Licensed for infants in 1996, the acellular shots are currently administered about two-thirds of the time. The acellular vaccines have been in use in Japan since 1981, after the Japanese had their own troubling experience with the whole-cell variety. Then in 1979, Japan suffered a whooping cough epidemic that left 41 people dead. It was an incentive to speed up introduction of the new vaccine, which has proved to be just as effective and to have far milder side effects. U.S. vaccine manufacturers and public health officials point to the Japanese epidemic and argue that it would have been a mistake to drop the whole-cell pertussis vaccine until the FDA had appropriately tested and approved the acellular variety.
Pertussis continues to be a problem in the United States.
In 1996, more than 7,500 cases of whooping cough were reported here, the most in three decades. Why that's so is unclear. It may be that doctors are noticing more adult cases. And it just may be that some parents aren't vaccinating their kids against pertussis because of the controversy. Victor Harding, the Clementses' attorney.