A hundred years ago, whooping cough killed more than one in every hundred children born in Europe.
Eighty years ago, two women in Grand Rapids, Michigan, developed the vaccine that stopped it. All it took was years of working evenings and weekends, an army of volunteer healthcare workers and lab technicians funded by donations from local businesses.
Fifty years ago, their whooping cough vaccine was at the centre of a scare that ushered in the modern antivaccine movement.
The story of the whooping cough vaccine is a story of good science, bad science and of the limitations of science when applied to anything as complicated as human beings.
David Miles is an infectious disease immunologist who has worked mostly on diseases of childhood in Africa and the vaccinations that protect against them. He now lives in London and tutors on the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s online MSc course. His first popular science book, How Vaccines Work, will be published in
Twitter: @Variolator
Bluesky: @variolator.bsky.social