A highly effective strategy is all but ignored by many companies and investors. Why, and what can be done to boost funding?
By Dan Zimmerman, Ken S. Rosenthal, and Eyal Talor
ARTICLE EXTRAS
They've eradicated smallpox, and all but eradicated polio. Their successes in lowering the disease burden of any number of other diseases are well known. Vaccines have joined an elite group of public health and medical approaches such as penicillin, pasteurization, and insecticides that have virtually eliminated diseases such as syphilis, bovine tuberculosis, and malaria from many regions of the world.
Because they're administered a few times at most, they're also more cost-effective than many drugs that treat the same conditions. In recent years, economists such as David Bloom have argued convincingly that the cost savings are even more impressive because they go beyond the costs of medical care, and should include income lost to illness and its sequelae ...
