Historical Evidence of Vaccines' Effectiveness
The graph on the left shows the frequency of measles cases. Many anti-vaccine activists argue that diseases were already decreasing due to more sanitary habits and living conditions, but it's clear that the number of measles cases fell dramatically after vaccines were introduced.
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After vaccines were introduced for many diseases, incidences of diseases fell dramatically. For example:
-Diphtheria deaths fell from over 175,000 to 4 deaths annually -Rubella deaths fell from nearly 50,000 annually to 152 deaths annually. Vaccine effectiveness is also illustrated by the consequences of falling vaccination levels. A drop in pertussis vaccination rates in the 1970s lead to:
-100,000 cases of pertussis and 36 deaths in Britain -13,000 cases of pertussis and 41 deaths in Japan -From CDC. |
"There can be no doubt now that children can be inoculated successfully against polio. There can be no doubt that humanity can pull itself out from its own bootstraps and protect itself from the insidious invasions of the ultra-microscopic disease."
--Dr. Thomas Francis, University of Michigan, 1955, (from The Museum of American History) |