I would like to give you my experience with immunizations. I could start with my own immunizations and then add to it with experience I have had in my medical practice.
I grew up in a time when we did not have the number of immunizations that we do at the present time. As a consequence, I had the diseases of measles, mumps, German measles, whooping cough and chicken pox. These were not pleasant diseases to have and they had some serious consequences. As an example, my grandfather’s brother got measles when he was about four years of age and lost his hearing and was deaf the rest of his life.
Smallpox was the disease that caused serious and fatal consequences. For example, the death rate for un-vaccinated people who got smallpox was 53%. This disease occurred in my mother's family and my aunt Mabel carried the scars on her face to her grave. Fortunately, she did not die or did not have any other serious consequences. While we are on the subject of smallpox, I got my smallpox vaccination and still carry the scar. The last case of documented smallpox in the United States was in 1949. I vaccinated patients in my practice for smallpox until 1972 after I was eight years in practice. This disease had been declared conquered but the World Health Organization. Therefore, there is no ongoing smallpox vaccination in the world. The virus still exists in laboratories and in England in 1978 a lady died after having been exposed to the virus in the laboratory.
Whooping cough (pertussis) is a serious disease especially in young children and infants. There is a vaccine for whooping cough, and it is readily available. In 2019 there were 10,000 cases of whooping cough in California and visitors carried the disease back to Utah and Wyoming and resulted in a number of school closings to individuals who were not immunized. The original vaccine was called DTP. This vaccine was prepared using whole cell extracts of the bacteria. It worked well on children, but when it was given to adults it caused some problems and was modified to change the whole cell Pertussis to an acellular vaccine and it is now known as Tdap. The protection from the Diphtheria and Tetanus components of this vaccine last 10 years. The Pertussis immunity starts to wane at about 3 years and is pretty well gone by 5 years. This vaccine is usually given to pregnant women to assure the newborn infant of immunity until the vaccine is given to him. There were 111 deaths reported in infants under 3 years of age in the US from 2004 to 2008. My experience in the first years of practice with this disease was memorable. I had a number of young patients who had not been immunized that ended up in the hospital in what we called croup tents with oxygen and on antibiotics for sometimes up to 2 weeks. I was fortunate to have not had any of them die. Most of these parents did not have insurance at the time and were saddled with medical bills.
Tetanus or as it is known in lay terms, lockjaw. I saw a case when I was an intern at the Dee memorial hospital in Ogden in about 1962. This man cut himself with his pocketknife and then got symptomatic and came into the emergency room. The diagnosis was made, and he almost died, but recovered. He had neglected to get a Tetanus shot. My great grandfather was a bronc buster and was kicked in the head by a horse. Both eyes came out of their sockets and rested on his cheeks. They were replaced and he did not lose his vision but got Tetanus as a result. A priesthood blessing allowed him to live, marry and have children.
Diphtheria was epidemic in the late 1800s (1880) in Utah. 749 lives were lost because of poor hygiene among midwives. My second great grandfather lost a number of his family in this epidemic. One can see their graves in the Tooele cemetery. President Spencer W. Kimball held his sister in his arms when she died of the disease. While on our mission we visited a hospital in the Ukraine where they had two patients on ventilators with Diphtheria.
Polio was known in my day as infantile paralysis. When I was in Denver (1945-1949), they did not have an immunization for the disease. We were not allowed to go the public swimming pool, because they felt that you could get the disease there. The first vaccine was known as the Salk vaccine. It was an injectable vaccine and was introduced in 1953 (a year after I graduated from high school). Not everyone got the vaccine, because I took care of a patient in the County Hospital during my training when he was in an iron lung. His diaphragmatic muscles were paralyzed, and he could not breath on his own. In 1962 the oral (Sabin) vaccine came out. It was dropped onto a sugar cube and administered that way. My wife and children and I at the time got our polio immunizations that way. There were three different strains, so one would have to get all three to be protected. Later they came out with a trivalent oral vaccine so that only required one dose and then a second, because sometimes Type 2 strain did not provide complete immunity from the first dose of the trivalent vaccine. I met Dr. Sabin when I was in my training when he came to Utah to lecture. While I was an intern, I took care of a patient at the Dee Hospital who had polio. I was told that that was the last reported case of polio in Utah. I continued to give oral polio vaccine until it was determined that the young people who got the oral vaccine were transmitting the live virus to older adults who were not immunized and then they became ill. Now we give the IPV (Salk) vaccine at 2, 4, 6 months of age with a booster at 4-6 years of age. Missionaries going to areas of the world where polio is endemic will receive a booster prior to their departure.
Hepatitis
There are 2 major types A and B. Type A is called infectious hepatitis or yellow jaundice. I have taken care of a number of patients in my practice who have had this disease. For a number of years there was no vaccine. The missionaries who would go to South America before the vaccine came out would get gamma globulin injections every 6 months to protect them from the disease until the vaccine came out for Hepatitis A in 1995. We received this vaccine when we went to Russia in 2001. It requires two injections 6 months apart. It is also available in a combination A and B called TwinRix. There have been recent cases in Utah of this disease. Hepatitis B is a disease transmitted from person to person by injections or very close personal contact. It came out in 1982 and in1991 was recommended for all infants and most pediatricians will give it to them. When we were in Frankfurt two missionaries from Russia were robbed and injected with the same needle by the intruders to sedate them. We evacuated them to Germany and started the Hepatitis B vaccines and sent them home to be treated for possible HIV.
MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella or German measles)
Measles vaccine in 1963, Mumps vaccine in 1967, Rubella vaccine in 1969 and the combination MMR in 1971. I immunized all my patients when the vaccine came out. I did not need it, because I had the disease. I have had patients who have had mumps and the complication in males of mumps orchitis (infection of the testicle resulting in sterility).
Chickenpox (Varicella)
I had chickenpox as well as all of my children with no complications. When I was at the county hospital in Salt Lake in my training, I had a patient die of chickenpox. I had two of my patients in Lander who developed cerebellar ataxia as a result of chickenpox. Both still have the problem to this day. This is not a benign disease. A few years ago, there was a missionary in South America who visited a family with the chickenpox. He had not been immunized nor had the disease. He came back to the apartment where there were a number of missionaries. All came down with chickenpox. Although this is not a required immunization for missionaries, I would recommend it for all of my grandchildren.
As long as we are talking about Chickenpox we might as well mention that this virus lays dormant in the body until one dies. It can emerge when the body’s resistance allows it to rear its ugly head and it becomes Herpes Zoster (Shingles). This can be a debilitating condition that, in some people, lasts years. My grandmother Stucki got Shingles involving the facial nerve and suffered until an anti-viral medication helped. There is now a vaccine for Shingles and is recommended for seniors. I have had Shingles twice, but I recognized the disease quickly and took the anti-viral medication and nipped it in the bud. Now that the vaccine is available, I will probably get it. I have seen a number of patients with Shingles over the years. Most before any treatment was available. My mother got Shingles after exposure to a nephew with chickenpox.
Typhoid
This is a bacterium called by the medical profession Salmonella Typhi Murium. It is transmitted from one person to another by one of the five F’s (flies, fingers, food, feces, or fomites (inanimate objects such as pencils, dishes, etc.). Your great grandfather Marco Clark got Typhoid. The prophet Joseph Smith had Typhoid and a resulting osteomyelitis in his leg, which was operated on in an experimental bone debridement by Dr. Nathan Smith saving his leg and his life. Good hygiene can avoid the disease, but it is rampant in a number of areas in the world. One of my daughters got Typhoid on a trip to Mexico. Fortunately, she responded to an antibiotic, but was really ill. There are two vaccines for Typhoid available today. Typhim is an injection that lasts 2 years and Vivotif is an oral medication consisting of 4 capsules to be taken one every other day this lasts 5 years. If you plan to take a trip south of the border, Grandpa recommends the Typhoid vaccine.
Influenza
The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 caused 50 million deaths worldwide and 675,000 in the United States. This little virus mutates and so the immunity from a shot this year will not necessarily protect against next years strain. There is guess work involved, so yearly immunization, especially for seniors, is recommended. There are vaccines developed in media made from eggs, so if you are allergic to eggs, then get the vaccine that does not contain eggs. People still die of the flu today, but not to extent that they did then. This is one of the things of mortality that afflict and torment man and woman.
There are other vaccines that I have had experience with, Japanese encephalitis, Rabies, and Yellow Fever. And diseases that they are working on such as Dengue fever, Zika, and Malaria, but I will not go into these. If you want further information, ask grandpa.
