High hopes

摘要

Vaccines have been an unparalleled public-health success: they have eradicated smallpox and driven polio to near extinction, and routine childhood immunization saves millions of children a year from death from diseases such as measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. So it is not surprising that the public tend to view vaccines as synonymous with elimination, or near elimination, of our microbial foes.