23 Vaccine Technology
Kendall Ringo
23.1 Introduction
“Syringe World Medicine” by Arek Socha, Pixabay is under a Pixabay License.
Keywords
- Variolation– a method of immunizing patients against smallpox by infecting them with substance from the pustules of patients with a mild form of the disease
- Eradicate– the permanent reduction to zero of the worldwide incidence of infection caused by a specific agent as a result of deliberate efforts; intervention measures are no longer needed
- Incidence– the number of new cases of disease in a given population
- Immune system– a complex network of cells, tissues, organs, and the substances they make that helps the body fight infections and other diseases
- Antibody– a protein molecule that can be found in the blood and is intended to attack antigens
- Herd immunity– a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, reducing the likelihood of infection for individuals who lack immunity
- Placebo group– the group that receives an inactive substance that looks like the drug or treatment being tested to act as a control
- Efficacy– the degree to which a vaccine prevents disease, and possibly also transmission, under ideal and controlled circumstances
- Pathogen– a bacterium, virus, or other microorganism that can cause disease
- Pandemic– an outbreak of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:
- Describe what a vaccine is and how it works to prevent the spread of infectious disease.
- Differentiate between vaccination and variolation.
- Describe how vaccination technology has impacted society.
- List the limitations of vaccination technology.
- Make predictions about how vaccination technology may advance in the future.
It’s estimated that as a result of vaccination, 103 million cases of infectious childhood diseases have been prevented between 1924 and 2010 in the United States (Iwasaki & Omer, 2020). In other words, millions of lives have been saved because a large range of diseases caused by both viruses and bacteria can be stopped by the use of vaccines. Despite this, there is still controversy surrounding the topic of vaccination, likely due to a lack of education on the science behind it. Although it’s become somewhat controversial, vaccination has been proven to be effective, and developments in vaccine technology have positively impacted the world by allowing us to control and eradicate infectious diseases.
Given that as this text was written, the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s so important, now more than ever, to be educated on vaccination and why it’s effective. In the past, the incidence of a disease has always declined after a vaccine for that disease has been approved for use, suggesting that vaccines definitely play a