I was reading an article on how long and complicated it is to design and manufacture a vaccine for the Corona-virus. I started to wonder, if it is so complicated and time consuming, how did they ever develop the vaccine for small-pox back in the late 1800’s?
So I looked it up and here is the crux of the discovery.
Smallpox vaccine, the first successful vaccine to be developed, was introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796. He followed up his observation that milkmaids who had previously caught cowpox did not later catch smallpox by showing that inoculated cowpox protected against inoculated smallpox.
(from another article on the manufacture of the vaccine)
After calves had been inoculated with smallpox, the lymph containing white blood cells which fight against disease are extracted and preserved in capillary tubes. This is then used to vaccinate people against smallpox. Calf lymph replaced the human kind in 1898 as human lymph spread other infections, such as syphilis. The vaccine was made by the Jenner Institute for Calf Lymph Ltd.
Instead of spending millions and years of effort to develop a virtual vaccine, you would think those responsible would be harvesting the white blood cells from those who were infected and survived and using that to vaccinate people against Covid-19.
Now, I know that we have many smart researchers working on this problem and obiously they know some reason why this approach will not work in this and other similar cases.
So, does anyone have any insight into this?
Thanks
Clan
So I looked it up and here is the crux of the discovery.
Smallpox vaccine, the first successful vaccine to be developed, was introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796. He followed up his observation that milkmaids who had previously caught cowpox did not later catch smallpox by showing that inoculated cowpox protected against inoculated smallpox.
(from another article on the manufacture of the vaccine)
After calves had been inoculated with smallpox, the lymph containing white blood cells which fight against disease are extracted and preserved in capillary tubes. This is then used to vaccinate people against smallpox. Calf lymph replaced the human kind in 1898 as human lymph spread other infections, such as syphilis. The vaccine was made by the Jenner Institute for Calf Lymph Ltd.
Instead of spending millions and years of effort to develop a virtual vaccine, you would think those responsible would be harvesting the white blood cells from those who were infected and survived and using that to vaccinate people against Covid-19.
Now, I know that we have many smart researchers working on this problem and obiously they know some reason why this approach will not work in this and other similar cases.
So, does anyone have any insight into this?
Thanks
Clan