Vaccines

It is courage based on confidence, not daring, and it is confidence based on experience. ~ Jonas Salk

Vaccines are biological preparations that provides active acquired immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future. In the 2000s, vaccine misinformation developed, with opponents of vaccination spreading false claims through various media.

Quotes

• Edward R. Murrow: Who owns the patent on this vaccine?
  Jonas Salk: Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?
  • CBS Television interview, on See It Now (12 April 1955); quoted in Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine (2001) by Jon Cohen

• It is courage based on confidence, not daring, and it is confidence based on experience.
  • Jonas Salk, on testing his vaccine against polio on himself, his wife, and his three sons (9 May 1955)

See also

• COVID-19 vaccine
• Health
• Health care
• Immune system
• Influenza vaccine
• Medicine
• Pharmaceutical industry
• Plague
• Use of fetal tissue in vaccine development
• Vaccine misinformation
• Virus