Vaccines save lives

August is National Immunization Awareness Month (NIAM) and this year vaccines and immunology are probably on many more people’s minds than usual – for obvious reasons. While medical professionals and researchers work tirelessly on developing and testing a COVID-19 vaccine (amongst others), let’s briefly remind ourselves how far we have come in such a brief segment of human history. 224 years, 40 vaccines The first vaccine, developed in 1796 for smallpox, was not put into mass production until many years later – but was a monumental breakthrough in Medicine. It took almost another 100 years before the next vaccines were developed for cholera, rabies, tetanus, typhoid fever, and bubonic plague – at the end of the 19th century. All were developed at great personal risk to the scientist developing the agent, with each saving millions of lives. Another 34 vaccines have been developed during the 20th and 21st centuries, although some of those are not yet in mainstream production. The most recent of the latter, for Ebola, will hopefully curb ongoing outbreaks. It is incredible to think that although only 40 vaccines have been developed so far in our history, yet these alone have saved millions, if not billions, of lives. Despite their success, only one of the vaccines has succeeded in completely eliminating the disease: Smallpox. What goes into a vaccine? Each of us can expect to receive between 9 and 12 varieties of vaccines in our lifetimes, depending on background a...
Source: GIDEON blog - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: News Source Type: blogs