Vaccines – An Intelligent Defence

When it comes to great medical achievements, there have been few as important as the discovery by a daring eighteenth-century English doctor, Edward Jenner. He devised the technique know as vaccination – in which he artificially created immune defences (antibodies) to prevent infection.

Operating on a hunch, Jenner took pus from a sore caused by cowpox – a similar but much milder relative of lethal smallpox – and scratched it into the arm of a healthy boy. Despite subsequent, repeated exposure to smallpox, the boy avoided the disease. Jenner never knew exactly why his risk experiment worked, but today we do. When tiny amounts of weakened or inactive bacteria or viruses are introduced into the body, the bits of foreign material stimulate lymphocytes to produce antibodies, making it easier for the body to fight off any subsequent invasion by a similar organism. Now, vaccines developed on principles Jenner observed protect our bodies against a host of once-terrible scourges.

The vaccines available today are highly reliable, and most children in the world routinely receive them. Adult immunization, however, is frequently overlooked as a part of health care, even though the benefits can be enormous. One study found that preventing the spread of flu by giving flu shots to health-care workers in aged-care facilities cut the death rate for patients by 60 per cent. Other research found that immunization against hepatitis B can decrease the occurrence of liver cancer.

For more information about vaccines for cancer, a cancer vaccine fact sheet can be found here.

Vaccine for Cancer

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