Question 1
Read the passage below and then answer the questions that follow.
Vaccines are an important part of modern medicine. They have helped to prevent many people and animals all around the world from becoming very ill.
A vaccine is usually injected into a person. It will not make the person sick but it will help their body develop ways to fight the disease. In other words, the vaccine trains the body so that it knows what to do if the real organism gets into the person’s body. Then the body is ready to fight the disease.
The first vaccine was developed by Edward Jenner (1749–1823), a British doctor. However, his invention, like so many others, depended on the work of many scientists and doctors before him.
In his time, smallpox was a very serious disease, which killed millions of people. It caused large pus-filled blisters, and those who survived were often left badly scarred.
During this time, people sometimes had dried pus from a smallpox blister rubbed into a cut on their skin. This gave them a milder form of smallpox. However, 1–2% of people who had this treatment died.
John Fewster (1738–1824) was another British doctor. He noticed that people who caught a mild disease from cows (cowpox) did not get smallpox. He wondered if there was a connection, and told other doctors about his thoughts at a meeting. One of the doctors at the meeting was Edward Jenner.
Jenner developed an idea (hypothesis) that pus from cowpox blisters contained something that would protect someone from getting smallpox. He then scientifically tested his idea. He scraped cowpox pus into cuts on a young boy’s arms. The boy got cowpox. After the boy recovered, Jenner put dried smallpox pus into cuts on the boy’s arm. The boy did not show any signs of smallpox. This part of his experiment provided good evidence that his hypothesis was correct.
Cowpox was then widely used as a vaccine. Today, smallpox no longer exists.
There are many vaccines today. Like all medicines, they are now tested in stages and an investigation as dangerous as Jenner’s would not be allowed.
In 2020, COVID-19 changed life all around the world. Many people became very ill from this disease and some even died. Scientists worked hard and very quickly to develop a vaccine against this disease. This vaccine has saved many lives worldwide.
**1** Explain how Jenner’s work depended on other scientists before him.
Vaccines are an important part of modern medicine. They have helped to prevent many people and animals all around the world from becoming very ill.
A vaccine is usually injected into a person. It will not make the person sick but it will help their body develop ways to fight the disease. In other words, the vaccine trains the body so that it knows what to do if the real organism gets into the person’s body. Then the body is ready to fight the disease.
The first vaccine was developed by Edward Jenner (1749–1823), a British doctor. However, his invention, like so many others, depended on the work of many scientists and doctors before him.
In his time, smallpox was a very serious disease, which killed millions of people. It caused large pus-filled blisters, and those who survived were often left badly scarred.
During this time, people sometimes had dried pus from a smallpox blister rubbed into a cut on their skin. This gave them a milder form of smallpox. However, 1–2% of people who had this treatment died.
John Fewster (1738–1824) was another British doctor. He noticed that people who caught a mild disease from cows (cowpox) did not get smallpox. He wondered if there was a connection, and told other doctors about his thoughts at a meeting. One of the doctors at the meeting was Edward Jenner.
Jenner developed an idea (hypothesis) that pus from cowpox blisters contained something that would protect someone from getting smallpox. He then scientifically tested his idea. He scraped cowpox pus into cuts on a young boy’s arms. The boy got cowpox. After the boy recovered, Jenner put dried smallpox pus into cuts on the boy’s arm. The boy did not show any signs of smallpox. This part of his experiment provided good evidence that his hypothesis was correct.
Cowpox was then widely used as a vaccine. Today, smallpox no longer exists.
There are many vaccines today. Like all medicines, they are now tested in stages and an investigation as dangerous as Jenner’s would not be allowed.
In 2020, COVID-19 changed life all around the world. Many people became very ill from this disease and some even died. Scientists worked hard and very quickly to develop a vaccine against this disease. This vaccine has saved many lives worldwide.
**1** Explain how Jenner’s work depended on other scientists before him.
