Vaccines · The people who beat the diseases
The Vaccine Heroes: Who Beat the Diseases
The anti-vaccine movement has its donors and its celebrities. The other side has the scientists who spent careers in the lab, the government researchers who made sure every batch was safe, and the organizations that put vaccines into hundreds of millions of arms. Many of them gave their work away. Here they are, with Canada’s part in the story, which most Canadians have never heard.
On this page
40+vaccines developed by one man, Maurice Hilleman
3,000 Lof polio virus fluid grown in Toronto for Salk’s 1954 trial
98%drop in Hib meningitis in U.S. children after the conjugate vaccine
$0patent on Salk’s polio vaccine, and on Hotez’s COVID vaccine
1. Featured: Peter Hotez, Texas
Peter Hotez, MD, PhD is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-directs the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston. He has spent his career on vaccines for diseases of poverty that drug companies ignore, such as hookworm and schistosomiasis.
- A patent-free COVID vaccine. With María Elena Bottazzi, he developed CORBEVAX, a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine built on older, proven technology like that of the hepatitis B vaccine. They did not patent it. India’s Biological E made it for about $2 to $3 a dose and supplied 100 million doses to the Indian government by August 2022. In 2022, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher of Texas nominated Hotez and Bottazzi for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- A father’s answer. His daughter Rachel is autistic. His 2018 book Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism explains, as a scientist and as a parent, why the evidence says what it says.
- Hounded for it. In June 2023, after Joe Rogan offered $100,000 to a charity if Hotez would debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his show, Hotez was swamped with online abuse, and two people confronted him outside his Houston home. He declined the debate, saying it would not be about the science.
“The trifecta: a Jewish vaccine scientist”
That is how Hotez describes why he is targeted. In January 2023 he posted a photo of the second letter that month mailed to him with a swastika on it, one drawn over a mask, another made of syringes. “I really don’t want or need a Swastika collection,” he wrote. He has since made the link between anti-science and antisemitism part of his work: articles such as “On Antiscience and Antisemitism,” and a 2025 conference he co-organized at Holocaust Museum Houston, Antiscience and Antisemitism: An Alarming Convergence, which traced attacks on Jewish scientists from the Black Death to the present. See our page on where anti-vaccine and antisemitic agendas meet.
His other books include The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning (2023) and Science Under Siege (2025), written with climate scientist Michael E. Mann.
2. The researchers
| Who | What they did | When |
|---|---|---|
| Edward Jenner | Showed that cowpox protects against smallpox: the first vaccine. | 1796 |
| Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering | Two Michigan public-health scientists, both former teachers and both whooping-cough survivors, built a pertussis vaccine on a shoestring during the Depression. In their first trial, 3 of 1,592 vaccinated children caught whooping cough, against 63 unvaccinated children. Chemist Loney Gordon later found the best strain, leading to the combined DTP shot. | 1932–1940s |
| John Enders, Thomas Weller, Frederick Robbins | Grew poliovirus in tissue culture, which made polio vaccines possible. Nobel Prize, 1954. Enders and Thomas Peebles then isolated the measles virus, leading to the first measles vaccine. | 1949–1963 |
| Jonas Salk | The killed polio vaccine. Announced as “safe, effective and potent” on 12 April 1955 after a field trial of about 1.8 million children. He never patented it. | 1955 |
| Albert Sabin | The live oral polio vaccine, given on a sugar cube; the vaccine that drove polio out of most of the world. | 1961 |
| Maurice Hilleman | At Merck, developed more than 40 vaccines, including mumps (from his own daughter Jeryl Lynn’s infection, 1963), the combined MMR (1971) and the first hepatitis B vaccine (1981). Often credited with saving more lives than any other scientist of the 20th century, yet few people know his name. | 1957–1984 |
| Baruch Blumberg | Discovered the hepatitis B virus antigen, making a vaccine possible. Nobel Prize, 1976. | 1965–1976 |
| Stanley Plotkin | With Leonard Hayflick at the Wistar Institute, developed the RA 27/3 rubella vaccine still used today; Merck adopted it in 1979. Later co-invented the rotavirus vaccine. | 1960s–2006 |
| Porter Anderson and David Smith; John Robbins and Rachel Schneerson | Two teams that developed conjugate vaccines against Hib, which used to give about 13,000 U.S. children a year severe meningitis. Hib meningitis fell by more than 98%. Lasker Award, 1996. | 1970s–1990 |
| Douglas Lowy and John Schiller | At the U.S. National Cancer Institute, developed the virus-like particle technology behind the HPV vaccines that prevent cervical cancer. Lasker Award, 2017. See The HPV Vaccine. | 1990s–2006 |
| Paul Offit, H. Fred Clark and Stanley Plotkin | Co-invented RotaTeq, the rotavirus vaccine that sharply cut the dehydration admissions that once filled children’s wards every winter. Offit, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has also become one of the most effective public defenders of vaccines; he and Dr. Polevoy appeared together at a McGill Office for Science and Society program about ten years ago. | 2006 |
| Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman | Worked out how to modify mRNA so the body would not reject it, the basis of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Nobel Prize, 2023. | 2005–2023 |
3. Canada’s contribution 🍁
| Who | What they did | When |
|---|---|---|
| John G. FitzGerald | Founded the University of Toronto’s Anti-Toxin Laboratories in 1914 with his wife’s inheritance, renamed Connaught Laboratories in 1917. Ontario paid for its diphtheria antitoxin so it could be given out free. He also helped Banting and Best with money and space for insulin, and founded U of T’s School of Hygiene. | 1914–1940 |
| Leone Farrell | A Connaught biochemist whose “Toronto method” of growing cultures in large rocking bottles cut the cost of whooping-cough vaccine tenfold. Adapted for polio, it let Connaught grow about 3,000 litres of poliovirus fluid for Salk’s 1954 field trial. Salk called it a “Herculean task.” | 1934–1969 |
| Frances Oldham Kelsey | Born in Cobble Hill, B.C. As a new FDA reviewer in 1960, she refused to approve thalidomide in the United States, sparing American families the wave of birth defects seen in Europe and Canada. President Kennedy gave her the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service in 1962. Her stand led to the law requiring drugs to be proven safe and effective. Member of the Order of Canada, 2015. | 1960–2015 |
| Pieter Cullis, with Michael Hope and Thomas Madden | At the University of British Columbia, spent some 40 years developing lipid nanoparticles, the tiny fat bubbles that carry mRNA into cells. The technology, from their Vancouver company Acuitas Therapeutics, is in the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Governor General’s Innovation Award, 2022. | 1980s–today |
| The National Microbiology Laboratory, Winnipeg | Public Health Agency of Canada scientists created the first effective Ebola vaccine. Canada licensed the rights for just US$205,000 plus small royalties; it was approved in the United States as Ervebo in December 2019. | 2003–2019 |
For what the wards looked like before these vaccines, see Dr. Polevoy’s Before the Vaccines: What I Saw.
Read their stories. Biographies and histories of the scientists who beat polio, measles and smallpox, on Dr. Polevoy’s reading list.Amazon.ca affiliate link: QuackeryWatch earns a small commission at no cost to you.
4. Inside government: the FDA, NIH, CDC and HHS
Vaccines do not reach children because one scientist has a good idea. Government scientists test every batch, investigate every problem and run the campaigns. Some of the most important people in this story never left the civil service.
| Who | Agency | Why they matter |
|---|---|---|
| Ruth Kirschstein | Division of Biologics Standards (later FDA); NIH | After the 1955 Cutter incident, when one maker’s faulty polio vaccine caused nearly 200 cases of paralysis, she helped develop the standard safety test that every lot of polio vaccine then had to pass, and trained labs around the world to use it. In 1974 she became the first woman to direct an NIH institute. |
| Frances Kelsey | FDA | Held the line on thalidomide (see above). The 1962 drug law that followed still requires proof of safety and effectiveness and informed consent in trials. |
| C. Everett Koop | U.S. Surgeon General, 1982–1989 | “America’s family doctor.” A pediatric surgeon who had caught hepatitis on the job before there was a vaccine, he urged adults as well as children to be immunized against influenza, pneumonia, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria and tetanus, and backed the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases’ immunization campaigns. He is best remembered for telling Americans the plain truth about smoking and AIDS when it was politically unpopular. |
| Harry Meyer and Paul Parkman | Division of Biologics Standards, NIH | Developed the HPV-77 rubella vaccine after the 1964–65 U.S. epidemic; the first rubella vaccine licensed, in June 1969. |
| John Robbins and Rachel Schneerson | NIH | Government scientists behind one of the Hib conjugate vaccines (see above). |
| Douglas Lowy and John Schiller | National Cancer Institute | The HPV vaccine technology (see above), invented in a government lab. |
| Barney Graham, Kizzmekia Corbett and Jason McLellan | NIH Vaccine Research Center | Years of work on how to hold the coronavirus spike protein in its “prefusion” shape let them design the COVID-19 vaccine antigen within days of the virus’s genome being released in January 2020. With Moderna, the first trial began 65 days later. |
| D.A. Henderson and William Foege | CDC and the World Health Organization | Henderson led the WHO smallpox eradication campaign from 1967; Foege developed the “surveillance and containment” strategy of vaccinating around each case, and later directed the CDC. The last natural case of smallpox was in 1977. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980: the only human disease ever wiped out. |
| Anthony Fauci | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases | Directed NIAID from 1984 to 2022, through HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, and helped design PEPFAR, the U.S. global AIDS program. Like Hotez, he became a target of threats during the pandemic, and his record remains a subject of political dispute. |
5. The organizations
| Organization | What it did |
|---|---|
| March of Dimes | Founded in 1938 by Franklin Roosevelt, himself paralysed by polio, and run by his law partner Basil O’Connor. Funded by dimes mailed in by millions of Americans, it paid for Salk’s research and the 1954 field trial of the “Polio Pioneers.” |
| World Health Organization | Ran the smallpox eradication campaign (1967–1980) and leads the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. |
| Rotary International | Launched PolioPlus in 1985, with the goal of vaccinating every child in the world against polio. |
| Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance | Founded in 2000 to buy vaccines for the world’s poorest countries. Canada has been a major donor. |
| CDC and the Public Health Agency of Canada 🍁 | Track outbreaks and run the national immunization programs; Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has advised on vaccines since 1964. |
| Connaught Laboratories 🍁 | Canada’s public vaccine maker for most of the 20th century: diphtheria antitoxin, insulin, polio vaccine, and smallpox vaccine for the eradication campaign. |
| Immunize Canada and the Canadian Paediatric Society 🍁 | Plain-language vaccine information for parents and clinicians. See where to check vaccine facts. |
6. The journalists and broadcasters
Vaccines also needed people who could explain them, and people who would expose those who lied about them.
- Edward R. Murrow, CBS, 1955. On the day the Salk vaccine was declared safe and effective, Murrow asked Salk who owned the patent. “Well, the people, I would say,” Salk answered. “Could you patent the sun?” It became the most famous line in the history of vaccines.
- Roald Dahl, 1986. His open letter about losing his daughter Olivia to measles is still shared by public-health agencies around the world.
- Brian Deer, The Sunday Times and Channel 4. His investigation of Andrew Wakefield led to The Lancet retracting Wakefield’s MMR paper in 2010 and to Wakefield being struck off.
- CBC Marketplace 🍁 went undercover inside the anti-vaccine movement in 2020; PBS Frontline and NOVA, CBC Radio’s White Coat, Black Art 🍁, McGill’s Joe Schwarcz and Jonathan Jarry 🍁, Timothy Caulfield 🍁 and John Oliver have explained the science to millions.
The full guide, with where to watch each program, is on our Watch & Listen page.
7. Timeline
1796Jenner’s smallpox vaccine
1914Connaught’s antitoxin lab opens in Toronto 🍁
1938Roosevelt founds the March of Dimes
1940sKendrick and Eldering’s whooping-cough vaccine
1954Salk trial, with polio fluid grown in Toronto 🍁
1955Salk vaccine declared safe and effective
1961Sabin’s oral polio vaccine
1962Kelsey honoured for stopping thalidomide 🍁
1963First measles vaccine
1969First rubella vaccine
1971Hilleman’s MMR
1980Smallpox declared eradicated
1981First hepatitis B vaccine
1985–90Hib conjugate vaccines
2006HPV and rotavirus vaccines
2019Winnipeg’s Ebola vaccine approved 🍁
2020COVID-19 vaccines, with Vancouver’s lipid nanoparticles 🍁
2023Nobel Prize for mRNA vaccines
8. The common thread: they gave it away
The heroes
- Salk took no patent on the polio vaccine.
- Hotez and Bottazzi took no patent on CORBEVAX.
- Canada licensed its Ebola vaccine for US$205,000.
- FitzGerald’s antitoxin went out free.
- Kelsey earned a civil servant’s salary.
The other side
- Millions from hedge-fund foundations and anonymous funds.
- Supplements sold to frightened parents.
- Paid expert witnesses and book advances.
- See Follow the Money.
The next time someone tells you vaccines exist only to make money, ask them to name the person who got rich from the polio vaccine. Then ask who is selling the “natural immunity kit.”
9. Read their books
Most of the heroes on this page wrote their own story, or had it written by someone who knew it well. Each title opens on Amazon.ca, where you can also choose the Kindle or Audible audiobook edition.
Peter Hotez
- Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism (2018) — a scientist and father answers the autism myth
- Preventing the Next Pandemic (2021)
- The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science (2023)
- Science Under Siege (2025) — with Michael E. Mann
Paul Offit
- The Cutter Incident (2005) — the 1955 polio vaccine disaster and what it taught
- Vaccinated (2007) — the life of Maurice Hilleman
- Autism's False Prophets (2008)
- Deadly Choices (2011) — how the anti-vaccine movement threatens us all
- Tell Me When It's Over (2024)
Katalin Karikó
- Breaking Through: My Life in Science (2023) — the mRNA pioneer’s memoir
C. Everett Koop
Brian Deer
- The Doctor Who Fooled the World (2020) — the full Wakefield investigation
Timothy Caulfield 🍁
Polio and Salk
- Polio: An American Story (2005) — David Oshinsky; Pulitzer Prize
- Jonas Salk: A Life (2015) — by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs
Amazon.ca affiliate links: QuackeryWatch earns a small commission at no cost to you. The authors have not endorsed this site.
Want more? The reading list behind QuackeryWatch, chosen by Dr. Polevoy.Amazon.ca affiliate link: QuackeryWatch earns a small commission at no cost to you.
Sources
- Houston Public Media, “Swastikas in the mail: Houston’s Dr. Peter Hotez reports anti-Semitic, anti-vaccine harassment,” 20 Jan 2023.
- Peter Hotez, “Combating Antisemitism” (peterhotez.org), including “On Antiscience and Antisemitism” and the April 2025 Holocaust Museum Houston conference.
- NPR, “Dr. Peter Hotez takes the war against science very personally,” 10 Sept 2025.
- NBC News on María Elena Bottazzi, CORBEVAX and the Nobel nomination, 2022; Business Today, “100 mn doses of Corbevax supplied to Centre, says Biological E,” 11 Aug 2022.
- Sinclair/KATV, “Pro-vaccine doctor stalked at home, harassed online during feud with Joe Rogan,” June 2023.
- History.com, on Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering; Lasker Foundation, 1996 Clinical Award (Hib vaccine) and 2017 Clinical Award (HPV vaccine).
- Wikipedia, “Rubella vaccine”; FDA History Office, “Ruth L. Kirschstein: Early Role in Polio Vaccine Research.”
- The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Leone Norwood Farrell” and “Frances Kelsey”; Wikipedia, “John G. FitzGerald.”
- Life Sciences BC, “Lipid Nanoparticles that Enable COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines,” 18 Aug 2022.
- Wikipedia, “rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine” (Public Health Agency of Canada licence and FDA approval).
- NIH Intramural Research Program, The NIH Catalyst, “That record-breaking sprint to create a COVID-19 vaccine.”
- CBS See It Now, Edward R. Murrow interview with Jonas Salk, 12 April 1955; Roald Dahl, “Measles: A Dangerous Illness,” 1986; for Brian Deer, CBC Marketplace and the other programs, see the sources on our Watch & Listen page.
- National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, profile of C. Everett Koop (Maxwell Finland Award recipient).
- Nobel Prize announcements: Enders, Weller and Robbins (1954); Blumberg (1976); Karikó and Weissman (2023).
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