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Nature Medicine 14, 120–121 (1 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/nm0208-120

A deader vaccine?

Philip Minor

Vaccines against viruses are usually live attenuated strains that infect the recipient without causing disease. The basis for their lack of pathogenicity is usually not known, and the vaccine viruses are derived in a fairly arbitrary manner before being shown to be suitable by careful clinical studies.