A Race With Evolution: A History Of Influenza Vaccines

I would like to begin by showing a graph depicting the dramatic impact of influenza vaccination on the morbidity and mortality of the disease during the decades of its use. This, unfortunately, I cannot do; not because the vaccine does not work, but because it is an underutilized vaccine for an unreportable disease. The data, therefore, are not available. I hope the following discussion will resolve this paradox. I hope, also, that I will be forgiven if I have focused narrowly on the complicated history of influenza vaccine development in a way which may appear to slight the scientific basis for its success. I am well aware of this basis, and in another recent essay on “A History of Influenza Virology” [1], I emphasize not only basic ­discoveries, but the contribution of influenza virology to virology as a whole.