WEBVTT - The Future of Vaccines: Part One 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:15.560 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:19.240 podcast that looks at the future and says, if you're down, 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:22.880 He'll pick you up. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Voban, 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:25.479 and I'm Joe McCormick. And today is going to be 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:27.720 part one of a two part series we're doing on 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:31.360 one of the most important life saving technologies of the 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:36.599 past couple of centuries. Yeah, we're talking vaccines saving literally 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.199 millions countless lives, you could say, because there's no way 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:44.120 of knowing. I'm pray the other but but clare might 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:47.600 have all gotten better anyway, probably not all of them. 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:51.360 Probably probably not, but maybastically speaking, maybe a few. But 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.319 at any rate, we know that millions of people are 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:58.120 alive today because of vaccines. Yeah, and we wanted to 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:01.000 cover it because it's been an interesting journey seeing how 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.880 the public relationship with the science of vaccines has changed 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:08.160 over my lifetime. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when I was 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:11.959 a kid, vaccines just being um, being a kind of 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:15.320 uncontroversial part of medicine as far as I knew, maybe 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:19.000 I wasn't aware of whatever controversies may have existed, then, 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:23.520 I think they were relatively controversial, uncontroversial for the entire 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:27.720 span of their existence up until like the nineties, at 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:31.119 least at least unless you kept like the first few 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.880 decades of vaccination, in which case there was some contention. 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.440 But well that's because they didn't work once they were 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.840 established from that point forward. Yeah, people really didn't have 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.320 a whole lot of contentious things to say until the nineties. 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:48.520 But we'll go into that probably more in part two. Yeah, 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:50.880 but one of the things that's interesting to look at 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:54.480 from our perspective on vaccines is that I think the 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:58.720 public has sort of lost track of the progress of 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:02.640 vaccines in the future or projections about vaccines, because we 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:05.360 live in a climate now where news stories about vaccines 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.960 tend to be about the political controversy people who, you know, 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.120 activist groups who are opposed to vaccines for some reason, 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:16.320 instead of about what new things vaccines could do in 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.079 a medical sense. Right. Yeah, So we've got a lot 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:23.200 to say about vaccines, and in this episode we're really 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:25.119 going to be looking it's it's it's almost like it's 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:27.880 a stuff you missed in history class episode instead of 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:30.440 forward thinking episode. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking about the future 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:32.760 of vaccines, and by the future we mean the past 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.480 right in part one. In part one, Yeah, in part two, 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:37.200 we're going to go into some of the new techniques 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:39.040 that are being developed in some of the new ways 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:41.600 that this sort of technology is going to continue to 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.560 change our lives. Uh and you know. But but right 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:46.400 in this first episode, would like to clear up a 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:49.680 little bit of the confusion perhaps about what vaccines are, 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:53.240 how they work, how they have worked, and what they 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.640 are doing for us right now. Yeah, exactly, So we 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.320 have to have a basic understanding to work from. So 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:01.600 at the very beginning, if you want to take a 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:06.440 super bird's eye view, vaccines essentially are a method of 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:12.040 teaching our immune systems how to respond to specific pathogens, 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:16.399 specific disease carrying microbes. Yeah. I tend to think about 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:20.440 vaccines sort of at two levels of resolution. One of 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.280 them is the specific sense, in which most of the time, 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:28.840 especially with with infectious diseases, there it's referring to using 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:33.520 a damaged, you're killed version of that disease in order 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:36.280 to teach your body's immune system how to respond to it. 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.160 But then there's also a broader sense of looking at 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:45.000 the concept of vaccination as essentially a preventative measure in 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.160 medicine that gives you resistance or immunity to a condition 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:53.760 or disease before you get it. Yes, and inoculation, it's 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:59.000 pre therapy. And also it's it's not just for the individual, right, 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:01.920 you know, talking about vaccination, this is really for the 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:04.640 good of large groups of people because often we're talking 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.280 about diseases that can be contagious. Now, not all diseases 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:12.120 that you would get vaccinations for our contagious, but several 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:14.640 of them are, and you would like to have a 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:19.000 vaccinated population to prevent that kind of outbreak it reaching 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.880 an epidemic, you know, proportion if possible. And just just 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:26.120 to be clear, when I'm saying diseases that aren't contagious, 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:30.320 I'm talking about human to human contagion. Right. Some diseases, uh, 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:34.679 you you catch from other sources, like malaria is spread 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:38.479 through mosquito bites, but not through human to human contact. 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.200 And we don't have a vaccine from malaria. Yes spoiler 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.800 alert from part two, but yes, exactly, we do not 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:47.360 yet have a vaccine from malaria. And there's very good 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:49.680 reasons why we have not yet developed one. We'll talk 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:52.599 about that in part but we did have one shingles. Yes, 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:57.480 shingles being the same actual virus that causes chicken pox, 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.560 but the shingles variant is not not human to human contagious. 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.520 If I were to develop shingles, I would not be 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:06.720 able to pass it on to my coworkers here. I 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.760 would just be in a lot of discomfort. Uh So, 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:14.360 there are different types of diseases, and both bacterial and 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:19.080 viral diseases are are represented among the vaccinations that we 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:21.440 can get. It's not just one or the other. You know, 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.800 we talked about antibiotics. That's typically something you would use 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:27.760 for a bacterial infection, but only something you can use 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:32.120 bacterial infection, right, So in this case, vaccines could be 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.800 used for either um and when in the case of malaria, 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.040 that's parasitic. But again we'll talk about that more in 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:39.880 portant too. So you might think, all right, well, how 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.480 far back to this does this idea date? Well, I'd 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:46.720 imagine that before we had vaccines, somebody had to have 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.919 observe that for some diseases, most people only got them once, 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:53.400 And in fact that did happen, and one of the 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.320 earliest records we have dates back to four twenty nine 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:59.360 b c E. And that was when a Greek historian 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:02.640 whose name I am going to spell and then attempt 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:06.800 to say it's throucidities. Throucidities, is that it? Yeah, I've 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.760 never ever heard it before. Come on, he's probably talking 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:13.520 about smallpox in Athens, right, And look, I was a 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:17.680 Shakespearean scholar. I had little Latin and less Greek, so uh, 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:21.200 thucidities then, at any rate, thlucidities observed in four nine 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.640 b C that people who were exposed to smallpox and 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.840 recovered did not seem to get it again, whether they 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.560 were around lots of people at small pox or not. Uh. 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:35.560 And it was this idea that kind of eventually evolved. 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.960 And what's interesting is that evolved in different places around 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.080 the world, more or less at around the same time. 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.320 We don't have a record of it originating in one 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.040 part of the world and then spreading, like the knowledge 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:52.719 spreading of how to make a practical application of this knowledge. 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.680 It may very well be that it independently was developed 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.520 in various areas around the world more or less than 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:02.400 the same time frame, but there do seem to be 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.840 ancient civilizations that figured out how to make use of 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.000 this observation, not just kind of, hey, that's an interesting 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:11.720 fact you can only get smallpox once, but thinking that 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:14.920 maybe if we, you know, kind of scrape off somebody's 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:18.200 smallpox scabs and jam them up your nose, that might 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.200 help you similar to that, Not quite that level, but yes, 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:25.280 uh so far off. This is the predecessor to vaccination 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.880 that is called vary elation. Are generally called vary elation. 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:31.280 There are some other names like ingrafting that will talk 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:33.720 about later there it's essentially the same thing. Yeah, I've 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.280 read this showed up in like China and India, Yeah, 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:39.960 and Africa. Yeah, it happened. Happened to show up in 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.240 a lot of different places all around again the same 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.480 general time frame. But vary elation involves pretty much what 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:49.200 you were talking about. You would take someone who has 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:53.920 not yet been infected by a disease like smallpox, and 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.160 you would end up scratching their skin and then introducing 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:04.760 some infected material, usually scabs or possibly pus, from someone 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:08.760 who already had contracted a weakened version of small box. 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:10.960 Someone who was had a mild case. Someone yeah, who 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.880 was surviving. Yeah, who had it but was doing okay, Yeah, 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:17.480 someone had it enough to have some scabs. Yeah. Well, 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:20.520 I mean that's a basic symptom of smallpox. You know, 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.560 it's not like it's not like, oh, well they've got smallpox, 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:25.440 but don't worry, they have the non scabby kind. It 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.400 was at any rate, it was It was taken from 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:31.280 people who had the mild cases because the thought was, well, 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:34.800 it's more likely to be less deadly than the people 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:39.640 who had really uh you know, debilitating and often fatal 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.199 cases of smallpox. So then they would expose the cut 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:47.120 to the healthy person, healthy person to this infected material, 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:51.000 essentially rubbing the infected material, sometimes using a lancet to 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:57.680 introduce infected material in underneath the skin, essentially injecting it 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:02.600 into the bloodstream of the uninfect in person. The uninfected 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.240 person then would become an infected person. This was the 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:11.240 process of going from uninfected to totally infected. But it 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:17.720 would normally result in another mild case, and more often 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.520 than not, certainly more often than someone catch catching the 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:26.480 disease naturally through person to person contact or whatever. Um 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:31.600 would recover and so then once they recovered again, yeah, 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:35.400 no matter what how powerful the strain was, they wouldn't 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:39.480 get that particular disease again, specifically smallpox, and the Chinese 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.880 were regularly performing vary elation treatments by one a d 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:48.199 and this spread probably outward from these individual communities, not 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:51.360 necessarily from uh you know, from from east to west, 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:55.880 although that did eventually happen, but much much later. Uh So, 0:09:56.080 --> 0:10:00.040 the Chinese physicians what they would typically do is a 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:02.920 lymph from a patient who had a mild case of 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.120 this disease and put that in a bottle and the 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:07.559 lymph would dry out, and they would usually wait a 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.040 couple of weeks before they would use it. And this 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:14.880 actually had the effect of either killing or rendering inert 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:20.280 most of the virus inside that sample, which is a 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:24.360 basic idea that's used in vaccines today, is using either 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:31.320 UH attenuated or dead versions of the pathogen. And just 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:34.559 so happens that they were doing it and and it worked, 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:39.400 was an effective treatment belief for them. Yeah, So, if 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:42.960 we if we fast forward to the early seventeen hundreds, 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:48.440 that was when UH inoculation, this idea of introducing infective 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.280 material and a healthy person to prevent them from catching something. 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:55.000 Later so you say early seventy. That sounds like we're 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.880 not to Jenner yet. No, we're not degener yet. There 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.920 was a lady by the name of a lady as 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:04.920 in a peer by the name lady Mary Wortley Montague. 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.959 Is lady on the same level as what lord? Yes? Yes, 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.080 is that a level or is that just a general? 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:13.880 It's a peerage, is part of the peerage. Um. So 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.280 she was the wife of a British ambassador to Turkey 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:23.120 and observed while in Turkey this practice of very elation. 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.760 She brought it back to England. She called the practice 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:30.920 in grafting. And she had a very um personal reason 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:35.760 for for practicing this. Her brother had died from smallpox, 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:39.080 and she herself had had caught smallpox. Survived, but she 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:43.160 was terribly scarred by it. She was someone who had 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.560 been renowned for her beauty in her youth, and she 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.000 was determined to make certain that her children did not 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.480 suffer the same fate as her brother or herself, and 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.679 so she used this approach. Um. In this version, you 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:58.280 would take pus from a blister that was formed on 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:01.880 a you know, if someone who had smallpox had developed 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:06.080 and preferably a mild case of it and then introduced 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:08.840 it into the bloodstream of an uninfected person using a lancet. 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:14.080 So it again ended up kind of catching on. It 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.360 wasn't infectious or anything, but it did catch on in 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:22.480 England and was over time a pretty popular way of 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:26.800 treating people so that they would not catch smallpox. But 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:30.480 it came with some slight drawbacks. Yeah, as you may 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:34.320 be able to imagine anyone who heard, you know, heard 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:38.240 us described this process and immediately went that's a really 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:41.000 good way to catch lots of other diseases from somebody. 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:45.000 And in fact it was a good way. So if 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.240 you were person the person who is suffering from a 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:52.000 mild case of small pox also happened to be suffering 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:56.400 from something like syphilis or tuberculosis, then there was a 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.439 strong possibility you were prubbing their bodily tissue into your 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:02.800 bodily to issue. Yeah, hey, that just sounds like even 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:06.320 more vaccines, right, Probably didn't work that word that way 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:10.480 for tuberculosis or syphilis. No, not all diseases are are 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.440 ones that you can use this particular approach to to 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:18.360 become immune to those diseases. Well, yeah, and it wouldn't 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:22.000 follow that if you had a particularly weak version of smallpox, 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:24.520 that your versions of those other diseases would be weak 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:28.240 strains as well. That's also true. So yeah, this this 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:32.760 was an issue. Now we skip ahead to six, and 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.440 that's where we get to Edward Jenner, who is often 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:39.160 credited as being the person who quote unquote discovered vaccines. 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:42.200 It's a little bit of a misnomer, a little bit 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:44.480 of misinformation, but usually any time you say that a 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:47.840 single person discovered a thing, it's it's sort of ignoring 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:52.959 the hundreds of years of scientific history right back to 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:55.560 their discovery. I think the best we can say is 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.520 that Jenner was the first to really apply the scientific 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:03.560 method you staying a hypothesis to prove the underlying uh 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.320 foundation was sound. Yeah, and don't get me wrong, like 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:09.640 he did amazing work, like especially considering that it was 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:14.440 sevent y'all. Yeah, and he he threw in his personal 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.240 like fortune is probably being too too grand a word. 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:20.680 He put a lot of his time and money into 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:23.000 this to the point where he was, uh, you know, 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:27.400 not doing so great and as far financially speaking while 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:29.840 he was working on this, but he believed in it wholeheartedly. 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:32.880 So he continued to pursue it. Uh, he had been 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.920 inoculated against smallpox when he was a kid using the 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.200 very elation technique. Yeah. But so there is a distinction 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.680 to make with jennerous technique versus the very elation technique, right, 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:45.880 which is the very elation technique says, let's take a 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.560 weak version of smallpox and give it to you and 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.200 hope it doesn't kill you or make you really sick, 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:55.040 and you'll become immune. Jenner found a sort of run 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.400 around this, right, He was like, well, what if we 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:01.360 took a similar disease that doesn't really hurt humans? Yeah, 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:05.280 I mean, cow pox does create some pretty nasty pustules, 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:09.680 but tends to usually, it doesn't last that long, and 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:13.240 it's rarely serious. It's kind of alone the lines of 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.520 like a chicken pox for someone who's young, right. You know, 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:18.760 obviously as you get older, if you have never had 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:21.360 chicken pox, it can be a more serious health hazard. 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:26.200 But uh, yeah, he had heard these tales about dairy 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:31.040 maids who had suffered cow pox but then never ever 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:34.880 suffering from smallpox, even if they were exposed to it um. 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.720 And so he started to form this hypothesis that perhaps 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:42.040 whatever caused cow pox was similar enough to smallpox that 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.920 if you were to expose someone to it in this approach, 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.680 they would then be immune to smallpox as well, which 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:56.040 would be incredibly helpful. Right, So he ended up taking 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.200 infective material from a woman named Sarah Nelms who was 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:02.480 a dairy maid who was suffering cow pox and uh 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.880 and ended up uh introducing into the blood stream of 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.680 a young boy named James Phipps, and then later used 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.440 the vary elation technique to introduce smallpox to the boy's 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.640 blood and he was completely unaffected. He didn't get sick. 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:18.800 So in other words, it was taking the the very 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:23.840 elation approach, like still trying to safely introduce a mild 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:27.000 case of smallpox to the boy to see if in 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:29.640 fact he would have the symptoms, because often people would 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.120 have symptoms for a short while, recover and then they'd 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.320 be immune. The boy never even developed symptoms, thus showing that, oh, 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:38.880 this cow pox approach is working. Now did the boy 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.960 know what was going on here? Yeah, this this is 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:45.680 a little bit less controlled. Either way, vary elation would 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.640 have been the method to in oculate him against smallpox. 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:51.880 So it turned out that you know, even if it 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:54.440 even if the cow pox thing hadn't worked. This is 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.720 this was the accepted way to inoculate someone against smallpox. Um. 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:03.840 Probably still a little ethically questionable today, but but you know, 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:09.640 the point is that the entire past is ethically questionable. Yeah. Uh. 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:12.400 And so uh, you know, keep in mind Jenner himself, 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:16.120 he was not just a physician, not like a country 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.359 doctor or anything. He had actually studied under some of 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:23.200 the most famous surgeons in England at the time. Uh, 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:27.440 and had even studied other fields of science, including biology. 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.640 He had helped classify species that were brought back by 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.199 Captain Cook after Cook's first voyage. Yeah. So he was 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:36.800 very much involved in the scientific community. And he wrote 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.200 up a paper about how he used cow pox to 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:45.080 inoculate against smallpox, and and uh ended up submitting it 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:48.080 to the Royal Society, but they rejected the paper. They 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:51.959 did not think that it was worthy of publication. And 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.880 so he would end up self publishing a booklet, uh, 0:17:56.160 --> 0:18:01.280 something that I can come traditions still kept alive today, exactly. Um, 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:04.760 And I'll show you His booklet had a catchy title. 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.399 It was an inquiry into the causes and effects of 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.720 very early vaccinate a disease discovered in some of the 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:16.639 western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:20.240 name of cow pox. That just sprawls right off the tongue. 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.480 It does. Oh wow, I'm putting this together in my 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:26.879 brain right now, and I've never realized it before. Spanish 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:31.919 for cow is voca, probably connecting to Latin voca meaning 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:35.239 cow meaning. The word vaccine comes from the word for 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:41.119 cow cow poxes uh in Latin is vaccinia. So he 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:46.680 named the process vaccinations. Vaccination refers specifically to using cow 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:51.199 pox to protect against smallpox, but has been since broadly 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:56.320 applied to this procedure for all sorts of different diseases. 0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:58.800 But yes, originally it all had to do with cow 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:04.840 pox and smallpox, uh, which I thought. I tried to 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:09.080 throw in at least one little cool truth nugget that's 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.679 gonna really get you, you know, right, right right and 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:16.239 right in the thinking parts. That was my goal at 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:19.680 any rate. Um. So, Jenner faced a little bit of 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.280 opposition to his approach because obviously, anytime you come up 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:27.600 with a different method of doing something than the standard method, 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:32.440 there's inertia to overcome, right, But other physicians physicians soon 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:35.760 began to employ this vaccination technique, and by eighteen hundred 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:39.600 the practice had spread from UK to Europe and even 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:44.040 to America. Thomas Jefferson himself became an advocate for vaccinations 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:50.200 after Professor Benjamin Waterhouse of Harvard University demonstrated its efficacy. 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:55.320 So Waterhouse had received a sample that ultimately came from 0:19:55.400 --> 0:20:00.280 Jenner of the cow pox um Uh, material that could 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.439 be used for vaccinations. Uh. It got to him by 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.440 way of another scientist. But that's how it got over 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:10.760 to America. And Jenner continued to push for vaccination, often 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:14.840 again at his own expense, but eventually was recognized by 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.840 a British parliament for his contributions to the health and 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:22.440 welfare of the nation, and they ultimately awarded him with 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:27.000 about thirty thousand pounds sterling, which was no small sum. Yeah, 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:29.240 that's that's not it. That's not a joke right now. No, 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.240 it's it's a healthy dose of cash right now. Back then, 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:36.639 it was, you know, an enormous sum of money. Uh. 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:40.360 And by eighteen forty, vaccinations had completely replaced vary elation 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:43.240 in the UK. In fact, vary elation had become prohibited. 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:47.840 So you could only go forward with vaccination at that point. Um. 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:50.359 And again, Jenner was not the first guy to try 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:53.800 this out. There were some other records that predate his work, 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:56.640 but he was the first to apply the scientific method 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:00.440 to establish that, in fact, this was a sound method 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:05.120 of preventing disease. But this is still before we had 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:09.080 realized that diseases are caused by germs. Germ theory was 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:11.639 not a thing, which means that there was still the 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:15.160 risk of cross contamination where you could still introduce something 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:20.240 like syphilis or tuberculosis in this process just because people 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:24.760 weren't sterilizing equipment, equipment. Essentially, it was it wasn't until 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:27.560 like the eighteen fifties that germ theory really caught on, 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.880 like like really really took hold. So, which is so 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:35.160 crazy to me thinking that that's that it was that late. Yeah, 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:37.560 so so yeah, And I mean you you can read 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:40.320 accounts in the Civil War of doctors who just didn't 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:44.120 take to that whole idea of washing up between patients, 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:48.119 I mean, just gonna get hands bloody again. Yeah, but 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:50.879 at any rate, you know, this is uh still was 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:54.920 quite an issue here. But but we also had debates 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:59.160 that raged on other elements of vaccinations, and they went 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:03.280 on well after or the eighteen hundreds. So, for example, UH, 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:06.280 there was the debate about the merits of a live 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:10.240 culture of whatever the pathogen is, whether it's viral or bacterial, 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:15.200 versus a dead sample, a dead or or inactive sample, 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:19.520 and depending upon the vaccination, that actually does make a 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:23.479 big difference. But a big debate that was right on 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:27.080 this this very very subject was between Jonas Salk, who 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:30.560 was the uh, the man who essentially created the polio 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:34.520 vaccine that all but wiped out polio um, although there's 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:36.440 still some parts of the world where polio is still 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:39.960 very much a problem. Uh and another physician by the 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:43.800 name of Albert Sabine, who argued for a live polio 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:46.879 vaccine as opposed to a dead polio vaccine. Salk went 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:50.920 out on that one, by the way, so at any rate, UM. 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:54.159 So that that's the history, but that doesn't tell us 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:59.200 exactly what is happening in our immune systems when we 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:02.440 encounter one of these pathogens, whether it's from a vaccine 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:06.480 or some other source, like if we're actually catching a disease. 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:10.040 So we in order to understand how vaccines work, we 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:12.320 kind of have to look into the immune system of 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:16.960 the human body. So to understand how our immune system works. 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:20.200 I've got a cast of characters that we need to 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:25.760 familiarize ourselves with, the dramatis persona if you will, Yeah, 0:23:26.560 --> 0:23:30.480 you know drama. The cast of characters from Inner Space 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:35.159 or the Fantastic Voyage does not does not have inner 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:38.320 space to sale is Martin short, right, which is which 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:40.800 they both are. Both are tiny people going in the 0:23:40.800 --> 0:23:46.560 body right, Yes, inner Space was the comedy, but at 0:23:46.560 --> 0:23:48.639 any rate, So one of the first things we have 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:53.080 to discuss that are several different subtypes of white blood 0:23:53.080 --> 0:23:57.959 cells actually play an important part here. We have macro flogees. Uh, 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:02.480 you guys know what macro floge means. It means big eater. Yes, 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:05.920 macrobe being big and foge being to eat. So these 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:09.959 are these are cells that quote unquote eat other cells, 0:24:10.000 --> 0:24:14.200 like consume other cells or other material doesn't necessarily mean 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:19.120 another cell. So they eat things like microbes, like foreign 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:21.399 microbes that come into the bloodstream. But they also eat 0:24:21.440 --> 0:24:24.159 other stuff like just de try to you know, the 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:27.120 garbage that accumulates in our bodies. If we didn't have these, 0:24:27.160 --> 0:24:30.840