Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
While I am entirely in favour of vaccines, the primary cause for the reduction of disease in the Western World has been the introduction of better nutrition and urban sanitation systems. Vaccines, for the most part, have not been responsible for much in the way of disease reduction, except for major exceptions, like polio.
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Not true for most diseases we vaccinate against, including the targets of the MMR vaccine (which is why when the vaccination rates dropped after Wakefield's fraud, the incidences of these diseases increased again). Improved sanitation helps primarily against food and water-borne diseases (e.g. cholera), not those that are transmitted person to person.