Similarly, and as explained in section 7, the oral polio vaccine can cause paralysis in a very small percentage of cases.
Our analysis yields a cost-benefit rule for eradication, which we apply to the current initiative to eradicate polio.
If the pathologies in question were tuberculosis or polio, we would not be claiming much success on the basis of the results of these campaigns.
But polio eradication is more complicated than that.
This suggests that the transmission of polio from vaccine recipients t o their contacts is not extensive.
Although the smallpox virus is much larger than polio, the technical feasibility of artificially synthesizing smallpox is perhaps dubious.
We find that polio eradication would be economically desirable - provided, that is, that eradiation of this disease were technically feasible.
We derive a cost-benefit rule for optimal eradication, and demonstrate its utility by applying it to the current global initiative to eradicate polio.
