Word: polio
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...value of vaccinations is most obvious to those who remember row upon row of iron lungs occupied by victims of polio epidemics and the quarantine signs posted on the homes of people stricken by diphtheria, whooping cough, smallpox and measles. Of these scourges, smallpox has been wiped out and the others have become rare and largely preventable through the use of vaccines. Says Duke University pediatrics professor Samuel Katz, a leading authority on vaccines: "Immunization is the single intervention that has most dramatically reduced childhood morbidity and mortality...
Vaccines, of course, aren't without risk. A slight possibility always exists that those containing live but weakened viruses--oral polio, measles and mumps vaccines, for example--could trigger the disease they're intended to prevent. And a few vaccines originally thought to be safe have caused side effects so severe in a small percentage of inoculated children that they've had to be modified or temporarily withdrawn...
Previous generations didn't need to seek out risk; it showed up uninvited and regularly: global wars, childbirth complications, diseases and pandemics from the flu to polio, dangerous products and even the omnipresent cold war threat of mutually assured destruction. "I just don't think extreme sports would have been popular in a ground-war era," says Dan Cady, professor of popular culture at California State University at Fullerton. "Coming back from a war and getting onto a skateboard would not seem so extreme...
...risks have been reduced by science, government or legions of personal-injury lawyers, leaving boomers and Generations X and Y to face less real risk. Life expectancy has increased. Violent crime is down. You are 57% less likely to die of heart disease than your parents; smallpox, measles and polio have virtually been eradicated...
...cure for cancer might be modern medicine's holy grail, the greatest medical discovery since the polio vaccine...