How Vaccines Helped All But Eradicate Diseases

Vaccines have been around for a long time and the first one is generally credited to Edward Jenner, an English doctor who injected pus from a cowpox pustule into an incision on an eight-year old's arm on May 14, 1796. The boy then proved immune to smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases at that time.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows just how effective vaccines have been in all but eradicating major diseases in the United States. Some diseases have in fact been eradicated with no new cases of polio or smallpox in decades in the United States compared to a 20th cenrury average of more than 10,000 cases per year. And even though progress in eradicating measles has stalled in recent years (due in part to growing vaccine skepticism), its morbidity is nowhere near the annual case load seen in the 20th century, when half a million people were infected in an average year. Its prevalence has fallen by more than 99 percent due to vaccinations, along with a whole host of other diseases such as pertussis (whooping cough), mumps and rubella.