Grease, anthraxgate, and kennel cough: a revisionist history of early veterinary vaccines

Abstract

In conclusion, it is remarkable just how farsighted many of the early vaccine investigators were. Jenner was apparently very comfortable with contagion and even recognized that infectious agents could gradually change and adapt to a new species. Pasteur, long before his fowl cholera experiment, dreamed that attenuation could yield safe vaccines and it took him no time at all therefore to recognize the significance of that serendipitous experiment. The fact that two other investigators were also developing anthrax vaccines simultaneously is yet another example of how the times favor certain discoveries. Finally Ferry, while constrained by the fact that he had no idea that distemper was caused by a virus, recognized well the concept of secondary infection and rationalized, not unreasonably, that his vaccine might assist in controlling this. It is also clear that we must look skeptically at the accepted historical record. Thus, it is clear that Jenner used horse-derived material as a source of vaccine material and that vaccinia may in fact be the long-lost agent of horsepox. Certainly this would not be news to many nineteenth-century investigators and veterinarians. Individuals planning to use live vaccinia in recombinant vaccines may wish to keep this in mind. Who discovered anthrax vaccine? Burdon-Sanderson clearly recognized that he could attenuate the organism. Greenfield showed that this could protect against disease although he was far from developing an effective vaccine. Poor Henri Toussaint was probably the first to develop an effective product but did not publicize his results widely. It was left to Louis Pasteur to take the risks inherent in a high-profile public experiment and win. I believe that he richly deserves the prize. Finally, who deserves the credit for distemper vaccine? First, Carré deserves much more credit than hitherto for discovering that distemper was caused by a virus. Second, Ferry, although misled by his identification of B. bronchiseptica deserves credit for realizing that his vaccine could play a role in controlling secondary infections. The true discoverer of an effective distemper vaccine was the Italian, Puntoni, but once again the publicity went to others, Laidlaw and Dunkin. Thus a pattern emerges that prior discovery matters little in the face of aggressive publicity. If nobody knows you did the experiment you might as well have never done it in the first place. Publish or perish is by no means a new phenomenon.