The writer is the author of ‘The Empress and the English Doctor’
Opponents of vaccination have short memories. Imagine, for instance, life without a measles jab. Before the introduction of a vaccine in 1963, up to 500 people died of measles annually in the US alone. At the start of the last century — once the US government had introduced mandatory reporting of all diagnosed cases in 1912 — an average of 6,000 measles-related deaths were recorded each year for a decade.
And yet, in the US, history is being thrown into reverse. President Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is unsafe, reviving disproved claims that the shot is linked to autism. His health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has called mRNA technology the “deadliest vaccine ever made” and, just five years after the scourge of Covid-19, shuttered $500mn in grants and contracts for other mRNA vaccine development.