Vaccine

A weakened or inactive version of a pathogen that stimulates the body's production of antibodies which can destroy the pathogen.. Historical examples of successful vaccination programs include those for smallpox and polio. Recently, vaccines have been used to deal with sexually transmitted diseases such as the HPV virus. Some Christian groups have objected to the use of such vaccines on the belief that such vaccines will encourage promiscuity in children.

Since doctors began using vaccines, however, many diseases have been curbed. Polio, for example, killed over 3,000 people in the United States in 1952 [1], and inflicted such noted persons as President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, actor Alan Alda, and musician Itzak Perlman. When doctors began using a vaccine to fight polio, it more or less erradicated the disease in the developed world.

Other diseases that have been curbed since the invention of vaccines include smallpox (previously a yearly killer of thousands worldwide), chicken pox, measles, mumps, rubella, and typhoid. Because these diseases were prevalent before the use of vaccines and rare afterwards, many people believe that vaccines may have something to do with preventing the diseases, although correlation does not always necessarily imply causation.