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Researchers Investigating Self-Boosting Vaccines
An anonymous reader writes "Vaccines, contrary to opinions from the anti-science crowd, are some of the most effective tools in modern medicine. For some diseases, a single shot is all it takes for lifetime immunity. Others, though, require booster shots, to remind your immune system exactly what it should prepare to fight. Failure to get these shots threatens an individual's health, and the herd immunity concept as well. Scientists are now looking into 'self-boosting' vaccines in order to fix that problem. Some viruses are capable of remaining in the body for a person's entire lifetime. If researchers can figure out a way to safely harness these, it may be possible to add genes that would create proteins to train the immune system against not just one, but multiple other viruses (abstract). This is a difficult problem to solve; changing the way we do vaccinations will itself have consequences for herd immunity. It also hinges on finding a virus that can survive the immune system without having uncomfortable flare-ups from time to time."
This is Timmy's mother, Timmy won't be able to come to school today because he's feeling well and the other parents are afraid that his general well being will cause autism in the other children.
Anti-vaxxers are anti-science and kill kids.
People like former Dr. Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy have blood on their hands.
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BMO
I find it interesting that this was modded flamebait. It's a valid point. Whatever your opinion on the subject, rhetorical hyperbole serves only to inflame those who already disagree to disagree more. If you disagree with the anti-vax crowd, offer reasoned counterpoints to their arguments. If you just write them off as a bunch of idiotic kooks, that will just entrench them in their position further. And who knows, do YOU have any research to support the idea that there is no benefit to, say, a more gradual vaccination schedule for infants? Has the issue been researched to a significant degree? I don't know of any studies on that specific subject (and note the difference between "I don't know" and "there are none"), so I couldn't counter the suggestion that it might be beneficial. If you disagree, back it up with the science, or you're no better than the "anti-science" crowd you claim to oppose. Blindly accepting "prevailing wisdom" without the knowledge to support it is every bit as "anti-science" as blindly accepting niche wisdom without the knowledge to support it. You look at the evidence available to you and form a conclusion, you don't just say "most scientists support idea A, so anyone who supports idea B is a fool." That helps no one and makes you look a fool.
And, for what it's worth, I was torn between posting a response to the fact this was modded flamebait, or modding it up. I chose the former.
You, and others, don't get it.
The doubt is unfounded. There is *no* science to back up the claim that thimerosol or vaccines cause autism.
When the Netherlands, and I believe Denmark banned Thimerosol, the supposed trigger of autism caused by vaccinations, did the incidence of autism fall?
No.
The claim that thimerosol and vaccines cause autism has been proven wrong empirically because of this, and the people who continue to push this dangerous meme kill kids.
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BMO
I completely get it. There are people who simply do not believe a specific claim of science. They were convinced of the counter claims the same way 90% of the people are convinced of the scientific claims, someone told them who appeared to be authoritative in the matter. Very few people have the resources or skills to replicate the vast majority of scientific discoveries so until they see it in use or have it explained to them by some authority in the matter, they have to trust someone. That does not make them anti-science, it makes them skeptical about a claim. They could very well believe and understand all the other science claims out there.
Like I said, stop playing Bush, it's not a with us or against us situation.
>That does not make them anti-science, it makes them skeptical about a claim.
When you take Jenny McCarthy's claim over a doctor's claim, you are anti-science.
There is being skeptical, and then there is just plain nuts.
Jenny McCarthy kills kids.
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BMO
Think it through. (I am absolutely pro-vaccine BTW.) The Varicella Zoster lives in your body. You _must_ get chicken pox in order to later get shingles. you don't just "catch shingles". This means that a virus (like zoster) can hang out in your body while your body "forgets" its immune response.
So this theoretical self-recurring "vaccination" could easily have unintended consequences that wouldn't be knownt until the second or Nth recurrance.
And every viral recuuance destroys or damages tissue. The sucky thing about shingles is not that it happens, but that the nerve it errupts out of can become perminantly inflamed.
So the model virus for the idea is kind of a strong example of why the idea might just suck donkey balls. The only way to really test such a long-lasting recurrent phenomonia for a whole lifetime. Think of how long the average hip replacement or surgical mesh was in a body before they started to go bad and people discovered the unintended consequences. And those are just innert physical objects.
We should be _very_ suspicious of anything "active" that we intend to engineer and put into our bodies as effective viral symbiotes. We haven't even gotten "piece of steel", let along "heart valve", right yet. Self replicating virus is a little ambitious just now.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
>It seems you missed the overall point here, which was "Cite your source, or shut up". We likely share a similar opinion on this particular subject. However, if you can't cite a valid source, if you can't point out solid, peer-reviewed research, then you're essentially acting on faith, just like the creationists, just like the anti-vax crowd.
You missed the point in that the anti-vaccine crowd has *no* peer reviewed study that says vaccines cause autism, and the one that was, was retracted, and Andrew Wakefield lost his license due to fraud.
> I realize, probably better than most, how frustrating it is to have the same argument time and time again, with so little success swaying the opinions of others, but if you just say "screw it, they're all morons", then you're just helping history to repeat itself.
No, they need to be riduculed and made embarrassed, because of the hundreds of thousands of studies on how and why vaccines work, they can't be arsed to read a single one of them. They are kooks, and the way you deal with kooks is to riducule and ostracize them until they come around.
> you're no better than the anti-science fundamentalists.
Might I direct you to the nearest university library and fuck off.
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BMO
People who deliberately spread misinformation so that kids die of whooping cough, measels, and other preventable diseases do kill kids as surely as holding a gun and pulling the trigger.
Because they do it not out of concern for children, but because of money, and backing away from fraud exposes the fraud. So they continue.
If you feel that this is out of line, feel free to foe me.
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BMO
Really? your argument is OMG YOU KILL KIDS by not swallowing everybit of information from the government as fact? and you get MOD POINTS?! this is slashdot, please stop that. Here we say 'there has been no known study proving a direct link between thimerosol and autism"
Even better: "Not getting your shorts [sic] threatens the herd immunity concept'. This last one is really a blatant admission that their crap doesn't work in the first place. It shouldn't matter if the person next to you wasn't dumb enough to take their shots, after all you took the vaccine, you're protected, right??
No, you Anonymous Coward dumbass - That's not how herd immunity works.
Imagine everyone in a kindergarten is vaccinated against smallpox but Fred's vaccine didn't work and for whatever reason Fred isn't immune to smallpox (biology is never 100%). However, Fred remains protected against smallpox because the rest of his class ("his herd") is immune, so the virus doesn't get the chance to leap to him.
Now imagine 10 kids in Fred's class are NOT vaccinated against smallpox - Now the virus has a chance to take hold and infect Fred, even though he's vaccinated. Fred has lost the benefit of the immunity of the herd.
Vaccination works because a) the immunity takes hold on the majority and b) we live in herds.
"contrary to opinions from the anti-science crowd..."
What is the point of this statement? I mean seriously, what's the point? I've been reading this site for years and it just seems to be getting more and more like this—which is not a good thing.
Who cares what the "anti-science" crowd thinks? Why even bother mentioning them? Why acknowledge their existence, particularly when NOT responding to one directly?
Just report the fucking story. What some other childishly labeled crowd thinks about it is irrelevant. I can't even get through a remotely interesting story about geology without some asshole making a "the earth is only 6000-years-old" joke. Who... fucking... cares? It's not. We know. We get it. The joke is old and tiresome. I really wish I was coming here to read interesting discussions about the science at hand. Instead, I'm constantly deluged with this kind of childish bullshit.
Care to give some examples for Sallies, Henries and their brothers?
And as a site note, if 1 of 1,000,000 dies due to an illness comming from vaccination, that is far better than if 300,000 from 1,000,000 die because no one is vaccined.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.