The V Word

I watched a segment on the Today Show this morning about a potential breast cancer vaccine. Research and trials are currently underway to develop vaccines that will train the body’s immune system to destroy recurring cancer cells in breast cancer patients and perhaps, eventually, even prevent breast cancer from developing in the first place. The piece was reported by Kristen Dahlgren, a long-time NBC correspondent who is also a breast cancer survivor. She is leaving her job at NBC to work for this project which is called Pink Eraser.

https://www.today.com/health/womens-health/kristen-dahlgren-leaving-nbc-breast-cancer-vaccine-rcna136292

Every aspect of this report was positive and encouraging—from the strides being made in the lab and the survival rates of patients going through trials as well as in how institutions have stepped back from their proprietary “mine, mine, mine” attitude to share what they’ve learned with others working in the same field.  And yet, at one point, Kristen said, “Please don’t write letters because I’m using the word vaccine. This will not be mandated, and this is strictly intended for a specific group of patients.”

I couldn’t believe she had to say that. I couldn’t believe she had to carefully defend the astounding and life-changing work being done by brilliant scientists and medical professionals because “vaccine” has become a politically charged word. That we have to watch the “optics” of using that word. I just cannot wrap my head around the fact that someone would choose to suffer and die or allow others to suffer and die from a preventable disease because “the government’s not going to tell me what to do.”

A lot of us would be dead had science not given us vaccines. I’m old enough to remember lining up in the local high school cafeteria to take the polio vaccine on a sugar cube. The measles and chicken pox vaccines weren’t yet available when I was a child, and had it not been for my physician grandfather’s intervention, I would have died or been left brain-damaged from a severe case of measles. As an aging boomer, I take whatever vaccines are recommended by my health care providers, whose knowledge I respect and trust.

But the universal perception that vaccines are beneficial all but disappeared during the Pandemic, despite the refrigerator trucks loaded with dead bodies in the streets of our major cities. The bottom line is we as a society have been forever changed by what we chose to believe or not believe during those terrible days.

I was thrilled to hear that report this morning. With breast cancer lurking in my family health history, (my mother died from it in 1980 at age 58) I’m a nervous wreck every time I go for a mammogram. But I’m grateful for the technology that allows breast cancer to be discovered at an early stage when it can be successfully treated. I’m over the moon about the possibility that generations coming after me may not have to face it at all.

But I am deeply disturbed that the word vaccine has become a word which must be used in careful context, lest it offend. That the V word now incites hateful emails or triggers angry dinner table discussions instead of symbolizing hope and relief of suffering as it once did. That a story with truly extraordinary implications for the health of women everywhere, has to include a disclaimer for the word vaccine.