Thread by @RetroReport

1/8 The Trump administration is acting to speed development of a #Covid19 vaccine. Vaccines have spared millions of people from disease. Side effects from vaccines are very rare or very mild. But a few missteps in the past offer #LessonsFromHistory.

2/8 1942: A yellow fever vaccine administered by the U.S. Army was contaminated with hepatitis B, causing 100 deaths.

3/8 1947: In New York, a smallpox outbreak killed two people. A vaccine was linked to six deaths.

4/8 1950s-60s: Hilary Koprowski, shown here, demonstrated that live virus could be used on humans in an oral polio vaccine. He paved the way for Jonas Salk’s injectable vaccine and Albert Sabin’s oral vaccine.

5/8 1955: After 200,000 people were injected with a bad batch of vaccine containing live polio virus, 70,000 became ill, 200 were permanently paralyzed, and 10 died.

6/8 1976: Of 45 million people immunized against swine flu, including President Gerald Ford, more than 500 contracted a paralysis called Guillain-Barré syndrome; 32 died.

7/8 With more than 100 potential vaccines in development around the world, according to @WHO, an infectious disease specialist warns against relaxing scientific standards @nytimes.com: “Unproven vaccines have real risks.”
nytimes.com/2020/04/16/opi…

8/8 The U.S. has taken steps to improve the safety of vaccines in the last decades. But it will not participate in a global initiative launched this month by the World Health Organization to accelerate the hunt for cures and vaccines.