A drug that maximizes life expectancy has these characteristics:
- It prevents childhood mortality. Saving 6 year-olds has far more impact on life span than saving 60 year-olds.
- It provides a durable cure.
- It acts against highly prevalent diseases.
- It stops the disease from spreading, protecting even those who have not received it.
If you guessed “vaccines”, you win. “Clean water” is also an acceptable answer.
Infectious diseases accounted for about half of all deaths in the US in 1900, and most of the victims were children
From Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century
Note that ID deaths had already flattened out by 1950, when antibiotics became widely available. Although antibiotics are important drugs and have saved millions of lives, their impact is small compared to vaccines and clean water. Antibiotic resistance is not an existential threat.
Infectious disease rates dictate life span. The big gains in US life expectancy exactly parallel the drop in ID mortality, going from 47 to 68 (21 years added) between 1900 and 1950.
By Neo139 – Own work, CC0
All of our subsequent medical interventions (which include additional important vaccines[1] ), added only 10 more years from 1950–2010. All the new and hideously expensive scans, surgeries, and drugs together do not have half the impact of vaccines and clean water. There really isn’t any comparison.
The importance of vaccines is not a relic of the past. The CDC estimates
…that among children born during 1994– 2013, vaccination will prevent an estimated 322 million illnesses, 21 million hospitalizations, and 732,000 deaths over the course of their lifetimes, at a net savings of $295 billion in direct costs and $1.38 trillion in total societal costs.[2]
That’s just the US. Multiply these numbers by 20 and you get a better idea of the global impact of vaccines. And these numbers are for a time period in which smallpox (300M deaths in the 20th century[3]) has already been eliminated.
This is why anti-vaxxers aren’t just well-meaning but misguided contrarians who harbor alternative theories about disease. They are – in effect, if not intent – child-killing monsters. Their views do not deserve any kind of respectful hearing.
Footnotes
[1] Timeline of vaccines – Wikipedia
[2] Benefits from Immunization During the Vaccines for Children Program Era – United States, 1994-2013