Toussaint created the first live attenuated vaccine
for chicken cholera,
treating its agent, later named
Pasteurella multocida to honor Pasteur,
using carbolic acid,
and in 1880 used the same method for creating
a vaccine for anthrax.
Pasteur began with Toussaint’s method,
experimenting with chicken cholera,
and used a similar method
for creating a live attenuated anthrax vaccine,
treating Bacillus anthracis
with another antiseptic,
potassium dichromate.
*
Publically, Pasteur claimed
he treated the bacilli with oxygen;
however, he used an antiseptic
like Toussaint. The antiseptic,
potassium dichromate,
is an oxidizing agent.
Some sources say there were problems
with Toussaint’s vaccine;
others say that Pasteur was jealous and greedy
and should have given Toussaint credit.
Devastation
The fifth plague of Egypt, 1500 BCE,
affecting horses, cows, sheep, oxen, and camels,
and the sixth plague, the plague of boils,
afflicting both man and beast,
could both have been caused
by Bacillus anthracis.
In Homer’s Iliad, written in the eighth century BCE,
Apollo’s punishment on the Achaeans,
affecting pack animals, dogs, then soldiers,
assuming Homer wrote of actual events,
would have been anthrax.
As the Huns swept across Eurasia in 80 A.D.,
forty thousand horses
and a hundred thousand cattle
died of anthrax.
Multiple anthrax pandemics starting in 1613
known as the “black bane”
killed sixty thousand cattle in Europe.
Through the nineteenth century
anthrax killed hundreds of thousands
of horses, cows, sheep, goats, and people
worldwide each year.
Economic incentive
Or “The story of an oxidizing agent.”
This unacknowledged helper
had already saved lives as an antiseptic.
Little did one suspect
it would be playing a leading role
in an unrelated drama.
The stakes were high.
The government had tried to influence
the scientific elite,
but the relevant scientific facts
were already known.
The work remaining was
more for technical assistants
and veternarians.
Was the work of a technical assistant
stolen by the laboratory director?
Was our agent’s role as an oxidizer
deliberately obscured?
Could a world-reknown scientist
be working only for money?
The gambit paid off.
Plausible deniability
had been carefully established.
Even good agents
under less pressure
have been known to crack.
Today, live attenuated vaccines and dead inactivated vaccines compete,
whether they are viral or bacterial.
A live vaccine is cheaper and results in a more durable immunity, but is riskier;
a dead vaccine is safer but requires multiple doses or boosters.
Today, live attenuated vaccines and dead inactivated vaccines compete, whether they are viral or bacterial. A live vaccine is cheaper and results in a more durable immunity, but is riskier; a dead vaccine is safer but requires multiple doses or boosters.
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