vaccination
palmd | February 7, 2009The movement against vaccination is old---very old. All medical interventions require scrutiny. Like any medical intervention, vaccines require systematic investigation before deployment, and monitoring during their use. Still, vaccines have done more for public health than most Westerners under the age of fifty can imagine.
Inoculation and vaccination have been vilified in many ways, from interfering with the will of God, to being a vast conspiracy to infect [insert ethnic group here] with [insert disease here], to a cause of autism.
There have been "bad" vaccines, and when this has…
palmd | February 6, 2009Apparently, it's time once again to remind people why vaccination is important. Pertussis ("whooping cough") is a nasty vaccine-preventable illness that is highly contagious and can be deadly to little ones. And it's making a comeback. The Michigan Department of Community Health is tracking this disturbing trend:
Michigan saw a significant increase in reported cases of pertussis (whooping cough) in the second half of 2008 compared to the first half of the year, prompting officials to remind parents and doctors of the importance of vaccinating infants as well as teens and adults against…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2009In the midst of the Conservative War on Contraception, there's a broader assault by conservatives on public health initiatives. At Salon, Alex Koppelman does a good job rebutting the conservative opposition to vaccination, infection control, and figuring out if someone has AIDS (further fisking is available from IDSA). There's no reason to repeat this fine work, but it really does highlight just how unserious movement conservatives have become.
This mindless backlash reminds me of Michael Fumento, and his opposition to influenza prevention:
In my post, I challenged him to offer alternative…
ddobbs | August 27, 2008When I called out a Scientific American post yesterday about a rise in measles cases because of unvaccinated children, I forgot to include a link to a longer story on the same issue that ran in the NY Times. It's short, but worth a look as well:
Measles Cases Grow in Number, and Officials Blame Parents’ Fear of Autism - NYTimes.com
More people had measles infections in the first seven months of this year than during any comparable period since 1996, and public health officials blamed growing numbers of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.
Many of these parents say they believe…
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2008There are two excellent papers in the August edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases (open access) about influenza that suggest alternative (or parallel) ways of dealing with an influenza pandemic (note: by "alternative", I don't mean woo). The standard response that is typically discussed is an influenza vaccine--and I've mentioned before how important it is to increase our influenza vaccination surge capacity (not only is it good for dealing with a pandemic, but could serve as a source of vaccine production against the annual epidemic).
There's a problem with this strategy.
We can't be…
mikethemadbiologist | May 14, 2008Someone I knew who wasn't Jewish, once asked me what I could do to stop anti-Semitism. I responded that, if combating anti-Semitism is solely the responsibly of Jews, then we're done for. The point being that you need more than a small minority to fight what is. I've often thought the same about the War on Science: if fighting it is only left to scientists, we really don't stand much of a chance.
This is why I was heartened to read Amanda's double-barreled blast against anti-vaxxers:
Anti-vaccination cranks make me see red, in no small part because there's no excuse for the levels of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 4, 2008Several of my fellow ScienceBloglings have noted that the increase in measles cases is due to idiots who refuse to get vaccinated. Beyond the obvious health threat this represents, there is a more subtle, yet equally murderous effect of all of this anti-vax woo.
It distracts us from other vaccination programs that we need to institute. Every year, roughly 36,000 U.S. residents die from influenza--the 'boring' kind. Why this isn't viewed as a major health crisis, while breast cancer, which kills approximately the same number annually, is escapes me. Not because breast cancer isn't an awful…
mikethemadbiologist | April 23, 2008Well, I feel better about voting for Obama already. Actually, what's sad is that she really doesn't support the vaccination leads to autism position:
Would you support a large-scale federal study ofthe differences in health outcomes
between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups?
Yes. We don't know what, if any, kind of link there is between vaccines and autism - but we should find out. The lack of research on treatments, interventions, and services for children and adults with autism is a major impediment to the development of delivery of quality care. We need evidence-based research on what…
mikethemadbiologist | January 23, 2008I'm posting about this because I want Orac's head to explode. Apparently, the first episode of the ABC legal drama, "Eli Stone", involves the protagonist taking up the mercury militia, anti-vax cause:
While police and legal dramas often use ripped-from-the-headlines topics as the basis of episodes, rarely do broadcast networks allow themselves to stray into the middle of heated debates that contain such emotional touchstones for large segments of their audience, if only because another big segment of a network's audience is likely to be on the other side of the debate.
With "Eli Stone,"…
mikethemadbiologist | January 22, 2008Olivia Judson describes what it would take to prevent almost all rabies deaths from Africa (rabies currently kills around 55,000 people annually):
To eliminate the disease from humans, therefore, it needs to be eliminated from dogs. And the way to do that is through dog vaccination. (At first, it may seem perverse to vaccinate dogs rather than humans, given that it's humans we want to protect. But because rabies is spread by dogs, not people, we can't break the chain of transmission unless we vaccinate the animals that spread it.)
The crucial factor in predicting the spread of an infectious…
mikethemadbiologist | October 1, 2007We're getting worse at washing our hands according to the Baltimore Sun. One thing I've said many times before, but it bears repeating: the best way to avoid getting sick is to limit contact with someone else who is sick. While that sounds obvious, one very good way to do that is handwashing. Handwashing breaks the 'transmission network' and essentially isolates the sick person. If you view preventing infectious disease as a question of how can I protect myself from disease, then we've already lost. The best measures (vaccination and handwashing) aren't just about protecting yourself,…
mikethemadbiologist | September 4, 2007In response to this post about annual influenza (also crossposted here), I received several emails and comments that missed the whole point. I am not denigrating the importance of 'other' diseases. AIDS and cancer are worth curing and preventing. My point about influenza is that preventing most of the deaths can be thought of as 'low-hanging fruit.'
Unlike AIDS or various cancers (there is no single 'cancer'), we don't need a medical or technological breakthrough that might or might not happen. We also don't need behavioral modification, such as STD awareness or smoking cessation…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2007The Massachusetts Public Health Association released a statement in July about the new budget for the Department of Public Health (pdf). You'll notice that most budget items increase:
The legislature and Governor Patrick have approved $548.7 million for the Department of Public Health (DPH) in the Fiscal Year 2008 budget. This is $74.4 million (16 percent) higher than the basic FY07 DPH budget passed by the legislature a year ago. It is $31.6 million (6 percent) higher than the total currently available for FY07, including supplemental funding that was approved for use in FY07.
Here's a list…
mikethemadbiologist | July 31, 2007Massachusetts, which has one of the highest rates of childhood vaccination, is facing an increase in parents claiming religious exemptions from having to vaccinate their children, even though the number of kindergarteners has decreased. But these exemptions aren't actually religious at all:
Barry Taylor practices naturopathic medicine, and defends these parents' right to choose. "The truth is, it's not about their religion," Taylor said. "It's about their values. And it would be a bit of a white lie to say it's religious."
Proponents of parental choice want Massachusetts to add a…
mikethemadbiologist | May 9, 2007Tristero makes an excellent point about Republican rhetoric, and I think it partially explains why so many scientists are opposed to the Bush Administration. Tristero compares the Niger 'evidence' for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the rhetoric opposing the HPV vaccination (italics mine):
Why were we positive Bush was lying? Because no one who is telling the truth talks like this about such a serious subject. Notice the first five words. It's not that Saddam recently sought significant quantities yadda yadda, but only that "the Briitish government has learned." If there was any…
mikethemadbiologist | May 2, 2007Yesterday, the NY Times had an article about using vaccination to eliminate or greatly reduce E. coli O157:H7 infections. Strategies differ: some would vaccinate the cows, while others would vaccinate people. The new threat due to E. coli O157:H7 isn't from contaminated meat, but from contaminated vegetables, such as the spinach outbreak. Unfortunately, I don't think vaccination is going to work.
We'll ignore the notion that if we were to institute a mass vaccination campaign of either cattle or people, we might want to target something that kills more than 61 people per year, and, in…
mikethemadbiologist | March 27, 2007One of the few predictable statistics in American public health is that between 35,000-40,000 people will die every year from 'ordinary' influenza. Most of these deaths are preventable. Yet we do nothing.
In the U.S., influenza kills approximately the same number of people every year as breast cancer does. But unlike breast cancer, we don't need to run, walk, jump, pogostick, or unicycle for the 'cure.' All we need to do is vaccinate enough of the appropriate people. It's that simple.
An effective influenza vaccination policy would involve the mass vaccination of those most likely to…
mikethemadbiologist | February 5, 2007I want to follow up on a point Amanda made in response to my post about the Texas plan to immune all girls against HPV. (Maybe between the two of us, we'll rub some good points together and come up with an idea...) Amanda writes (italics mine):
...it's true that the opt-out policy does mean that it's going to be a lot harder for vindictive, misogynist parents to refuse to protect their daughters from cervical cancer. It's the difference between neglect and active abuse, really. Without mandatory vaccinations, denying your daughter preventative treatment was easy, since you simply had to…
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2007It should tell you just how loony the Christopath right is when a conservative Texas governor gains admission to the Coalition of the Sane (for the time being, anyway). How did Texas governor Rick Perry do it? By mandating that schoolgirls receive the HPV vaccine, and that the state subsidize the vaccinations. From the AP:
Some conservatives and parents' rights groups worry that requiring girls to get vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer would condone premarital sex and interfere with the way they raise their children.
By using an executive order…
mikethemadbiologist | January 24, 2007Well, kinda sorta. I'm mentioned in a UPI article about rapid diagnosis of influenza and antibiotic use. Rather than repeat the UPI story, here's the abstract (don't worry, I'll translate):
Background: Rapid influenza testing decreases antibiotic and ancillary test use in febrile children, yet its effect on the care of hospitalized adults is unexplored.We compared the clinical management of patients with influenza whose rapid antigen test result was positive (Ag+) with the management of those whose rapid antigen test result was negative or the test was not performed (Ag0).
Methods: Medical…