Jewish Invention Myths: The Cholera Vaccine

A persistent ‘Jewish Invention Myth’ – like the false claim that jews invented the polio vaccine – (1) is that we have jews to thank for the cholera vaccine. This latter claim credits the jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine with having invented it. Like the false claim that Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine rather than the reality that Howard Howe did: the claim that Waldemar Haffkine had a role in the cholera vaccine is quite true, but he does not deserve the credit for having invented it.

The website ‘Kosher River Cruise’ narrates the Haffkine claim as follows:

‘During the late 1800s, lethal diseases like cholera and bubonic plague had no known vaccines. Despite historical blame placed on Jews for the Black Death outbreaks in the 1300s, Jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine refused to be deterred from finding cures for these devastating illnesses. Haffkine’s dedication led to the development of vaccines for cholera and bubonic plague. His bravery even extended to testing these vaccines on himself. In 1893, he relocated to India for 30 years to combat these diseases. Thanks to his efforts, these vaccines became crucial tools in preventing widespread outbreaks.’ (2)

‘Christian Learning’ expands the claim as follows:

‘Cholera and the bubonic plague are both responsible for massive outbreaks and deaths around the world throughout the centuries. Known also as the black death, the bubonic plague is responsible for being the most deadly disease outbreak in history as it ravaged Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

With the huge global trade expansion occurring in the 19th century, cholera was given the ability to stretch it’s disease to almost every continent on Earth, killing tens of millions of people. Because of this cholera is known as the most deadly disease of the 19th century.

By the late 1800’s there still was no vaccine invented for both of these very deadly diseases. Though historically the Jewish people had been blamed for the black death outbreaks in the 1300s, Jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine decided he would not let that stop him from producing a cure for cholera and the bubonic plague. He got to work on creating vaccines for both diseases and even put himself in harm’s way by testing each vaccine on himself. In 1893 he even moved to India for 30 years so that he could be closer to the source of the outbreaks.’ (3)

‘MNews’ (4) and Slava Bazarsky (5) credit one ‘Vladimir Aronovich Khavkin’ but it turns out this is just Waldemar Haffkine’s Ukrainian name so while confusing doesn’t represent a different jewish invention claim. (6)

Now Haffkine is credited with creating the first working cholera vaccine in 1892 and tested and refined it in practice for thirty years in India from 1893 to 1923. This much is true he did create a cholera vaccine in 1892 and he did refine and test it in India for thirty years from 1893 to 1923. (7)

However, he wasn’t the first to come up with a working cholera vaccine that credit lies with the Spanish bacteriologist Jaume Ferran y Clua in 1884-1885 who created an injectable cholera vaccine during a major outbreak of cholera in Marseilles, France in 1884 and then successfully used it during another major outbreak of cholera in Barcelona and Valencia in Spain in 1885. (8)

Nor was it the case that Haffkine was the second since his Ukrainian colleague at Louis Pasteur’s laboratory in France Nikolay Gamaleya – later a famous Soviet bacteriologist – created a similar vaccine to Jaume Ferran y Clua’s by different methods using dead cholera bacteria rather than Ferran y Clua’s vaccine using live cholera bacteria. (9)

The reason that Haffkine is sometimes credited with priority is in large is because of the argument made by George Bornside in 1982 that Ferran y Clua’s vaccines were ‘ineffective’ (10) compared to Haffkine’s.

However even Bornside states unequivocally that:

‘In the same year, Jaime Ferran, a thirty-three-year-old Spanish physician and admirer of the work of Koch and Pasteur, was the first to immunize humans against a bacterial disease, cholera.’ (11)

Barbara Hawgood summarizes the ‘Ferran-Haffkine’ priority dispute as follows:

‘During the cholera epidemic in Spain in 1885, Jaime Ferran y Clua (1849–1929) inoculated townsfolk in Barcelona with live vibrio bacilli collected from cholera patients. However, the efficacy was not established and the practice, criticized for the great variability in virulence of the inoculating agent, was discontinued. Haffkine stressed the importance of the discovery, first by Edward Jenner (1749–1823) and then by Louis Pasteur, of inoculating with microorganisms of an increased and fixed state of virulence obtained by passage through animals; Pasteur had shown this with the rabies virus in 1883. After many false starts, Haffkine discovered that by repeated passages of Asiatic cholera bacilli through the peritoneal cavity of guinea pigs, he could obtain a culture of bacilli of an increased (exalted) virulence which on further passage did not alter; about 39 passages were required. An attenuated culture was produced by exposing the fixed exalted culture to conditions of aeration at a raised temperature. The potency of the attenuated culture remained stable but that of the exalted culture waned after about two weeks and required several passages through guinea pigs to restore full potency.’ (12)

Basically, the argument comes down to the fact that Haffkine carefully verified his findings over thirty years of experimentation in India where-as Ferran y Clua did not which results in the suggestion made by Bornside and Hawgood that Ferran y Clua’s vaccine was not effective. However, as Anna Lopez et al (13) and Giovanni Gabutti et al (14) have pointed out this is not actually true and thus priority (and credit) for the invention of the first cholera vaccine must actually lie with Ferran y Clua not with Haffkine.

Therefore, the first cholera vaccine was not developed by the jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine in 1892 but rather the Spanish bacteriologist Jaume Ferran y Clua in 1885.

There goes another jewish invention myth!

References

(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jonas-salk-howard-howe-and-the-myth

(2) https://kosherrivercruise.com/jewish-innovations-throughout-history-that-transformed-the-world/

(3) https://www.christianlearning.com/jewish-inventions/

(4) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions

(5) https://slavaguide.com/blog/jewish-inventors-and-jewish-inventions

(6) https://en.scientificrussia.ru/articles/vladimir-havkin-2

(7) Barbara Hawgood, 2007, ‘Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, CIE (1860–1930): prophylactic vaccination against cholera and bubonic plague in British India’, Journal of Medical Biography, Vol. 15, pp. 12-17

(8) Ibid., p. 10; supported by Anna Lopez et al, 2014, ‘Killed oral cholera vaccines: history, development and implementation challenges’, Therapeutic Advances in Vaccines and Immunotherapy, Vol. 2, No. 5, p. 126

(9) Giovanni Gabutti et al, 2020, ‘Cholera, the Current Status of Cholera Vaccines and Recommendations for Travellers’, Vaccines (Basel), Vol. 8., No. 4 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7711912/)

(10) George Bornside, 1982, ‘Waldemar Haffkine's Cholera Vaccines and the Ferran-Haffkine Priority Dispute’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 37, pp. 399-422

(11) Ibid., p. 399

(12) Hawgood, Op. Cit., p. 10

(13) Lopez et al, Op. Cit., p. 126

(14) Gabutti et al, Op. Cit.