Whooping‐cough vaccination: historical, social and political controversies

Summary• New acellular whooping cough vaccines may have the effect of leading us to forget that infectious diseases such as whooping cough have declined in the context of particular historical, social conditions and persist in the context of particular types of social inequalities. • The debates over the existence of damage from whole‐cell whooping cough vaccine, and the respective risks of the vaccine and the disease arc still unresolved owing to methodological limitations of studies on both sides of the argument. • One‐sided health ‘education’ campaigns on whooping cough vaccine have questionable ethics, and suppression of dissenting views is counterproductive. • Health professionals and parents have a right to know the political context of the debate.