
Speaker 1: was the uh, the man who essentially created the polio
Speaker 1: vaccine that all but wiped out polio um, although there's
Speaker 1: still some parts of the world where polio is still
Speaker 1: very much a problem. Uh and another physician by the
Speaker 1: name of Albert Sabine, who argued for a live polio
Speaker 1: vaccine as opposed to a dead polio vaccine. Salk went
Speaker 1: out on that one, by the way, so at any rate, UM.
Speaker 1: So that that's the history, but that doesn't tell us
Speaker 1: exactly what is happening in our immune systems when we
Speaker 1: encounter one of these pathogens, whether it's from a vaccine
Speaker 1: or some other source, like if we're actually catching a disease.
Speaker 1: So we in order to understand how vaccines work, we
Speaker 1: kind of have to look into the immune system of
Speaker 1: the human body. So to understand how our immune system works.
Speaker 1: I've got a cast of characters that we need to
Speaker 1: familiarize ourselves with, the dramatis persona if you will, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know drama. The cast of characters from Inner Space
Speaker 1: or the Fantastic Voyage does not does not have inner
Speaker 1: space to sale is Martin short, right, which is which
Speaker 1: they both are. Both are tiny people going in the
Speaker 1: body right, Yes, inner Space was the comedy, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, So one of the first things we have
Speaker 1: to discuss that are several different subtypes of white blood
Speaker 1: cells actually play an important part here. We have macro flogees. Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys know what macro floge means. It means big eater. Yes,
Speaker 1: macrobe being big and foge being to eat. So these
Speaker 1: are these are cells that quote unquote eat other cells,
Speaker 1: like consume other cells or other material doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: another cell. So they eat things like microbes, like foreign
Speaker 1: microbes that come into the bloodstream. But they also eat
Speaker 1: other stuff like just de try to you know, the
Speaker 1: garbage that accumulates in our bodies. If we didn't have these,
Speaker 1: we would are our blood would get pretty toxic pretty fast. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then we have the idea of antigens. When a mac
Speaker 1: macroflage eats um a microbe, it leaves behind, it saves
Speaker 1: a special part of that microbe called the antigen. They
Speaker 1: they're actually molecular markers that yeah. Yeah, it's essentially kind
Speaker 1: of like an identifying badge that says, this is what
Speaker 1: this thing is. Uh. And antigens are what alert the
Speaker 1: immune system that are potentially harmful foreign being is present
Speaker 1: in the body. So this is what sets off the
Speaker 1: red alert inside of your your body when your immune
Speaker 1: system starts to really kick in and you start feeling sick.
Speaker 1: This is what is going on. It's identified that there's
Speaker 1: something hanky going down. Yeah. So, uh, antigens are pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: When the macroflage eats on MicroB, it saves that antigen,
Speaker 1: which helps your immune system recognize future infections from that
Speaker 1: same pathogen. It's it's the body's equivalent of the wall
Speaker 1: where you put up that do not accept checks from
Speaker 1: this person. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I can't overstate how
Speaker 1: completely rad this process is. Uh. And that's the like
Speaker 1: official scientific term is radh Because the cells in your
Speaker 1: immune system make these these antigen's part of their own
Speaker 1: genetic code and then use intracellular communication to spread word
Speaker 1: about that antigen. It's it's really beautiful, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah yeah, So now we've got some other
Speaker 1: white blood cell types. We need to talk about lymphocytes. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is also part of the immune system, obviously, and
Speaker 1: within lymphocytes, we have two broad categories of cells, T
Speaker 1: cells and B cells. T cells are thymus cells, and
Speaker 1: they can run either offense or defense. So they're the
Speaker 1: iron man players in the immune system, right. They can
Speaker 1: switch off. Um, actually technically you've got two different types.
Speaker 1: But in the offense mode, what they focus on our
Speaker 1: human cells that have been infected by some sort of pathogen.
Speaker 1: A lot of pathogens are essentially invading human cells, overtaking
Speaker 1: the molecular machinery inside the cells for their own doc purposes,
Speaker 1: usually to generate more of themselves, especially in the case
Speaker 1: of viruses. Yeah, so it's all about, Hey, let's use
Speaker 1: the body's machinery against itself and make more of us, y'all.
Speaker 1: And so that's what tends to happen. So T cells
Speaker 1: they wage chemical warfare on your body's infected cells. So
Speaker 1: there are cells that originally belong to you, but now
Speaker 1: and compromised by the enemy, and it's time to carpet bomb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's to eliminate with extreme prejudice and uh. And the
Speaker 1: idea being that if you can kill the host cell,
Speaker 1: then the pathogen will not be able to multiply and
Speaker 1: you can get the upper hand on an infection defensively.
Speaker 1: T cells secrete chemical signals that alert the other elements
Speaker 1: of the immune system to the presence of a harmful
Speaker 1: micro and this is called cell mediated immune response. And
Speaker 1: then you have the B cells. B cells are responsible
Speaker 1: for making antibodies. Now, antibodies are molecular weapons that lock
Speaker 1: onto antigens on microbes. So you can think of it
Speaker 1: like lock and key or a jigsaw puzzle, where a
Speaker 1: particular antibody will fit snugly against a particular antigen, which
Speaker 1: means that not every antibody works on every antigen. Right,
Speaker 1: if a disease, if you if you come in contact
Speaker 1: with a specific disease and your body has not ever
Speaker 1: encountered that before, the antibodies at deuces won't fit that disease,
Speaker 1: not initially. Yeah. Yeah, these cells are running around like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to help. I'm trying to help, but nothing
Speaker 1: is working. Yeah, Or it's kind of like you're going
Speaker 1: through all of your keys and none of your keys
Speaker 1: are fitting the lock on the front door. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's that kind of thing. And like without that compatibility,
Speaker 1: you can't actually have the immune system kick in. Now
Speaker 1: when it does work, essentially it kind of gloams on
Speaker 1: there and uh and renders the microbe inert unable to
Speaker 1: harm any any of the cells. So when a MicroB
Speaker 1: binners your body, the macroflages are on the case, they
Speaker 1: begin to attack microbes. They they hang out all over
Speaker 1: the body. The macroflages they're pretty much localized to whatever
Speaker 1: area they are already in um. And then they also
Speaker 1: send out the alert to T cells, which start they
Speaker 1: kind of gravitate towards the lymph nodes. But T cells
Speaker 1: will come into play and uh, let the you know,
Speaker 1: really get the word out to say to the immune system, hey,
Speaker 1: here's what's going on, and here's how we need to
Speaker 1: respond help or T cells then emit the chemical signals
Speaker 1: that alert the immune system and B cells that produce
Speaker 1: anybody's that are compatible with that microbes andigen divide into
Speaker 1: large plasma cells. Those mass produced the appropriate antibodies that
Speaker 1: bind with the energens, kind of gumming everything up, and
Speaker 1: it renders the antigen are the the microbe rather thank
Speaker 1: you from being able to infect a cell. And that's
Speaker 1: called humoral immune response or antibody response. But it ain't
Speaker 1: no joke, No, it's not humorous. It's just humoral. So
Speaker 1: then the killer T cells target all the cells that
Speaker 1: have already been compromised. Uh. This is part of why
Speaker 1: you feel so bad when you're sick, apart from the
Speaker 1: symptoms that are specific to whatever pathogen you've been exposed to,
Speaker 1: and when your bodies I think it is sort of
Speaker 1: a general principle that a lot of the reasons you
Speaker 1: feel bad when you're sick are immune responses rather than
Speaker 1: the disease itself. A lot of it is because yeah,
Speaker 1: your body a will, you know, do several things in
Speaker 1: order to fight off diseases, and not all of them
Speaker 1: make you feel hunky dory. In fact, most of them don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it's important because without that process then you
Speaker 1: would be much more vulnerable to these pathogens. Uh So,
Speaker 1: then once your teeth you don't want to pasiphist Imman,
Speaker 1: you definitely want you definitely want a good clings exactly.
Speaker 1: That offense is the best defense. Um. When your body's
Speaker 1: T and B cells have are able to render inert
Speaker 1: microbes faster than the microbes can reproduce, that means you're
Speaker 1: beating the infection. You're winning in that that war. But
Speaker 1: that can take some time. Right, A particularly virulent pathogen
Speaker 1: might be able to replicate itself very quickly, and so
Speaker 1: you know, the initial stages might be pretty touching go,
Speaker 1: depending upon the type of disease. Now, once your body
Speaker 1: fights off the disease, some of the T cells and
Speaker 1: B cells convert into memory cells, which retained this information
Speaker 1: about the disease and can rapidly produce the appropriate antibodies,
Speaker 1: which is why it's easier for you to fight off
Speaker 1: or even entirely resist future infections from the same strain.
Speaker 1: But there's a big caveat here. Strains can sometimes mutate some,
Speaker 1: some mutate much more readily than others, Influenza being a
Speaker 1: big one, right, And when it mutates enough, it it's
Speaker 1: essentially like putting on a disguise and the antibodies don't
Speaker 1: recognize it anymore. And you have to go through the
Speaker 1: whole process all over again. So some diseases mutate so
Speaker 1: rapidly that like by common cold for example. That's that's
Speaker 1: why you can you can get the cold like four
Speaker 1: or five times in a row. Just because it's a
Speaker 1: different version. Your body is completely unprepared to deal with
Speaker 1: this new version. It's why we can't vaccinate against it.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's hope that because often there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of the protein chain that remains the same
Speaker 1: from mutation to mutation that maybe one day we'll take
Speaker 1: advantage of that. But we'll talk about more of that
Speaker 1: stuff in part two. Yes, so with a vaccine, you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about that's the immune response to to a disease. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: so that is how all of that is how your
Speaker 1: immune system works. Vaccines mimic an infection, right. It's a
Speaker 1: purposeful introduction of of a pathogenic material. Essentially, they give
Speaker 1: your body a practice round. Yeah yeah, yeah. So you
Speaker 1: you introduce a weekend or dead strain of some sort
Speaker 1: of pathogen into a patient's bloodstream, which kicks the immune
Speaker 1: system into gear. Uh. It responds just as it would
Speaker 1: with any other kind of infection, and the result is
Speaker 1: once that has run its course, your body is now
Speaker 1: able to produce the proper antibodies for that particular antigen eventually. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen instantaneously. It takes a few weeks to
Speaker 1: build up this response. Right, So, if you've ever said
Speaker 1: I got a flu shot and then like a week
Speaker 1: and a half later ahead the flu, that flu shot
Speaker 1: gave me the flu, probably not. In fact, almost definitely not.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that when you get that vaccination,
Speaker 1: because it takes time for your body to produce the
Speaker 1: appropriate antibodies in quantities that can make you immune, you're
Speaker 1: still vulnerable. So you could still catch the flu from
Speaker 1: your buddy who happens to already have it. So so
Speaker 1: don't lesson here is that if you get the flu shot,
Speaker 1: don't go out and start licking door knobs and the
Speaker 1: house of someone who has the flu, right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: always always, I mean, maybe don't lick people's door knobs anyway,
Speaker 1: because I gotta stretch of time in the year that
Speaker 1: I have a strict no door knob licking policy, and
Speaker 1: the outside of that, it's you know, flexible rules. Sure,
Speaker 1: but you still want to participate in your influenza cuddle
Speaker 1: puddles and yeah, yeah, so so just be careful for
Speaker 1: a few weeks after you get a vaccine, as all
Speaker 1: is all we're saying, right, And this is also why, like,
Speaker 1: if you're going to travel, you want to make sure
Speaker 1: you schedule the vaccinations for what, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: going to travel someplace that has particular diseases prevalent in
Speaker 1: that area, you want to schedule your vaccinations well ahead
Speaker 1: of time before you actually you know, not the day
Speaker 1: before you get on the plane. Um, that might not
Speaker 1: be a great idea. Okay, So earlier you mentioned that
Speaker 1: there are lots of different types of diseases that we
Speaker 1: can vaccinate against, so it seems logical to assume that
Speaker 1: there are lots of different types of vaccines to deal
Speaker 1: with the different types of diseases. There are, in fact
Speaker 1: lots of different types of vaccines to deal with different diseases,
Speaker 1: and some of them again, it's one of those things where,
Speaker 1: through through very careful experimentation, we were able to determine
Speaker 1: which version works best for any particular pathogen. And some
Speaker 1: of these also can be used in conjunction with one another,
Speaker 1: depending upon how you're trying, you know what diseases you're
Speaker 1: trying to prevent. Um Now, I've always wondered why they
Speaker 1: can't just in ject some of that antibacterial soap or
Speaker 1: listering into you when you're getting sick. Do you also
Speaker 1: wonder why that you can't just drink anti freeze when
Speaker 1: it gets cold. Yeah, that's a good question to the
Speaker 1: Toxicity is still a thing, Joe. Toxicity is something that
Speaker 1: we can't just just ignore. Okay, well you can't do that. Well,
Speaker 1: we gotta go with this this thing we've talked about
Speaker 1: earlier where they put some of these things that are
Speaker 1: going to harm you in your body for a practice round.
Speaker 1: Now they might be alive or they might be dead. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're your first time. Sub type of vaccine would
Speaker 1: be live attenuated vaccines attenuated meaning weekend exactly. And this
Speaker 1: would have you know, a live virus or some weekend
Speaker 1: strain of bacteria, depending upon what type of vaccine you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Uh, that you would then introduce to a
Speaker 1: patient before an uninfected person. Yes, that's a better way
Speaker 1: of putting it. The Yeah, I mean, I guess you're
Speaker 1: technically a patients as you walked through the door, but
Speaker 1: uninfected person is much more accurate. So, but this sounds
Speaker 1: like it depends on the fact that you do have
Speaker 1: a fully functioning immune system, right, Yeah, you don't want
Speaker 1: to you don't want to give the sort of treatment
Speaker 1: to someone who has a compromised immune system because it
Speaker 1: will mean that there's still the possibility the virus could
Speaker 1: or bacterial infection could take hold and cause really severe
Speaker 1: medical complications. Because it depends this, this system depends upon
Speaker 1: your all of your immune cells being up and ready
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, yeah, because otherwise you can't develop the immunity.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I should say most or at least
Speaker 1: several vaccines require multiple doses over time in order for
Speaker 1: you to actually get to the level of immunity. Uh,
Speaker 1: many of them, Like a one shot is not enough
Speaker 1: to have lifelong immunity. Some of them, there are, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and some some some pathogens are too virulent
Speaker 1: to risk exposing that much of of a of the
Speaker 1: pathogen at a single time. Very good point. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And some are so virulent that you can't go with
Speaker 1: the live attenuated vaccine yeah yeah, And in that case
Speaker 1: you can use inactivated vaccines, which sounds like the vaccine
Speaker 1: itself is inactive. That's not what it means. Inactivated vaccines
Speaker 1: used dead or inactivated viruses or bacteria. Then there's a
Speaker 1: toxoid vaccines, which sounds like it comes from trauma films
Speaker 1: but doesn't. Toxoid vaccines are used to treat bacterial diseases
Speaker 1: that produce toxins. So the vaccines themselves contain a weakened
Speaker 1: version of those toxins, and those are called toxoids. So
Speaker 1: when the body's immune system encounters the toxoids, it learns
Speaker 1: how to fight off the actual toxins. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like building up an immunity to iokaine powder over. So
Speaker 1: that way, when the zini comes to you and gives
Speaker 1: you a mind game, you can choose whichever you know, whichever,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Yeah, you can put you can put
Speaker 1: the syphilis in both kinds, that's right. Then you have
Speaker 1: subunit vac scenes. This is where a vaccine is sublet
Speaker 1: to another vaccine. Actually, no, that's not true. Subunit vaccines
Speaker 1: contain just bits of a virus or bacteria. Uh, it
Speaker 1: doesn't need to have an entire organism. Yeah, or or
Speaker 1: virus is a little common. Yeah, but then I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to have I mean, virus is such
Speaker 1: a tricky thing, man, we could do a full In
Speaker 1: fact that we have talked about viruses a lot in
Speaker 1: this in this podcast. They're fascinating. But yes, you you
Speaker 1: need to have some part of the micro but you
Speaker 1: don't need the whole thing. Um. By limiting that pathogenic
Speaker 1: material to just the bits you need for the body
Speaker 1: to build up an immunity, you reduce the possibility of
Speaker 1: really severe side effects. You're probably still going to have
Speaker 1: some because it's your immune system kicking in. And again,
Speaker 1: like we've said before, a lot of your symptoms are
Speaker 1: really your immune system reacting, not necessarily the pathogen itself. Um.
Speaker 1: Then you have conjugate vaccines. That's right. These are vaccines
Speaker 1: that have uh well it's this's weird, right. Conjugate vaccines
Speaker 1: are all about kind of fooling your immune system into
Speaker 1: fighting the the pathogen you want them to fight. Uh.
Speaker 1: You use this to protect against bacteria that have antigens
Speaker 1: that are coded by something called polysaccharides, is like a
Speaker 1: sugar like coating. So the sugar like coding on the
Speaker 1: antigen disguises the antigen, so your immune system doesn't see it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so that one of your when one of your
Speaker 1: T cells bumps up against one of these invading cells
Speaker 1: and goes like, hey, what are you? Are you chill?
Speaker 1: Are you not chill? It doesn't find any of those
Speaker 1: antigens that would say, oh, I'm not chill, yeah this
Speaker 1: or even I'm not okay, right exactly, Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: this invading microbe, it's like it has an identifying badge
Speaker 1: that's turned the other way around, and the T cells
Speaker 1: just like, oh, you're probably fine and exactly So, conjugate
Speaker 1: vaccines connect polysaccharide two antigens so that the immune system
Speaker 1: recognizes that these are in fact foreign microbes that need
Speaker 1: to be fought off. UM. And it's uh an interesting approach, right,
Speaker 1: it's linking the the idea of this particular polysaccharide represents
Speaker 1: this particular type of of microbe, and it's a little
Speaker 1: more indirect than some of the other methods we're talking
Speaker 1: about UM, which is pretty awesome. So we're going to
Speaker 1: conclude this episode by talking about some of the diseases
Speaker 1: that people have developed vaccines for. This isn't necessarily a
Speaker 1: completely exhaustive list, but it's pretty pretty decent sized list
Speaker 1: of diseases for which we have vaccines. Smallpox the thing
Speaker 1: that we started talking about, Uh, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: It has been eradicated through vaccination. People don't get smallpox anymore.
Speaker 1: It's gone. And now the question is should we preserve
Speaker 1: tiny samples of it or destroy them? So, you know,
Speaker 1: we we we assume that it seems to be dead
Speaker 1: in the wild. We've got some samples of it in
Speaker 1: labs around the world. Should those labs keep them or not?
Speaker 1: I think there are good cases to be made on
Speaker 1: both sides, Like the keeping it could help us develop
Speaker 1: protections in case it were to ever resurge in the wild.
Speaker 1: But then again on the other hand, like if yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're just keeping around, you don't you don't want
Speaker 1: the stand, right Stephen King's the stand to break out?
Speaker 1: Because that's a long book. No, that's not why. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Also polio, we talked about that briefly. That's a viral
Speaker 1: infection that is close to being eradicated through vaccination, though
Speaker 1: they're still limited outbreaks in different parts of the world.
Speaker 1: And then here are all the not all, but here's
Speaker 1: a list of some of the vaccines we have for
Speaker 1: bacterial infections. That would include anthrax hib or hib diphtheria,
Speaker 1: uh nina, cockle disease like meningitis, whooping cough also known
Speaker 1: as pertussis uh new mccockle diseases. That's the cause of
Speaker 1: bacterial pneumonia, not viral pneumonia, tetanus, and typhoid. The typhoid
Speaker 1: vaccine is not effective. It does create a resistance to typhoid,
Speaker 1: but you're not guaranteed to be immune to typhoid should
Speaker 1: you get that vaccine. Okay, that's the bacterial end. How
Speaker 1: about the viral end hep hepatitis A and B. We
Speaker 1: have vaccines for both of those. Shingles like we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: and chicken pox. The the again, the virus that causes
Speaker 1: shingles is also the virus that causes chicken pox, HPV, influenza,
Speaker 1: although more on that in our next episode. Measles, momps, rhodavirus, rubella,
Speaker 1: yellow fever. All of those are viral infections for which
Speaker 1: we have vaccines. So it's a really impressive. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some big names that are on that list, but but
Speaker 1: that's that's amazing and it shows that we've come a
Speaker 1: long way. Yeah, like goteine humanity like these are. It's
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine in in this day and age,
Speaker 1: the amount of just disastrous tragedy that these diseases caused. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like every year, Like like the fact that that
Speaker 1: people our age have never had to worry about smallpox.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to get across how huge that is
Speaker 1: when you're talking about disease that has been a scourge
Speaker 1: on humanity pretty much the entire history that we had
Speaker 1: civilized humans. So that's a big deal. And especially is
Speaker 1: more and more of us live in urban centers and
Speaker 1: and live within easy infection range of a lot of
Speaker 1: other people. Sure, and of course also the population growth
Speaker 1: in places where you have other pathogenic vectors at play. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it also depends upon where you live in the sense
Speaker 1: of your access to vaccines. That's something that we'll talk
Speaker 1: about more in our second an episode. But this really
Speaker 1: was all about setting that foundation that understanding to realize, Wow,
Speaker 1: vaccines are pretty awesome and the future is going to
Speaker 1: be super interesting, fascinating really uh, and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: more about that in our next episode. So I guess
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to give everyone a reminder. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future episodes of forward Thinking, or you've
Speaker 1: got questions something that we didn't cover that maybe you
Speaker 1: would like to hear more about, send them to us.
Speaker 1: Our email address is f W Thinking at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, or you can always drop us a
Speaker 1: line on Twitter or Facebook. If you search on Facebook
Speaker 1: for FW thinking will pop right up. You can leave
Speaker 1: us a message we are FW thinking on Twitter. You
Speaker 1: can just tweet us there and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again about vaccines really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic in the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com.
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