By Jaime Caldwell
I have been fortunate to live through a great deal of history. Through our educational system, I also had the benefit of learning about the history that preceded me. Both experience and education have reinforced a simple truth: science is dependable.
Consider the foundations upon which modern science rests. Newton’s 18th-century work on inertia, force, and action and reaction—staples of high school and college physics. The Law of Conservation of Energy, developed in the 19th century, which tells us energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Go back even further to Archimedes and his discoveries regarding buoyancy. Add Boyle’s Law, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and countless others. While these principles have been refined and expanded over time, none has been disproven. They endure because they are rooted in evidence and repeatable observation.
So why, then, is immunology treated differently?
If we accept that these pioneers uncovered immutable laws, what about Edward Jenner, whose work led to the eradication of smallpox? Or Louis Pasteur, whose discoveries laid the groundwork for vaccines against rabies and anthrax? Or Maurice Hilleman, Jonas Salk, and Albert Sabin, whose contributions dramatically reduced or eliminated diseases such as polio, measles, and mumps? Over the last 300 years, has science somehow proven these giants—responsible for saving millions of lives—wrong?
Apparently, it depends on where one chooses to get their science. Today, social media platforms too often serve as substitutes for evidence, elevating opinion and misinformation above decades of rigorous research and real-world outcomes.
A recent Politico Plus article by Kelly Hooper and Sophie Gardner, titled “Outbreak Anniversary,” highlights the resurgence of measles and raises the troubling possibility that the United States could lose its measles elimination status, as recognized by the United Nations. When, exactly, was the science proven wrong? And when did leading by example cease to matter more than counting votes?
Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, captured the moment succinctly: “There’s so much in medicine we don’t know. There’s so much we can’t do. This we know. This we can do, and we’re consciously choosing not to do it.”
The data are sobering. Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. Yet in 2025, case counts reached 2,242—the highest annual total since the early 1990s—across 49 outbreaks, resulting in three deaths. Approximately 93 percent of cases occurred among individuals who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown. As of January 13 of this year, 171 measles cases have already been reported.
Three deaths—entirely unnecessary.
Kindergarten vaccination rates have fallen to 92.5 percent for the 2024–25 school year, well below the 95 percent threshold public health experts say is needed to prevent measles transmission. Has someone discovered new science proving vaccines ineffective or unsafe? If so, I must have missed it.
History has not failed us. Science has not failed us. The real question is whether we are failing to learn from both.
