Today, however, anti-vaccine activists go out of their way to claim that they are not anti-vaccine; they’re pro-vaccine. They just want vaccines to be safer. This is a much softer, less radical, more tolerable message, allowing them greater access to the media. However, because anti-vaccine activists today define safe as free from side effects such as autism, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots—conditions that aren’t caused by vaccines—safer vaccines, using their definition, can never be made.

I've never seen this level of anger at parents who've chosen not to vaccinate their children.

For most mothers, vaccinations become a matter of faith - faith in pharmaceutical companies, faith in public health officials - and I think there's been an erosion of faith.

One bacterium has 2,000 to 6,000 proteins.

What really reinvigorated vaccines was Prevnar, the pneumococcal vaccine that prevents against meningitis and ear infections. Here was the first vaccine to cross the billion-dollar mark.

Today, however, anti-vaccine activists go out of their way to claim that they are not anti-vaccine; they’re pro-vaccine. They just want vaccines to be safer. This is a much softer, less radical, more tolerable message, allowing them greater access to the media. However, because anti-vaccine activists today define safe as free from side effects such as autism, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots—conditions that aren’t caused by vaccines—safer vaccines, using their definition, can never be made.

Pertussis is a disease that adolescents and adults give to children.