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Scientists Move Closer To a Universal Flu Vaccine
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Vaccines for most diseases typically work for years or decades but with the flu, next fall it will be time to get another dose. Now Carl Zimmer writes that a flurry of recent studies on the virus has brought some hope for a change as flu experts foresee a time when seasonal flu shots are a thing of the past, replaced by long-lasting vaccines. 'That's the goal: two shots when you're young, and then boosters later in life' says Dr. Gary Nabel, predicting that scientists would reach that goal before long: 'in our lifetime, for sure, unless you're 90 years old.' Today's flu vaccines protect people from the virus by letting them make antibodies in advance but a traditional flu vaccine can protect against only flu viruses with a matching hemagglutinin protein. If a virus evolves a different shape, the antibodies cannot latch on, and it escapes destruction. Scientists have long wondered whether they could escape this evolutionary cycle with a universal flu vaccine that would to attack a part of the virus that changes little from year to year so now researchers are focusing on target antigens which are highly conserved between different influenza A virus subtypes. 'Universal vaccination with universal vaccines would put an end to the threat of global disaster that pandemic influenza can cause,' says Dr. Sara Gilbert."
Because I'm currently sneezing my brains out...
I will not be on bleeding edge of this. The recent track record of the drug and vaccine approval process has been pretty sorry, let some other guinea pigs live with it a few years first.
No good deed goes unpunished.
So if a one season shot makes your shoulder sore for four or five days, this will....?
--- Mercutio was right.
(From TFA, emphasis mine)
"Several of these have now been taken into clinical development, and this review discusses the progress that has been made, as well as considering the requirements for licensing these new vaccines and how they might be used in the future."
It just wouldn't be a slashdot story if 'intellectual property' didn't pop up somewhere, now would it?
Consider the feedback loop. In response to our actions, the flu itself will change.
We're already seeing how microbes are developing resistance to antibiotics, and how germs acquired during healthcare are more virulent than those out there in the wild.
Do we want to incentivize the flu to mutate into something more vicious and fast-acting?
Sometimes, mother nature represents a balance between extremes. Somewhere between no-flu and a flu that resembles airborne superfast Ebola is the current balance.
I am not saying we should not explore this technology, but with our current record, we should move cautiously.
Yep, look at Polio. Years later and it's killing us all once again.
My understanding is that the Common Cold is based on six virus families, so a similar approach for each family could create a set of vaccines to eliminate colds.
What "sorry" track record? Last I checked we've been doing quite well with vaccines. I managed to get into a trial for one of the more recent ones, Chickenpox, and am certainly glad I did. Why are you so worried?
So could we kill off all the 'typical' flu viruses allowing the evolution of something more aggressive?
Probably not inconceivable; but there are a couple of points to consider: TFA mentions targeting structures that are 'highly conserved' between different virus subtypes. Typically(and I am not a molecular biologist, so feel free to cringe and/or correct me) the fact that a structure is 'highly conserved' between genetically distinct populations means that it is extremely important for some reason. Mutations happen(and very, very fast in influenza), so regions that aren't life-critical can diverge significantly over time. Life-critical regions, on the other hand, do experience mutations; but most of the mutants die. The degree of conservation across genetic lineages that diverged at a known period in the past can tell you a lot about how important that area is, even if you don't yet know exactly what it does.
Second, while this also doesn't preclude a really nasty bug, it is important to remember that diseases aren't little agents playing Pandemic 2 and trying for a high score. Killing your host can be a viable strategy, if you gain enough from doing so; but (in the very weak sense that mindless evolving virues can even have 'goals') the 'goal' isn't body count, it's survival and reproduction. Very high mortality is frequently counterproductive, because hosts die faster than the disease can spread to new ones. In broad strokes, high mortality tends to occur when a novel pathogen shows up for the first time; but ends up being selected against over time(see the classic attempt to use Myxoma virus against feral rabbits in Australia).
So could we kill off all the 'typical' flu viruses allowing the evolution of something more aggressive?
That's not how evolution works.
Under the assumption that it is possible for a flu virus to easily mutate these particular antigens which appear to highly conserved (which is not a given...no matter how many people you run over with a bus, humans are not going to evolve immunity to buses), then it does not necessarily follow that the new strain would be more aggressive. This new strain could, in fact, very well be a much milder version. If these antigens are highly conserved, it's probably a part of what makes influenza evolutionarily successful. An adaptation that allows it to replicate and spread optimally. If true, and we attack these vectors, we're essentially changing the game such that the virus is now forced to have an adaptation which would have been less successful in the wild, in an environment without the vaccine.
After all, think about it. We didn't create more aggressive strains of polio or chickenpox once we created vaccines against those viruses. Instead, we pretty much annihilated those diseases.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I never catch the flu because I go out of my way to avoid contact with all humans. No need for a fancy vaccine and best of all, free of charge.
A vaccine is something you take prior to getting sick.
More specifically, a vaccine makes the disease a much less serious issue, as it enables the body's immune system to squish it very rapidly and with few ill effects. That is, it changes the nature of the disease as a process occurring in the body (and to our benefit); it's immune system hacking really.
Given that we're not the primary hosts for influenza, a general vaccine (if possible) will be highly beneficial. Well, provided it's restricted to people and not also used to try to partially stamp it out in the natural reservoir; that would be bad because it would put strong selection pressure on the virus to evolve into something that the vaccine wouldn't help with.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
And yes, I meant smallpox.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Yeah: Polio, Smallpox, Scarlet Fever, Malaria, Plague, Anthrax; all of those have historically been defeated by "exercise and vitamins and good food". That's why hardly anyone dies from them anymore. No, wait, sorry, my bad. It's because of vaccines, antibiotics, and sanitation. I always get those mixed up too.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
exercise and vitamins and good food.
Oh good, advice from a Slashdot armchair physician.
Unfortunately, what you don't know can quite literally kill you: the influenza virus can do more damage to young healthy people than the infirm, and some strains infect over 30% of the population, irrespective vitamin pills or yoga classes.
Read up on the 1918 flu pandemic and then cytokine storms to gain a glimmer of understanding into why research into a flu vaccine is more important than almost any public safety measure you can think of. Short of nuclear war, there's not a lot of things that are likely to wipe out a significant fraction of the human race, but the flu is one of them. We're practically overdue for a strain deadly enough to kill more people in a year than WWI and WWII combined.
I'd like to see you try to keep your attitude towards healthy living as the best defense against a viral plague when the government starts hauling away the bodies of your neighbors by the truckload.
This just in! Nature moves closer to a flu immune to the "universal" vaccine.
End of line..
At the time I was playing field games all year, could easily run five miles, and was getting a very good diet. I was in bed for 10 days with the 76 flu. I later learned that with many viruses the exact opposite of what you claim is the truth - plenty of exercise results in muscle cell damage which makes it easier for the virus to enter them, so athletic people can suffer worse than sedentary people. Poliomyelitis is another one that can do this.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Research been showing more problems than prevention from vaccines
I'm going to use my annecdotal dataset of one. Let's see, people I know who've had vaccines. Hmm... all of them. Number of those people who have had negative side-effects.... none whatsoever. So, if there are more problems than prevention from vaccines, I'm not seeing it in my little slice of the world.
In fact, given that vaccination rates run at something from 70-90% in industrialised countries and we aren't seeing 70-90% of people suffering more than they might expect from polio, measles, influenza, etc. I'd say that claiming that vaccines do more harm than good is complete bullshit.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Yep, look at Polio. Years later and it's killing us all once again.
You do understand that this is because of the recent anti-vaccine movement, where parents are not vaccinating their children, because of irrational fears that it may cause autism, right?
Yes a tiny number of people have died of vaccines. Have you any idea of how many would have died without them?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The parts that doesn't change doesn't change because they don't undergo any evolutionary pressure - once you are through with illness, you have antibodies which successfully prevent its return, for the season, all that without aiming at those "unchanging" parts of virus. Once we start targeting them, they too will start changing.
Why is it that people have such trouble understanding evolution?
Evolutionary pressure does not increase mutation rate. It prevents organisms which are unfit against said pressure from reproducing and spreading. So, if mutations in those parts that are most unchanged have happened, those viruses will reproduce more than the ones targeted by the vaccine. However, mutation rates of those parts do not increase. In addition, since those hypothetical viruses do not compose the majority of the viruses now, we can assume they are less fit in an environment without the vaccine, and that our bodies make short work of them already.
A universal cure for all virii, both known and unknown could be acheived
by changing the genetic code used by human (host) cells. This would
cause an invading virus to be mis-replicated and therefore harmless to
the remaining, uninvaded cells.
There is a species of bacteria which partially implements this tactic for
the purpose of surviving bacteriophages (a bacteria-attacking virus).
Such a change would ideally done temporarily just in case there are
side effects.
Correlation does not imply causation. Your co-worker's paralysis could could have been caused by a number of factors and probably was not thoroughly explored. The curezone article that was shown is a mis-mash of peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed "articles" from main-stream, generally chemophobic press and even some of the books.
Even the recent thermisol flap was debunked by three research agencies in the US: CDC, FDA with the results being reviewed by three independent agencies (NAS-Institute of Medicine, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Still after this tremendous amount of research, we still have TV stars warning us about the evil of vaccines and those containing thermisol in particular. As people hear the tripe without investigating, the begin to believe then they stop immunizing their children, and as such we have seen a resurgance of childhood diseases such as whooping cough.
Generally speaking, flu vaccines won't "prevent' the flu as much as it helps reduce duration and severity of the sympotons, as the virus mutates pretty rapidly. One has to look at the risk/benefit of vaccination, not only for themselves but for society as a whole.
It also means there's no selective push against it.
The is quite possibly a good reason we don't create immunities to that target site - possibly because there are beneficial internal fauna that use similar proteins (including, possibly, phages that kill threatening bacteria), or we ourselves have something that would also be targeted.
I strongly suspect such a vaccine will have NASTY side effects. The problem is, you cannot unvaccinate.
I don't believe that it is an accurate representation, but have you seen the BBC show Survivors? I doubt it will spread like it did in that show (because I doubt we'd use such an inoculation method, or be as careless), but I could see a similarly unpleasant result to those who get vaccinated.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Exercise, vitamins and good food are essential for day-to-day health. If you have enough of those in your life, your chance of keeling over due to a heart attack will drop. However, this doesn't protect you against a viral attack. That's something that this stuff won't do a single thing against. Maybe your healthy body will weather the viral infection slightly better than someone who only sits on the couch eating junk food, but not by much. In fact, someone who sits on the couch eating junk food, but who got the flu vaccine, will tend to be better off when faced with the flu than a healthy eater/exerciser who doesn't get the vaccine.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
No. At least not as far as recent history has proved. We've eliminated lots of disease, from mundane old cholera to smallpox. Even with the advent of global travel, we really haven't seen any new bugs come in to take their place.
"..If a virus evolves a different shape, the antibodies cannot latch on, and it escapes destruction. Scientists have long wondered whether they could escape this evolutionary cycle with a universal flu vaccine that would to attack a part of the virus that changes little from year to year.."
The medics should talk to Dr Alan Solomon, who used to run the successful computer Anti-Virus company "Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit".
He was the one who, when polymorphic viruses came out in the early 1990s, developed the approach for detecting them that all AV companies use today. IIRC, he got a Queen's Award for Technology for this invention.
At the time, many AV companies used to recognise viruses by matching simple bit strings which occurred in the virus code - much the same as detecting the proteins on the surface of a biological virus. Virus writers produced code such as the 'Mutation Engine', which put random 'NOPs' in the code and altered the call sequences, so that every instance of a virus in a computer was a different bit string. Then they started doing whole virus encryption with different keys on each infection. At a stroke, the detection process was subverted.
Alan realised that the virus was 'the same' at some level - not at the bit level, but in terms of its code behaviour. The actual bits would be different for each virus, but a copy of, say, Tequila, would still load two registers, compare and jump at a similar point (that's simplistic, but you get the idea...). So he developed a process for examining a virus, not at the bit level, but in terms of code behaviour. And when he finally sold his company he became a rich man.
I'm sure the same techniques will function in biological viruses - both from the virus attack point of view and the medical defenders. We understand the technique in computers - I hope the medics are sufficiently widely read to be able to apply the work Alan did 25 years ago in a different discipline.....
Silly boy. You can not patent exercise, vitamins and good food.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
So not only is it effective against the asian and bird flu's, it also works against Martian, Klingon and Vulcan types.
(And how about The Andromeda Strain ?)
So could we kill off all the 'typical' flu viruses allowing the evolution of something more aggressive?
You could make the same argument about ANY vaccine. It's a tradeoff between how many people you will save and the risk of creating something worse. But, so far at least, vaccines have paid off in a HUGE way. It's almost unheard of today for children to die of common diseases that used to routinely kill them in droves.
If anything, the real risk is that we will end up prolonging life so long that we'll end up with overpopulation and demographic problems (we're already seeing some of that now).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Make sure you actually do the "keep away from people" bit. Then hopefully it'll just be you and your family dieing from preventable diseases and not the rest of us.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
How come they haven't taken aim at the Common Cold?
Or is it that the pharmaceutical companies are making all too much profit from the less-than-threatening cold virus?
Maybe I'm just too jaded.
http://pastebin.com/YBMHMnX7
I must be missing something where malaria has been defeated. Perhaps you might like to inform the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation they are wasting their money.
However in general you are right.
Should we be concerned about eliminating pathogens that we have co-evolved with and that help build our immune systems (for those of us that aren't killed by them)? Is there an unintended consequence building up here?
Or in other words - what could possibly go wrong?
Everything Dr. Hadwen said has been thouroughly debunked, many times over. If you've deluded yourself enough to think otherwise I know you won't read these, but I'll leave the links here just in case:
https://draust.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/who-needs-facts-these-vaccine-conspiracy-pieces-write-themselves%E2%80%A6/
http://skepticalsurfer.blogspot.com/2007/09/terminology-aggressive-vs-conservative.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Vaccine_controversies/Archive_2
http://reasonablehank.com/2012/02/06/judy-judy-judy-are-you-attempting-to-censor-others-right-to-free-speech/
Is 1563649 a prime number?
That's a crock of shit, sir. Every time you vaccinate, you challenge the immune system, and you bring it to a state of readiness for the next attack. It's only people whose immune systems are naive to the invader that actually come down with the disease. That's the whole fucking point of vaccination!
I don't care if your daughter dies. I don't care if her 90-year-old grandparents die. I do care if I come down with a case of whooping cough from a carrier like her.
Fortunately, I won't have to worry about that for another 10 years, because a lot of people have wrongly thought that pertussis was one of those diseases of the 60s/70s that had been wiped out by vaccination, and forgot that there was a booster shot available. Some antivax fucktard cow orker of mine infected three of us and knocked my team's productivity down for a month.
no matter how many people you run over with a bus, humans are not going to evolve immunity to buses
The ones who don't get run over by buses are more likely to be the ones who pay attention to what's around them or the ones who never leave the house. Both of those are good not-getting-run-over-by-a-bus survival strategies, and they can be passed down to the survivors' offspring.
That _is_ how evolution works.
.... a group of rabid, radical evangelicals are planning a boycott because if their children have a greater chance to live, they have a greater chance to have SEX!!!!!
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
All the Conspirator theories and Dick Cheney/Halliburton/Asbestos Conspiracies....
The human body already self inoculates against the majority of pathogens. There is no more reason to think the Flu will become more deadly over any other virus that is attacking humans 24/7.
That makes no sense. A vaccination only makes someone's immune system work harder, earlier. It is just like "playing in the dirt", only with particularly useful dirt.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
If you never leave the house, you're not particularly successful at reproducing. So yeah, that *is* how evolution works, and helps GP's argument. This kind of mutation actually *weakens* the targeted organism.
I suspect that we'll just have to kill a lot of fuzzy little animals in order to find out if those binding sites are specific to pathogens or whether they show up elsewhere...
Incidentally, if you want a category of vaccines that seems like it is just begging for dramatic trouble, how about Immunocontraceptives? Already used with success in a variety of nuisance mammals; but uneconomic for use in smaller, more numerous, or harder-to-catch pests(because it has to be injected to work). So, logically enough, work is ongoing to produce virally delivered vaccines that will spread themselves through the target population!
Invention describes an innovative method of improving general physical health through combination of repetitive physical exertion, nutritional supplementation, and dietary selection.
--- Mercutio was right.
Vitamins don't sdo anything for you unless you are deficient. Even then, a lot of pills don't work well.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...and queue the opening credit sequence, the soundtrack, and the scenes of the population being mass innoculated before the "rage virus" mutation overtakes New York.
I'm a satanic clam.
It actually can, if the manufacturer screws up. That's why many EU countries stopped two flu vaccines manufactured by Novartis (some stopped all three). There is also the BCG screwup in 1930 with 72 infants dead. Some vaccines are somewhat dangerous (yellow fever, rotavirus, rabies). And I write that as someone who has got most of the shots you need in Europe (MMR, polio, diphteria, tetanus, hepatitis A+B, TBE, BCG, flu).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Yes we have. That was a horrible article which can only be summed up as 'A lie'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's treatable now. People rarely die of it if they can get treatment. It was mostly fatal 100 years ago. It doesn't fit as well as some of the others, but Malaria is much less scary than it once was, even if it isn't "defeated".
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Hi. You clearly have no idea how vaccines work beyond what you've read in Watchtower, and I hope your daughter is taken into the care of people who aren't microcephalic zealots.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Excellent point. Thanks for making it.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
well yeah, shoddy standards can screw up anything
but generally, that's from cut rate manufacturers, three or four manufacturing cycles down the line, when oversight lags
up front, manufacturing standards will be spectacular
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sure, when I was a kid, I'd get it once a year usually, for a day. Never longer. Haven't had it in like 20 years. Not sure what that means, but I do know it means I don't need to get vaccinated for it. Which works, because corporations like to get rid of old stock, which is never good for the flu that is currently going around. And they'll charge you also. boom! you just paid for last years flu vaccine.
Got to love capitalism.
Be seeing you...
This vaccine must be stopped.... immunity to flu will just lead to more people socializing without fear of getting sick, and socializing leads to sex!
Won't someone think of the children? If flu was not keeping those diseased little creatures in check they would be fornicating like bunnies!
A few years- maybe even a couple decades of reduced flu.
Then new versions of the flu which change these sections hit with a vengence.
Hopefully we can rapidly prototype and produce vaccines by then.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How can a vaccine hurt you?
By giving you the symptoms of the disease, or containing something you're allergic to.
Free Martian Whores!
You knew by posting this here you were going to get slammed, right? When it comes to vaccines, the scientific minded community does not allow any room for criticism, doubt or deviation from their position that all vaccines are a godsend and beyond reproach. Doubts and skepticism are at the core of the scientific movement-- except when it comes to this issue. Instead you're just called a conspiracy theorist and a nut.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
The last I heard, this particular universal vaccine does not work very well when injected. The key is to introduce the antigen(s) below the tongue:
The normal flu vaccines are also available as a nasal aerosol.
flu is in general one of the larger killers in the WORLD. Now, if you take out one of the top killers, what will happen? EVERYBODY lives longer. we are looking at a population explosion. a big one. unless we have food/water issues in better shape, we could be trading one killer (disease) for another (war).
It would be nice to see ppl like gates quit focusing on health issues and focus instead on creating new tech such as a thorium nuke generator. Likewise, high speed train that can replace many roads would be smart. why? Because it would help the world over.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The problem is, you cannot unvaccinate.
Actually, you can. After stem cell transplation I had to do all my vaccinations again.
Whatever.... as he is now going to be receiving compensation from our government for the rest of his life. He doesn't care what you as a taxpayer thinks.... shrug...
Not to mention that the Dr who wrote about thermisol was paid a few million by a group of people who had money to be made by negative publicity against thermisol. Also, he didn't actually find a link, he merely suggested that their could be one and had absolutely no data to even suggest it.
This is why they should have nothing to do with it. It should be solely the job of public sector professionals (being PUBLIC HEALTH and all), working on nothing else - say boner pills - but vaccine production and research; all well-funded and isolated from horseshit from any part of the political spectrum.
Some things are far more important that filthy lucre, air-headed 'stars', and pissing contests: preventing pandemics should be chief among them, FFS.
You are correct about the Poster you responded to. However, there is a reason the last flu pandemic with major world health implications was in 1918. That is because that was the last flu pandemic before modern medicine (which I date from the development of sulfa drugs, although some might move it to the mass production of penicillin). Many of those who died from the 1918 flu pandemic actually died from opportunistic infections that attacked them while they were in a weakened state from the flu infection, not from the flu itself. Today most of those opportunistic infections are treatable. It is improbable that we will have a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic unless we have a collapse of industrial society.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yeah... exercise is the best thing to do when you've got a 102F fever. That'll fix you right up.
It's almost unheard of today for children to die of common diseases that used to routinely kill them in droves.
...and so we breed weaker/less adaptive immune systems into the broader human population. There's always a tradeoff when you tamper with the mortality profile of a species, *especially* when it comes to allowing more individuals to reach reproductive age. It doesn't stop at the species (virus) you're directly targeting.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
There is already a universal virus killer in development. And it doesn't target the virus. Instead it targets the cell hosting the virus. When a cell is virus infected it makes a specific protein, a "help I'm infected" RNA flag.
DRACO is two proteins bound together. When it sees the "help I'm infected" RNA, it breaks in two. Half of DRACO binds to it. The other half is a protein messenger that triggers apoptosis - cell death.
The end result is that any cell that has a virus in it commits suicide before the virus can use the cell to reproduce.
Here is a quick story on DRACO.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
there's a fundamental problem with all these vaccines, which is summed up flippantly as "what doesn't kill ya makes ya stronger"... by vaccinating children against various disease - by giving their immune systems an "easy ride" - their immune systems simply do not develop to the same extent that a child would if they had the actual disease and had to fight for their life.
Yeah, tell that to my friend Mike, who has a twisted arm and hand and a twisted leg because he had polio fifty years ago. Guess what? Neitze was a fucking moron; ask Steve Reeves if falling off that horse made him stronger. Ask my wheelchair-bound cousin if having his neck broken at age 16 made him stronger.
Moron.
the very first time we fight for our lives - for our right to live - is when we are born. we *literally* fight for breath, when being sqeezed out of our mums.
Well, my oldest did, because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck and her lungs were filled with fluid. She's now learning-disabled. A hundred years ago she would have died.
My youngest came out screaming in rage. I don't think you've ever seen a child being born.
i would sit by my daughter's bed-side, nursing her patiently back to health, loving her and being happy with and for her.
Being happy with her when she's seriously ill? Let me tell you something, boy (I'm sure you're under 16), NOBODY'S happy when their child is ill.
and no, we have *NOT* vaccinated our daughter.
That's because you don't have one. If in fact you're an adult with schitzoaffective disorder rather than a stupid teenager, I hope the child protective services take her from you and possibly save her life. How you're treating your (I still believe nonexistant) daughter is monstrous.
the reports on the detrimental effects and case studies on the long-term health of children are out there; they're just not widely published
So where did you find out about these "secret studies"? Got a citation? Heh, thought not.
in the 1960s there was a "foot & mouth" outbreak in the UK. nobody slaughtered any cows.
That's because hoof and mouth doesn't affect humans except in very rare circumstances. Note than when bovine ensephalitis hit Europe, they killed hlaf the cows after finding that it did indeed affect humans who ate the meat.
with the masses having their immune systems weakened *because* of the mass-vaccinations
Where in the HELL did you get the retarded idea that vaccinations weaken the immune system? And is the shift key broken on your keyboard, son? Yes, refusal to type like an adult is a very good indicator that you're a dumbass youngster trying to be hip.
Pay a little more attention in school. When you do have a real kid, rather than the schitzophrenic hallucination you seem to be having, I hope you've been taking your meds.
Free Martian Whores!
Ah, good thing that all of you were properly vaccinated, so you're safe right? Oh wait.
You may want to look up Herd Immunity
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Wrong. There are plenty of published and peer reviewed studies that do show injury, such as adjuvant induced autoimmune diseases. There are also issues of ineffectiveness, bad batches, etc. and things like serotype replacement where bugs mutate into something even worse. We know of several events in history where vaccines HAVE directly caused harm, such as the polio outbreak in Nigeria that was directly caused by the oral polio vaccine and the swine flu vaccine that caused GBS. It's also a widely accepted fact that for a very small portion of population, there will be significant adverse reaction. It's not universal that all vaccines are good, safe and infallible; you can't lump them all together in one basket.
Now, I'm definitely not arguing that all vaccines are ineffective either and agree the anti-vax crew do have a lot of crazy theories that are unproven or anecdotal (including some comments made by the OP). But on both sides of the vaccine debate there is a lot of misinformation. And the problem IMO is that there should be NO area of science where we're not constantly evaluating, but for some reason, this is one of the only areas where questions do not seem to be allowed. Instead of people showing why you're wrong, they yell at you for even asking questions. I've experienced this firsthand on many occasions.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
They are talking about creating a vaccine that would cause our antibodies to target a more conserved site.
Obviously, since they don't do that now, our antibodies aren't targeting it.
It's either impossible, or unfavorable given the other alternatives. Either way, there's probably an evolutionarily sound reason for this.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I think the odds of something more aggressive developing from existing influenza virus are a lot lower if you've essentially wiped it out through a vaccination program.
OK. You can't trivially unvaccinate.
That does not sound like something I'd ever want to go through.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I'd stick to risking flu then. I don't suffer from flu very often, I might get it, but it's rarely a big deal. Colds are not a big problem for me either. Take a zinc+C supplement for a few days and I feel reasonably OK during that time.
To me any vaccine that's going to be applied to "everyone" had better be much safer than the disease. It's not like a normal treatment where the person is already sick and doing better than the problem is easier.
For example even if the "severe problems" rate is 0.1% that means 1 million out of 1 billion will be affected. Whereas 0.1% for a cancer treatment is pretty darn good
The ones who don't get run over by buses are more likely to be the ones who pay attention to what's around them or the ones who never leave the house
That's why quarantine works pretty well against most contagious diseases. They have to evolve to not kill so fast and maybe not produce so obvious symptoms.
In theory if everyone had 2 weeks supply of food and water (haha) you could issue a mass quarantine order and wait for a killer flu to burn out.
> The ones who don't get run over by buses are more likely to be the ones who pay attention to what's around them or the ones who never leave the house.
Or the bus.
See Dr. Joel Fuhrman: http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cold-flu-flu-and-nutrition-dr-fuhrman-responds-to-comments.html ..."
"The idea that a person eating a nutrient-rich diet is just as likely to develop and suffer the dangerous consequences from an influenza virus as a cheese burgers and soda eating American is simply wrong. More importantly such opinions are dangerous as they may lead to tragic outcomes for those mistaking authority for knowledge. Let's review just a few articles from the scientific literature that further support this concept that nutritional.excellence can offer protection from viral attacks. I will show the reference and post some explanatory comments below each reference.
Numerous citations there.
Also, on vitamin D:
And: http://www.naturalnews.com/029760_vitamin_D_influenza.html
Counter-evidence on vitamin D though:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/02/health/vitamin-d-colds/index.html
But elsewhere it's been said by Dr. John Cannell that vitamin D has only helped with some influenza strains and also by compairson that the amount in the previous study may still have been too low:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/news-archive/2009/h1n1-flu-and-vitamin-d/
Can you provide any substantial evidence to back up your claims to the contrary? Can you even cite any good evidence the flu vaccine to date has accomplished anything significant except put more aluminum in people's bodies? By contrast: ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/11/does-the-vaccine-matter/307723/
"But what if everything we think we know about fighting influenza is wrong? What if flu vaccines do not protect people from dying -- particularly the elderly, who account for 90 percent of deaths from seasonal flu? And what if the expensive antiviral drugs that the government has stockpiled over the past few years also have little, if any, power to reduce the number of people who die or are hospitalized? The U.S. government -- with the support of leaders in the public-health and medical communities -- has put its faith in the power of vaccines and antiviral drugs to limit the spread and lethality of swine flu. Other plans to contain the pandemic seem anemic by comparison. Yet some top flu researchers are deeply skeptical of both flu vaccines and antivirals. Like the engineers who warned for years about the levees of New Orleans, these experts caution that our defenses may be flawed, and quite possibly useless against a truly lethal flu. And that unless we are willing to ask fundamental questions about the science behind flu vaccines and antiviral drugs, we could find ourselves, in a bad epidemic, as helpless as the citizens of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Jackson's findings showed that outside of flu season, the baseline risk of death among people who did not get vaccinated was approximately 60 percent higher than among those who did, lending support to the hypothesis that on average, healthy people chose to get the vaccine, while the "frail elderly" didn't or couldn't. In fact, the healthy-user effect explained the entire benefit that other researchers were attributing to flu vaccine, suggesting that the vaccine itself might not reduce mortality at all. Jackson's papers "are beautiful," says Lone Simonsen, who is a professor of global health at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and an internationally recognized expert in influenza and vaccine epidemiology. "They are classic studies in epidemiology, they are so carefully done."
The results were
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
no matter how many people you run over with a bus, humans are not going to evolve immunity to buses
The ones who don't get run over by buses are more likely to be the ones who pay attention to what's around them or the ones who never leave the house. Both of those are good not-getting-run-over-by-a-bus survival strategies, and they can be passed down to the survivors' offspring.
That _is_ how evolution works.
You know, when I was writing my original post, I debated changing my example to "you can't develop an immunity to being shot," because I figured somebody would misinterpret it.
All I'm trying to say with that example is that you can't necessarily force an adaptation to a species by applying an evolutionary pressure. Sometimes you get extinction instead. Sometimes there are no feasible mutations that can develop, or there are feasible mutations, but they are of sufficiently low probability that they don't develop in time to stop the extinction.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I read a study somewhere or other many years ago that argued that the flu played a beneficial role and was a necessary part of remaining healthy long term
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
I've never had the flu. I don't know what all the fuss is about.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Stop making sense. For God's sake don't mention that the big diseases that vaccine's supposedly 'fixed' where in serious decline at the time vaccination was introduced(they will put you on the /. anti-science stake).
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
I make no such suggestion - I know little about the disease profiles of the time and would question the reliability of the data of anyone who made serious claims about them. Rather I'm pointing out that when you eliminate/de-fang dominant predators (whether macro- or microscopic) you also weaken the survival mechanisms of those they preyed on. Now wolves, cougars, etc. are unlikely to move in to the ecosystem niches left empty by cave bears, saber-tooth cats, etc. and prey on humans unless we seriously drop the ball, but microbes evolve much faster than us - potentially thousands of generations a year*, and many of them have far more volatile genomes than we do. If the prey starts weakening their defenses then it's only a matter of time until new predators appear. Especially when we make an active habit of breeding them for durability against all our best medical technologies through inappropriate use. Antibiotic hand soap for home use? What idiot thought that up? To say nothing of saturating our livestock with antibiotics - can you say drug-resistance bio-reactor?
* let's put this number in proper perspective - the smallpox vaccine was the first to see widespread use a bit over 200 years ago. In that time period there are microbial species that may have seen 200,000 generations. In human terms (assuming a generation averages 15-20 years, perhaps a little overlong) that translates to 3-4 MILLION years of evolution which puts us somewhere between Ardipithecus and Australopithecus. At that point our ancestors resembled something like a modern-day chimpanzees or bonobos - they were making the jump to predominantly bipedal locomotion and had begun to lose the oversized canines - but were still completely furry and their brains were only slightly larger than other apes. Homo Habilis with their primitive stone tools wouldn't show up for another half-million years.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.