What are the prospects for a SARS vaccine?
As a way of controlling SARS, a vaccine would be preferable to any conceivable antiviral drug, because vaccination can prevent a person from developing SARS in the first place, greatly reducing the burden on health-care resources compared with drug-based treatments. But here, too, there are many uncertainties. Although a vaccine probably can be developed, it is impossible to say how long this will take, and vaccination may actually not be the most cost-effective way of containing SARS. Is a SARS vaccine possible? There are some good reasons to believe that the answer is yes. For example, it is encouraging that 90 percent of SARS victims eventually recover, because this shows that the immune system can recognize and overcome the virus, which is a necessary condition for a vaccine to be successful. Also, there are already proven veterinary vaccines for coronaviruses; for example, in many countries, piglets are routinely vaccinated against enteric coronavirus disease. On the minus side, s
