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The Fight against Infectious Disease

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A number of factors have enabled infectious diseases to be treated more effectively over the past 250 years. These factors include chance, experimentation, new technologies, war and competition. Jenner's initial breakthrough, with his chance discovery of the vaccine for smallpox, allowed future doctors and scientists to analyse the way in which the vaccination process worked: Jenner hadn't understood this. Scientists such as Robert Koch and Loius Pasteur were then able to find vaccines to other infectious diseases through scientific experimentation. The rapid increase in the number of vaccines made available by this pair were due in part to the fierce competition between the two scientists, who were aided by new types of microscope and other pieces of scientific equipment. Further new technologies enabled later scientists to realise that each disease was transmitted in a microbe, which led to the identification of a large number of disease carrying micrbes. Because of these experiments and the new technologies that enabled them vaccines could be developed with greater ease. As experimentation within this field became more and more developed more infectious diseases were tackled. Chance though still had a large part to play, as it was by good fortune that Fleming discovered penicillin. Nevertheless without the experimentation by Florey and Chain and the large investment in the drug by the American government as a result of the Second World war, it is arguable as to whether or not the true powers of this life saving drug may have been realised so quickly.

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Page last updated 25/04/01