vaccination
mikethemadbiologist | February 10, 2011I've always thought that if Bill Gates really wanted to make his mark, he should build sewer systems in the developing world (and provide endowments to maintain them). Because I'm getting tired of reading excellent articles like this:
The recent outbreaks of cholera in Haiti, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe suggest that our current global action plans against cholera are failing. This issue contains two important articles that will help inform our discussions on ways to respond to the global cholera situation. Cholera is a severely dehydrating illness caused by Vibrio cholerae, a Gram-negative…
mikethemadbiologist | January 30, 2011Dave Noon makes a very cogent observation about resistance to vaccination:
Advocates will have to explain why, if the risks are so minimal, the packaging inserts for commercially available vaccines all warn of horrifying potential complications (with no reference to their statistical unlikelihood); or they'll have to explain why the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System exists in the first place if vaccines are so uncontroversially "safe." There are, of course, strong and convincing responses to both of these detours among many others, but I can attest from personal experience at least that…
tlambert | January 5, 2011The detailed examination of the Wakefiled fraud is by Brian Deer: How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed. The British Medical Journal editorial summarises:
Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield. Is it possible that he was wrong, but not dishonest: that he was so incompetent that he was unable to fairly describe the project, or to report even one of the 12 children's cases accurately? No. A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was…
lborkowski | November 29, 2010Given that Haiti is suffering from the devastation of a major earthquake and a cholera epidemic, it's not surprising that voters yesterday encountered disorganized polling places where many were told their names weren't on the rolls. But there were also reports of violence and intimidation, polling places being ransacked and ballot boxes ripped open, and ballot-stuffing. In the afternoon, 12 of the 19 candiates for president joined together and called for the election to be canceled.
Meanwhile, the cholera epidemic continues. Haitian authorities report that more than 1,600 people have died…
tsmith | August 18, 2010The Skepchicks are sponsoring a pertussis vaccination clinic at Dragon*Con over Labor Day weekend. They're teaming up with the Georgia Dept. of Health, who is providing free assistance and vaccines, but they need some assistance raising funds to cover space rental, posters, and other miscellaneous charges. If you're able to assist, you can donate to their "Hug me! I'm vaccinated!" campaign at the links included in the post.
And while I'm nagging about donations, I'll also note that donations to help the flooded in Pakistan have been slow, especially compared to the Haiti earthquake. If you…
mikethemadbiologist | July 31, 2010Maryn McKenna makes a critical, yet neglected point about the recent whooping cough (pertussis) outbreaks that have been hitting California--one that emphasizes that vaccination not only protects the vaccinated, but everyone else:
Between a day job as Scary Disease Girl and a childhood spent moving between continents, I am pretty much the most vaccinated person on the planet. I'd had my full series of pertussis vaccinations as a child. Surely I was protected?
Actually, no -- and unless you've had a booster, neither are you. The immunity created by the 5-dose childhood series wanes over time…
lborkowski | July 1, 2010It's Zombie Day on ScienceBlogs! Scicurious at Neurotopia kicked things off, and Joseph of Ataraxia Theatre (whose other projects include the GearHead roleplaying game) provided the cool zombie illustrations.
Thanks to the DC Department of Health's excellent disease surveillance system, a recent outbreak of zombies in the nation's capital was detected quickly enough to allow for capture and isolation of all cases, and no further transmission of the zombie virus has been observed. All state and local health and law enforcement departments have been alerted to the outbreak and instructed on…
mikethemadbiologist | June 10, 2010Back when I owned a car*, car insurance payments were always depressing. In the best case scenario, I'm paying money for no purpose; in the worst case, I've been in a collision. Public health is a lot like car insurance, in that it's really important when something bad happens, but when something bad doesn't happen--either because it didn't happen due to dumb luck, or because other public health measures prevented the problem--public health appears to be wasteful spending. Once the waste charge get bandied about, some people won't be content with that--they have to start indulging in…
ddobbs | May 28, 2010Here's what I distracted myself with this morning. Don't mix these at home.
Wired Sci examines how Testosterone Makes People Suspicious of One Another. And that's a hell of a photo.
New Flu Vaccines Could Protect Against All Strains If all goes well, of course. Not to count on at this point, but an interesting look at one direction in vaccine development. I covered another approach in an Technology Review article last year, when I also looked at the weird history of adjuvants. (If you want, check out my complete vaccine coverage. You can find also some other good ones at the Technology…
ddobbs | March 11, 2010Helen Branswell, ace flu reporter, delivers the goodsl:
TORONTO A landmark study looking at how to limit the spread of influenza has shown what experts have long believed but hadn't until now proved: Giving flu shots to kids helps protect everyone in a community from the virus.
The study, led by Dr. Mark Loeb of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., showed the risk of catching the flu was lowered by nearly 60 per cent in communities where a substantial portion of kids aged three to 15 got flu shots.
That level of indirect protection is nearly as good as what healthy adults might expect…
mikethemadbiologist | March 10, 2010I've argued many times on this blog that an influenza vaccination policy, as opposed to the non-policy we currently have, would focus on vaccinating the people who are likely to spread the disease. Or as Yogi Berra might have put it, you can't get the flu from someone who doesn't have it.
So who are these germ dispersal units? Children, which why I've remarked that grandparents are being killed by their grandchildren. Theoretical work has suggested that vaccinating 80% of children could massively reduce influenza in the rest of the population. We've also seen the effect of child…
mikethemadbiologist | February 8, 2010
(from here)
By way of Maryn McKenna, we find that the Obama Administration has decided to massively cut the funding for the CDC's antimicrobial resistance and vaccination efforts. I thought this was the kind of anti-science bullshit that the Bush Administration did. From the IDSA (pdf):
Under CDC's proposed budget, the agency's already severely strapped Antimicrobial Resistance budget would be cut dramatically by $8.6 million--roughly 50 percent. This vital program is necessary to help combat the rising crisis of drug resistance, a critical medical problem that the agency deems "one of the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2010Over at DailyKos, there's a very good post about anti-vaxxer idiocy (I believe in rewarding non-science blogs with links when they take this stuff head-on). The author's motivation illustrates just how murderous this lunacy is:
Part of what infuriates me about this issue is that I'm aware of a case where a child was infected with Measles before he was old enough to be immunized against it. The source of the infection was an older child at a day care whose parents decided against vaccination.
The child's Measles progressed to subacute sclerosing panencephalitis from which his brain…
jstemwedel | January 29, 2010This, our first week of classes of the Spring semester, also marked the return of regular publication of the daily student newspaper. Since I'm not behind on grading yet (huzzah for the first week of classes!), I picked up yesterday's copy and read one of the front-page articles on my way to my office.
And dagnabbit if that article didn't angry up my blood.
The trouble is, I'm having a hard time figuring out where properly to direct that anger.
The article, which appeared below the fold, was titled "U.S. Health Secretary urges vaccinations". It drew from a January 26, 2010 conference call…
mikethemadbiologist | December 21, 2009...when the misogynist internet comments start? Anyway, you should go read the article.
mikethemadbiologist | November 24, 2009From the NY Times, the blame game begins:
At a hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security argued that they were right not to put immune-boosting adjuvants in the vaccine even though that could have quadrupled the number of doses available now, and that they were also right to leave decisions about allocating vaccine up to local health departments instead of trying to micromanage them from Atlanta or…
mikethemadbiologist | November 7, 2009One of the problem with influenza vaccine production (as well as some other vaccines) is that the vaccine is made by injecting into chicken eggs--infecting chicken embryos--and then harvesting and killing the virus for use in the vaccine. This is a very time-consuming process that takes months. A holy grail of influenza vaccine production has been a cell-culture based production method, since this would allow much faster production of virus (and thus vaccine).
It sounds like this will soon become reality:
Novartis said it won approval in Germany for a swine flu vaccine that's made in cell…
mikethemadbiologist | October 28, 2009Before I get to the horrendous Atlantic article about vaccination, it's worth reviewing the Mad Biologist's Pentultimate Postulate of Vaccination (What? You don't know it?):
Effective vaccination is not about protecting you, it's about protecting other people from you.
To put it another way, the best way for you not to get influenza is to not come into contact with people who have it--and standing next to a vaccinated person dramatically decreases those odds.
So onto the PCV7 vaccine.
The PCV7 vaccine confers immunity to the seven most common types of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium…
ddobbs | October 26, 2009In a disturbing post at ScienceInsider, Jon Cohen and Martin Enserink explain why the swine flu vaccine is running so late. Or at least they try to explain why it's so late. For while all the suppliers are running into problems, we're not allowed to know what they are.
The delays are substantial and critical. They leave us naked as the flu spreads through the country. The flu has now killed 1000 people, over 100 of them children. Even as this happens, the delivery dates keep moving back and the delivery amounts keep shrinking. As recently as a month ago, the CDC was telling us that we'd…
mikethemadbiologist | October 25, 2009For anything? Excluding very rare norovirus outbreaks, I can't remember ever reading about school absentee rates like these from Grafton, MA:
Grafton High School closed early today after more than a third of its students and more than a quarter of its staff stayed home sick. It is the only school in the state to close, according to public health and education departments, but absenteeism has been elevated some communities across the state. At the beginning of the school year, state officials urged schools to close only as a last resort during flu season and instead focus on keeping sick…