The New England Journal of Medicine shows graphic statistics of the leading causes of death in the United States in 1900, with acute infectious diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis being the most fatal and emerging diseases to address. Following the biomedical model, effective medicines and vaccines are produced over time, these diseases were reduced from an epidemic to a rare event in the 2000s, resulting only in developing countries and rarely in Western countries and places developed. The old biomedical model was useful at that time because it deals primarily with the biochemistry of disease and therefore researchers and scientists were able to produce and significantly reduce the mortality rate through these diseases over time. However, in the 21st century, the chart also illustrates the leading causes of death in the United States in 2010, with heart disease and cancer, with 192.9 and 185.9 deaths/100,000 respectively, topping the list. This explains the importance of the social model over the biomedical model in this era. As stated by William C. Cockerham, this is because many diseases are incurable such as cancer and many of these diseases are very expensive in terms of treatment without a guaranteed cure. Cockerham further explains that aiming to resolve and address chronic conditions and diseases with the same mindset used for infectious diseases and trying to only develop drugs to eradicate them has proven to be of limited success in terms of actually improving patients' health. In comparison, social models for health have proven to be very useful in trying to eliminate and reverse some of these health problems such as obesity, AIDS and heart disease. This includes educating people about the risks involved and how people can develop them