Whooping cough vaccines: a century of good science and bad

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.