Anyone who has spent time with kids probably knows Mary Poppins’ recipe for making a bad tasting medicine more palatable. Fewer perhaps know the song was written about the Sabin oral polio vaccine which in Mary Poppins’ London was given in a sugar syrup to counteract the bitter taste of the vaccine. (In the U.S. it was delivered on a small cube of sugar.)
Sabin’s oral attenuated live vaccine followed Jonas Salk’s inactivated virus version which was delivered by injection. Both scientists were universally recognized for their discoveries which saved children worldwide from often paralyzing and sometimes fatal infections. Both scientists generously refused to apply for patents on their remarkable discoveries saying these vaccines were their “gifts to mankind.”
Even though it has been more than 60 years since Mary Poppins first sang her song, I am amazed and saddened by what has happened in the world of childhood vaccines since that time. Rather than being seen universally as life-saving compounds — gifts to mankind — childhood vaccines are now being described in some circles as generating unnecessary risks to children today.
The scientist in me can’t help but ask: How could this radical about face have occurred? I find it hard to believe that anyone would intentionally seek to harm children by taking vaccines away from them, so I have to believe the individuals remodeling the current childhood vaccine infrastructure must have different data than I do. I try to closely follow the published scientific literature and I am comfortable with what I hear from the American Academy of Pediatrics and most other medical societies which endorse vaccines as enormously effective investments in reducing infections and saving lives.
Since 1994, the Vaccines for Children program has covered the cost of vaccines. A summary of the health and economic benefits for the first 30 years of the VCF program was published in Aug. 2024. It showed routine childhood vaccinations for the 117 million children covered have prevented 508 million illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations and 1,290,000 deaths. The costs of those immunizations was $268 billion at a net savings of over $540 billion in direct costs and $2.7 trillion in societal costs. With discounted vaccine prices every dollar spent on the VCF program results in a savings of 11 dollars. Unfortunately, however, funding for childhood vaccination programs is slated to be reduced in the most recent federal funding proposals.
Reported measles cases are already at their highest levels in decades. As of Oct. 7, 2025, 1,563 cases have been confirmed from 41 states. Measles is one of the most infectious viruses known. As vaccine hesitancy increases, the likelihood of even more significant outbreaks increases. Many people think measles infection is “no big deal” and that there are few consequences of refusing measles vaccine. In fact, the risks of the vaccine are trivial compared to the risks of the disease. As someone who has managed a 3 year old with measles pneumonia on a ventilator, I can in good conscience say that measles infections can be very serious. If 10,000 children were to get measles infections, 2,000 will require hospitalization,
500 will have pneumonia, 10 will get encephalitis (brain swelling) and between 10 and 30 will die In contrast, if 10,000 kids get MMR vaccine as directed, three will experience a febrile seizure and one might have abnormal blood clotting.
The 2023 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to two scientists for their research that led to the unique COVID m-RNA vaccines which are estimated to have prevented 18 million hospitalizations and 3 million additional deaths.
They also saved about $1.1 trillion in medical costs that would otherwise have been expended. Yet, the grant funding for the research that would have extended this innovative technique to other infectious diseases and even some forms of cancer was terminated for a reason that seemed nonsensical to a Harvard epidemiologist. The reason given was that these vaccines failed to completely protect against respiratory infection over the long term — which is definitely true, but they did protect high risk individuals from severe disease which allowed them to survive their infections. The logic of that decision and many others related to vaccines is unclear to many of us.
Parents sometimes wonder about the number of vaccines their children get these days compared to when they were young. Can we be overwhelming their developing immune systems? That is a thoughtful question, and the answer is reassuring to those of us in the field. The reality is that over the years, scientists have learned more about the bacteria and viruses that cause these illnesses, and they are able to be much more accurate in their targeting. In the mid 80s, children under two received vaccines against 7 seven diseases. Those vaccines targeted over 3,000 antigens to work effectively.
Today, children under 2 receive vaccines against 15 infectious diseases but their formulas target about 320 antigens. This much more focused targeting results in less stress to the young immune systems.
Vaccines save lives. There are many issues in medicine that are debatable, but for me, this is not one of them. However, the current wave of vaccine hesitancy is threatening that reality. As fewer children are immunized, more will get infected and, ultimately, more will die.
I hope that before rejecting the recommended vaccines and schedules, parents will take the time to learn more about these issues from reliable sources, to talk with their caregivers or other trusted individuals and to allow their children to benefit from these safe and valuable medicines.
The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Health which he chairs.
Dr. Tom Massaro is chair of the Board of Health and also serves on the Town Charter Committee. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia where he practiced medicine and taught public health, health law and the business of medicine for many years. He lives in Marblehead with his wife and son. He is not writing for the Board of Health.
