Final answer:
A vaccine with an avirulent form of a whole virus capable of replicating would be termed an attenuated vaccine. These vaccines stimulate an immune response without causing disease, but carry a small risk of reverting to a virulent form.
Step-by-step explanation:
If a vaccine contained a non-disease-causing form of a whole virus that is capable of replicating, it would be called an attenuated vaccine. Attenuated vaccines are made by weakening the wild-type, or disease-causing, virus in the lab through various methods, such as growing it in tissues or at temperatures different from its natural environment in the host. This process induces mutations that reduce the virus's ability to cause disease while still invoking an immune response.
An example of this process is the production of live vaccines like the non-virulent vaccinia virus, which is used as a vehicle for introducing recombinant antigenic epitopes for different diseases. The virus is attenuated to prevent it from causing the disease, but it retains the ability to replicate and stimulate an immune response. While effective, there is a low but significant risk that attenuated viruses can mutate back to their disease-causing form, as occurred with the polio vaccine in Nigeria in 2007.
Recombinant vaccines, such as those prepared for rabies, use agents like non-virulent vaccinia virus to produce antigenic epitopes for all strains of a disease-causing virus or bacteria. This prepares the immune system to respond to multiple strains, thereby providing broad protection against diseases.