vaccines
oracknows | October 21, 2010My alma mater has let me down.
As many of you know, I went to the University of Michigan for both my undergraduate degree and for medical school. I still have a fairly strong attachment to the school, which is why I can still be disappointed when its faculty let me down. Unfortunately, it's happened, and this time U. of M. has disappointed by inadvertently providing ammunition for the anti-vaccine movement. I'm referring to a poll released by the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital (which is where I did my pediatrics rotations when I was in medical school). The poll results are being trumpeted…
oracknows | October 18, 2010Posting will probably be very light the next couple of days because I'm at the Lorne Trottier Symposium. Not only have the organizers have packed my day with skeptical and science goodness, but I only have Internet access when I'm back at the hotel, which isn't very much. This is somewhat distressing to me because several readers have sent me a truly bad study implying that (with the press out and out saying that) because investigators couldn't detect signs of cancer in Egyptian mummies there must not have been cancer in pre-industrial times, the further implication being that all cancer is "…
oracknows | October 10, 2010Over the weekend, I saw a rather fascinating post by Sullivan entitled A Sense of Civil Discourse. The reason I found it so fascinating is because what was quoted in it utterly destroyed my irony meter yet again, leaving it nothing but a molten, gooey mess still bubbling and hissing in my office. Apparently last week, Mark Blaxill and Dan Olmsted, authors of the distillation of all the craziness that is the blog Age of Autism into book form under the same title, The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic, did a radio interview on the Leonard Lopate Show. During the…
tsmith | October 4, 2010This is great. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has launched a site on The History of Vaccines. I've been poking around, and there's an incredible amount of stuff to check out. They have a nice FAQ, Top 20 questions about vaccination, as well as some great activities (herd immunity! learn about Koch's postulates! understand the relative risk of vaccination versus other events!) and a metric fuckton of articles and images. Looks to be a fantastic resource for students, and for anyone interested in understanding vaccination.
sa smith | October 1, 2010Thanks once again to Trine Tsouderos:
Chronic fatigue and XMRV -- what one researcher (who's been there) has to say
Weiss' main point is that the history of retrovirology is littered with the debris of papers finding a link between a virus and a disease that later turned out to be false results caused by contamination. "There has been a long succession of 'rumor' viruses posing as tumor viruses and promulgated as the cause of chronic human diseases," Weiss wrote.
Researchers at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease, which led the team that published the original paper,…
oracknows | September 12, 2010THE PAST IS PROLOGUE
Location: Central New Jersey, deep within the brick and steel of a secret pharma base.
Year: 1999.
A shadowy figure dressed in gray, bald, and stroking a white cat enters a nondescript room in the middle of which sits a massive conference table. More than a dozen men and women leap to their feet at attention and wait until the man pauses at the head of the table and then very deliberately sits in high-backed leather chair.
Shadowy figure: Have they arrived?
Lackey #1: Yes, Leader.
Shadowy figure: Let them wait a few minutes. First, we have pressing business. You have…
sa smith | August 22, 2010I dunno whether this guy is a troll or not, but he asked a question I would love to answer, as it is very, very relevant to things Ive written on this blog before:
Finally, if your children have been vaccinated against xyz disease, why would you care if others are NOT vaccinated, surely your children are immune to the effects the disease may pose?
Joe might be a troll, but this is a fantastic question that perfectly illustrates how scientifically illiterate and self centered anti-vaxers are*.
One of the many things Ive tried to emphasize about your immune system is, the fundamental randomness…
sa smith | August 18, 2010Hey, remember back in 2008, when I wrote a post on a neat idea in herpes vaccine design?
That paper was all ideas. Well, they just published a paper where they test some of the science of those ideas:
Herpes Simplex Virus 2 ICP0â Mutant Viruses Are Avirulent and Immunogenic: Implications for a Genital Herpes Vaccine
When most people think of 'herpes', they think of a 'social' disease. Yeah, the sores (wherever they crop up) are embarrassing, and its embarrassing telling your boyfriend/girlfriend about it, but its not like herpes kills anyone... right?
Well, no. Though its rare, babies born…
sa smith | August 17, 2010Part I: HPV
Part II: Measles
Anti-vaxers are absolutely disgusting.
I couldnt possibly care less what other people choose to do with their own bodies. I dont care if guys want to use steroids for cosmetic purposes, any more than I care if a female wants to get a boob-job (or vice versa). I dont care if someone is a vegetarian for health reasons or drinks a liter of Jack a day because they dont care about their health.
The line gets drawn when peoples own decisions effects other people. If you are buying cycles of steroids and getting boob jobs while your kids are starving, thats disgusting…
tsmith | August 5, 2010Interesting post today at juggle.com, showing the evolution of a conspiracy theory akin to a game of telephone. Interestingly, it starts with an article in Wired by author (and former Scienceblogger) Johah Lehrer. Lehrer wrote an article on the effects of chronic stress on health outcomes, and one researcher's work to develop something akin to a vaccine to mitigate the stress effects. Sounds reasonable, no?
Next, the Daily Mail picked up the article, and focused on the "stress vaccine" angle.
Finally, the folks at Alex Jones' Prison Planet--who've never met a conspiracy theory they didn't…
sa smith | August 2, 2010Beet black scorch virus.
Family: Tombusviridae
Genus: Necrovirus
I know you all are thinking what Im thinking. LETS MAKE A VACCINE OUTTA THAT! YAY!!!!
A ton of plant vaccine papers have been rolling out on PubMed since I first wrote about them a few months ago. I couldnt resist writing about another cool paper-- How to make a GMO virus that infects plants to make them produce viral proteins for a rotavirus vaccine:
Oral administration of plant-based rotavirus VP6 induces antigen-specific IgAs, IgGs and passive protection in mice
Rotavirus causes diarrhea that kills hundreds of thousands of…
sa smith | July 28, 2010While poop jokes are all in good fun here in the US (and in other developed parts of the world), diarrhea really isnt all that funny for most of the planet. Dehydration due to diarrhea is the second leading cause of death for babies, worldwide (it was #1 until we started aggressive education/re-hydration efforts). Hundreds of thousands of people die from cholera and enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) infection every year.
Thats not funny :(
So scientists have been working really hard to create vaccines to cholera and ETEC, and a group of folks have figured out a really cool strategy--…
oracknows | July 16, 2010
Ever since I somehow stumbled into a niche in the blogosphere where I seem to be one of a handful of go-to bloggers for issues having to do with vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement, like Spider-Man I realize that with great power comes great responsibility.
Wait a minute. That beginning was too pompous and pretentious even for me. I know it's hard to believe, but even Orac has limits when it comes to pretentiousness.
Orac-ian pomposity aside, there are indeed certain topics that I can't resist. Whether it's because they intensely interest me or my being an aforementioned "go-to" blogger…
oracknows | July 14, 2010Orac note: Please be sure to read the addendum.
Say it ain't so, Jill! Check out this e-mail notice from the latest Generation Rescue mailing list sent to me by a reader. It's apparently legitimate, because I found a copy of it on the Generation Rescue website itself. Look at who's being featured at a fundraiser for anti-vaccine guru, discredited and delicensed U.K. physician and "researcher" Andrew Wakefield:
A Private Evening with Dr. Andy Wakefield
To benefit Dr. Wakefield's research:
"Strategic Autism Initiative"
WHEN: Sunday, July 25th
WHERE: Private house in Woodland Hills, California…
sa smith | July 12, 2010There was some big news last week, that believe it or not, did not involve delusional, myopic, hypocritical bloggers on the internet.
FOR REALZ!
At the International Papillomavirus Conference, at a symposium sponsored by QIAGEN, QIAGEN announced that their super awesome HPV test was approved for use in the Third World:
... the careHPV test makes HPV DNA testing simple, effective and affordable for women in low-resource settings. The careHPV Test can be performed by a healthcare worker in a community facility without mains electricity or running water and offers HPV detection results in a…
sa smith | July 6, 2010This sounds like a science-fiction novel, but the following is totally true:
In 1967, a group of folks in Marburg Germany doing research with African Grivets, all got sick. Apparently they picked up a new virus from the grivets, and 7 of the 31 infected people died of hemorrhagic fever.
This Marburg virus (close relative of Ebola virus) caused a few more small outbreaks in Africa the next few decades, but it was eventually capitalized on by the Soviet Union for use as a bioweapon. Ironically, the individual in charge of this, Nikolai Ustinov, accidentally stuck himself with the virus, and…
oracknows | July 4, 2010Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Since it is a holiday here in the States, I'm chilling out and recovering. I'll try to be back tomorrow, but, worst case scenario, I'll be back for sure on Tuesday. (Monday just so happens to be a holiday, too, this year. Gotta have those three day weekends.) In the meantime, here's a little something you might want to know about, particularly if you live in New York City..
The skeptics in Chicago did a truly excellent job countering what fortunately turned out to be not much of an anti-vaccine "protest." Now here's a chance for NYC skeptics (both belonging to…
oracknows | June 30, 2010ORAC SAYS: Please note my disclaimer.
After the events of last week, I'm a bit sensitive when it comes to matters like the one I'm about to discuss. Having the anti-vaccine cranks over at the Age of Autism weblog trying to get me fired over my blogging has a tendency to do that to me. (The details are out there if you haven't heard of it; I will say nothing more of it here.) In any case, if there's anything the events of last week drove home to me, it's that a sina qua non of anti-science cranks like the leaders of the anti-vaccine movement is that, when faced with serious scientific…
oracknows | June 29, 2010I wish it were otherwise, but not all that many reporters "get it" when it comes to science and quackery. Fortunately, Chicago Tribune reporter Trine Tsouderos does. She's shown it multiple times over the last year with stories about the autism "biomed" movement and Boyd Haley's trying to pass off an industrial chelator as a dietary supplement.
It just so happens that she's going to be taking part in a live web chat Thursday, July 1, at noon CDT (that's Chicago time). The topic is going to be alternative treatments for autism, pegged to her story last week about OSR#1 and Haley. The chat will…
mpendergrast | June 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.
The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…