The oral vaccine has to be dispensed quickly, before the train pulls out. Seeking out the unvaccinated in Karachi, Pakistan, a health worker finds a boy who lacks the mark on his finger that would indicate he’s previously been inoculated against polio. ( Discover the strange history of vaccines.) Never mind that independent scientific studies have repeatedly demonstrated that no such link exists, most recently in a study of 657,000 children in Denmark. Thus, some well-meaning parents avoid vaccinating their children out of misplaced fear that the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) causes autism. Or worse, we make up other things to worry about. Once the threat appears to be gone from our lives, we become lax.
One result of this willingness, however, is that I suffer, like most people, from a notorious Catch-22: Vaccines save us from diseases, then cause us to forget the diseases from which they save us. I am deeply grateful to vaccines for keeping me alive and well, and also for helping me return from field trips as healthy as when I set out. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with extra input for foreign travel from the CDC Yellow Book. Having grown up in the shadow of polio (my uncle was on crutches for life), and having made first-hand acquaintance with measles (I was part of the pre-vaccine peak year of 1958, along with 763,093 other young Americans), I’ve happily rolled up my sleeve for any vaccine recommended by my doctor and the U.S.
#Forgotten fields 2019 lineup update#
I’ve continued to update my immunizations ever since, including a few exotic ones for National Geographic assignments abroad, among them vaccines for anthrax, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, typhoid, and yellow fever.
Likewise, we lined up for the vaccine against smallpox, then still causing millions of deaths worldwide each year. Like most American children of my generation, I lined up with my classmates in the mid-1950s to get the first vaccine for polio, then causing 15,000 cases of paralysis and 1,900 deaths a year in the United States, mostly in children.
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