From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 07 2000 - 09:33:28 MST
Curt Adams wrote:
> >1) How much have vaccines contributed to health?
> >The answer to the first question seems to be: suprisingly low.
>
>Goodness, no. Vaccination remains the only effective treatment
>for smallpox, even today. Given that smallpox is transmitted
>through the air human-to-human, and that it's mortality is ~30%
>in populations adapted to it, and that virtually everybody used
>to get it, about 2 billion owe their lives to that one.
Jenner's famous small pox inoculation was devised ~1800, though
a similar treatment was common before. Unfortunately, this is
before we have good mortality cause data. The first good data
in England are from ~1850, when only ~1% of deaths were from
smallpox. So it is hard to say how much smallpox medicine reduced
mortality before 1850, but it clearly couldn't contribute more than
~1% after. (Also, a source I found said that smallpox was ~10% of
mortality across Europe in ~1700s.)
>Some others I can think of are whooping cough,
When the Whooping Cough vaccine was introduced to the US ~ 1930,
that disease only accounted for ~1/200 of deaths. And death
rates from it seemed to be falling as fast before the vaccine
as after.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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