In a recent bacterial pathogenesis lecture, my class was shown a short video on whooping cough, a sometimes-fatal childhood disease caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis. Children no older than 2 years old were unable to breathe, taking desperate breaths in between painful coughing fits, mucus covering their faces. We had been studying the creation of ideal vaccines with the pertussis vaccine as an example. After the video, our professor mentioned in passing that an outbreak of whooping cough had occurred in Britain due to parents opting not to vaccinate their children because of a possible but rare link between…