Sir Ian Blatchford: Museums and the media must engage the cautious in the vaccine rollout

As the Science Museum becomes a vaccination centre, Sir Ian Blatchford discusses the historical precedent for ‘vaccine hesitancy’ - and the importance of engaging with it
Sir Ian Blatchford is director and chief executive of the Science Museum Group
Science Museum Group
Ian Blatchford15 March 2021

Last week the Science Museum joined the spaces being repurposed for this country’s most pressing task in at least a generation, vaccinating the adult population. I am proud that my museum not only tells the story of how vaccination has saved millions of lives, but that it will also play a part in ensuring they protect the nation from Covid-19.  It is an extraordinary sensation to be collecting and living history all at once.  

The crop of approved Covid vaccines are the stars of this story. Make no mistake, the speed with which these vaccines have been developed, tested and approved represents one of science’s greatest success stories of all time. In less than a year, we went from the genetic code of the virus to several vaccines that prime the immune system by using the virus’s own spike protein; thanks to the ingenuity of modern science, the protein that helps the virus invade human cells is turned against this scourge. 

Sadly, with the museum closed to anyone who hasn’t received an invitation as part of the vaccination programme, you will all have to wait a while to see the empty vial and syringe used to deliver the first dose anywhere in the world as part of the mass immunisation programme to 90-year-old Margaret Keenan. These historic objects, along with the vial from the first Oxford AstraZeneca vaccination, will bring up to date the 300-year history of vaccination that we tell in the vast medicine galleries occupying a whole floor of the museum. 

The Science Museum has re-opened as a vaccination hub
© Science Museum Group

History tells us two things: vaccines really are the answer to pandemics; and anti-vaxxers, who exploit public anxiety about vaccination, really are a menace. Recently the United States’ leading immunologist Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor for President Biden, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi MP and other experts joined us virtually at the Science Museum to discuss these issues. It was comforting to hear Dr Fauci strike a hopeful tone for the future, when he noted: “One of the great success stories from Covid-19 are how rapidly we’ve gone from knowing the sequence of the virus to vaccinations going into the arms of individuals in less than a year. There will be a next outbreak, but continual investments in public health infrastructure and in science will get us through it.”

As we join governments, the media and others in public engagement around vaccination, we must all take care to avoid the mistakes of previous decades on the issue of climate change, when – in the name of balance – too much weight was given to those making arguments at odds with the scientific consensus.  

Jean Adkins was the first person to be vaccinated at the Science Museum
Science Museum Group

In this age of social media, conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers have enough opportunity to push misinformation into people’s homes, without us making it any easier for them. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Misinformation will cost lives. Even before Covid, the WHO said that 1.5 million deaths could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved. 

Equally we mustn’t make the mistake of vilifying everyone who feels distrustful about what’s being asked of them during this public health emergency. Our task is to join others in giving experts such as Dr Fauci opportunities to engage with the public, to ask probing but measured questions of the scientists as we have through our regular coronavirus blog, to understand how vaccines are tested, why we are confident they are safe and to look to history for perspective on this crisis. 

Today’s ‘vaccine hesitancy’ has a precedent. Reluctance and distrust of vaccines dates back to Georgian times. Smallpox, a really horrible disease that killed and disfigured millions, is only eradicated today because there were concerted international vaccination programmes. But when the Vaccination Act of 1853 introduced mandatory smallpox vaccination in England and Wales for infants it was opposed by plenty of people. 

The first vial of Covid vaccine used in a mass immunisation programme will go on display at the museum
© Science Museum Group

Life was far riskier in Edward Jenner’s time, and there was arguably much more to object to in the treatment he was offering than with today’s momentary jab. At least four cuts would be made in the flesh of the arm using a sharp blade or lancet, with infectious pus then smeared into the cuts. The pus used by Jenner in 1796 to fool the immune system of James Phipps into thinking it had seen smallpox was in fact Cowpox, and the term vaccination comes from vacca, the Latin word for cow. 

To look into the past is to see the suffering humanity has avoided through vaccination, to imagine a world where polio, smallpox, diphtheria, rubella, tetanus, measles, mumps and many others still rage. Looking into the future, a study of millions of Facebook users reproduces the recent explosive growth in anti-vaccination views, and predicts that these views will dominate in a decade.  

Today, the Science Museum is content to play a small part in the vital national vaccination programme. Soon we will be able to set the Covid-19 vaccines in their historic context. And by collecting the science and the stories of this difficult human chapter, we’ll allow generations to explore the scientific achievements, the mistakes, the every-day experiences of the past year. The bad news is that we can expect more pandemics as a result of our poor husbandry of our fragile planet. The good is that we have seen we can now develop vaccines at pandemic speed. 

Sir Ian Blatchford is Director and Chief Executive of the Science Museum Group

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