The Daily Mail has turned against the anti-vaxxers it used to champion | Polly Toynbee

As the paper lends its support to a Covid vaccine, don't forget the damage it once did by backing bogus science

Anti-vaxxers are as old as the very first vaccine. Edward Jenner, who saved the world from the scourge of smallpox, faced ferocious opposition. When Prince Albert unveiled a posthumous statue to him in Trafalgar Square in 1858, it was met with virulent opposition from anti-vaxxers, backed by the military who regarded Trafalgar Square plinths as exclusively theirs.

Pulling down statues is nothing new or woke". The Times called for Jenner's to be removed and within a year of Albert's death in 1861 it was shuffled off to an obscure spot in Kensington Gardens. The British Medical Journal protested that military statues remained while Jenner was banished, because they killed their fellow creatures whereas he only saved them".