Letter: Combat whooping cough

It saddens and alarms me that the deadly infectious disease called whooping cough has peaked in California.

My mother's sister, Dr. Pearl Kendrick, a microbiologist, developed whooping cough vaccine in the late 1930s. At its height, whooping cough claimed more than 6,000 lives each year in the U.S. Since 1943 and the early 1960s the incidence of this horrendous disease plummeted to less than 5 percent of the 1930s' rate. In 1942, Dr. Kendrick and Dr. Grace Elderling combined three vaccines into a single shot known as DPT- diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus.

It is immoral not to get it — not only for the children but for the individuals who have a compromised immune system who are exposed to this infectious disease in the public arena.

Lyle Sisson Jr.

Yuba City