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Uptick In Whooping Cough Linked To Subpar Vaccines
sciencehabit writes "Whooping cough, or pertussis, has exploded in the United States in recent years. A new study (abstract) confirms what scientists have suspected for some time: The return of the disease is caused by the introduction of new, safer vaccines 2 decades ago. Although they have far fewer side effects, the new shots don't offer long-lived protection the way older vaccines do."
If neither vaccine was effective, there would have been no change. However, there was an observed uptick, indicating that the previous vaccine was definitely having an effect.
Could you expand on what you mean by this?
Vaccines have a great reputation, largely resulting from the highly successful campaigns with smallpox and polio. However, these were done in a less litigious era, and unlike today's medical practice, they could operate without the fear of gigantic lawsuits if something went wrong.
These reduced-effectiveness vaccines are like many "safer", "greener", or otherwise "less harmful" solutions; they have their drawbacks, but only a fool would try to push their solution by advertising those drawbacks. Now we're seeing two effects. A re-emergence of pertussis, and decreased public confidence in vaccines.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Well of course they aren't. That's why we still have 10% of the population dying from smallpox and polio ... right?
How retarded are you on a scale from 1 to retarded?
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
Or, maybe vaccines aren't effective period. Just a thought.
I guess that would explain all these horrible outbreaks of polio, mumps, and measles we've been having....
Oh, wait, we aren't having large outbreaks of these diseases? Well, then I guess vaccines work.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I wonder when it will become mainstream for our vaccinations to be based in part on nanotechnology to further the delivery and the effectiveness of vaccinations and our ability to stimulate our immune system towards fighting these diseases.
With population exploding, shouldn't we return to an era where the weak were culled out? With chronic unemployment as the new norm, maybe there's just too many people. It's like managing these "lifestyle" diseases - back in the day old people had the grace to die of diabetes or a heart attack, now they live until 90, but don't work the last 30 years of their lives, effectively eating the seed corn of the new generation. We're soon going to be victims of our own successes.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
you have proof the DNA of the disease is the same then as now?
they might have that proof, actually.
but more than that they have the last years stats of the people who were vaccinated 20+ years ago. presumably the change didn't happen overnight either so there would be some overlap there as well where some age group got either one.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Or maybe people should stop refusing to have their child vaccinated because of $CONSPIRACYTHEORY. Just a thought.
Oh you racist! You hater!
I need a hug.
queue the crazies. "vaccines make autism!" "they poison you and are mind control!" :) where is your iron lung? remember that time you had smallpox?
the facts are that hundreds of millions of people have died of stuff we now vaccinate for before vaccines were created for them. re: jason777's post that "or maybe vaccines aren't effective period", i dont think you understand what hundreds of millions means
Does it really matter? Much like MRSA, I think a lot of times the inevitable Darwinian result happens when a vaccine or medication is ineffective against certain strains of a virus, bacteria, or other pathogen, which results in that version which resists the treatment being refined into what they like to call a "superbug" and having less of the vulnerable ones to blend into. I suspect it could be the case that what we're doing is turning a recessive gene in the bug into one that is standard for basic survival.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Or maybe people should stop refusing to have their child vaccinated because of $CONSPIRACYTHEORY. Just a thought.
Why do you hate natural selection?
The vaccine debate is a religious one on both sides and your statement is evidence of that. The data suggesting that vaccines are working is overwhelming and trying to deny that they have worked is ridiculous. There is also risk to vaccines and they can cause harm and trying to deny that is ridiculous. The bigger question is whether or not over use of vaccines is creating a similar problem as the overuse of antibiotics. And in the process are we actually reducing our ability to adapt as a species to environmental pressure and stress.
Well it's a thought not supported by the empirical evidence witnessed over the decades of vaccine use that had seen the decline and near eradication of many human and other animal diseases that once plagued entire populations. Or maybe all these virii and bacteria got bored and decided to stop procreating spontaneously? Wake up, anti-vax anti-science conspiracy theorists. Maybe all you lay moms and dads out there DON'T know better than your doctor what's best for your baby. We've taken this "mom knows best" mentality off the deep end.
Or, maybe vaccines aren't effective period. Just a thought.
I suggest you try thinking harder next time.
Smallpox would still be around if they didn't work, and other diseases would be much more common.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
God damn it Alexander Peter Kowalski, APK, this shit is getting old.
*retarted
Couldn't they just give the safe one first and the older, more effective one a few months later? And if not, why not just do the weaker one yearly? I think an elegant solution for a lot of these weaker vaccines is to simply do them yearly, around the same time you get your flu shot. Other than further aggravating the Jenny McCarthys of the world, I think this would be a fine solution.
you have proof the DNA of the disease is the same then as now?
That's a possibility. Virulence factors can change over time. It's been hypothesized that the near complete absence of Rheumatic Fever might be due to less virulent streptococcal A bacteria. Or it might be due to increased treatment, better nutrition, sunspots or something else. It's hard to prove.
FTFA
As much pertussis as we're seeing now, we're still seeing in most places pretty good control in the very young," who are at the highest risk of dying form pertussis, Halperin says. "We're seeing lapsed immunity in school-age kids and we have to solve that. But those kids aren't dying."
Can be interpreted as either the bacterium is the same and the host defenses are better in younger children due to a less effective (but still reasonably useful) vaccine or it could be that current Pertussis strains are not as virulent, especially in infants, but still contagious. Should be possible to determine this by looking at older frozen samples of Pertussis, which I assume are available (but don't really know).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What are you on? 10%?! Try nearly 0% in the US where we made sure to get rid of it. Less than 20k people get it per year and less that 1000 deaths per year hardly 10%, at its peak in the 50s. It is near 0 right now since the late 80s. In areas where they do not use the salk vaccine the death rate is pretty high. Because they do not use it...
To not use the vaccine is not only dangerous to yourself but others.
Whoosh!
With population exploding, shouldn't we return to an era where the weak were culled out?...
Unless you live in Africa, population is not exploding. The population growth rate is slowing, the UN predicts that the world population will stabilize around 2090 and fall afterwards. Most (more recent) predictions think that this estimate is pessimistic - it's looking like population will stabilize around 2050 and decline afterwards.
Most industrialized nations have negative population growth already, the US *would* have negative population growth if you discount immigration. Even with immigration, the US population is slowing and will turn the corner sometime in the next couple of decades.
... back in the day old people had the grace to die of diabetes or a heart attack, now they live until 90, but don't work the last 30 years of their lives, effectively eating the seed corn of the new generation.
I think the problems you are seeing is due to a lack of an evolved sense of morality. On your part.
Nothing like vaccine stories to get the loonies going, is there?
Google "herd immunity".
Our "ability to adapt as a species" would mean simply letting people die if they weren't already immune. Unless you're aware of some Lamarkian pressure I don't know about.
Use of vaccines does create a selective pressure for vaccines to adapt, which is why they're used for the most dangerous diseases or in the most at-risk groups, or so broadly that a disease doesn't have a chance to adapt before it loses all of its possible niches. Adios, smallpox. Time to get your coat, polio.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
How can anyone call a vaccines sup-bar when it causes less cases of brain damage?
Or, maybe vaccines aren't effective period. Just a thought.
I guess that would explain all these horrible outbreaks of polio, mumps, and measles we've been having....
Oh, wait, we aren't having large outbreaks of these diseases? Well, then I guess vaccines work.
No, they don't.
See, what has happened is that folks who are naturally immune have peed in water. Now, since the essence of their immunity has gone into the water, we have been drinking the homeopathic cure!
But don't tell anyone! The homeopathic industry needs their revenue for all the R&D they have to prove the effectiveness of their products with their scientific studies.
Like this one:
"Drink this Homeopathic medicine for your sickness. Do you fell better?"
"Yep!"
"There you go! A 100% effectiveness rate!"
People treated with antibiotics from childhood have weaker immune system. The same may be true for vaccines.
Do you get your children vaccinated?
It's much more likely that your child will have a bad reaction to the vaccine than to actually get the disease. And if everyone *else* gets vaccinated, there's no need for any specific child to take that risk. That's the dilemma facing parents nowadays - from their individual viewpoint, there's a higher risk from the vaccination than there is from the disease.
Taking polio (about 30 years ago) as an example, the chance of getting polio from the vaccine was about 1 in 750,000. Polio became largely non-existent in the US during the later years of the vaccination program, so individually it's easy to see why parents might not want to take the risk.
And yet if everyone makes the best choice for their personal welfare, polio runs rampant in the country with 35,000 cases per year.
This is a variant of the Prisoner's dilemma, where if everyone does what's in their immediate best interest then everyone suffers needlessly.
We must accept the fact that sometimes we forced to take risks, and sometimes those risks will go badly. The risks are structured such that by taking the forced risk we are lowering everyone's total risk, and in the case of diseases, lowering it to a point where eventually no one will have to take the risk in the future.
Please list the vaccines that contain mercury.
Whatever. I still don't support homeopathic marriages or adoptions.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sure it may, but why think that without evidence. Do you see any correlation between vaccines and anti-biotics that we don't?
That's simple enough, just offer a significant tax break for people who elect to maintain their vaccines. The conspiracy theorists will still scream their heads off while everyone else says "$250 tax credit? Shoot me up!"
Of course this makes the neocon/libertarian baby Jesus cry, nevermind the fact that we'll all save money (and lives) in the long run.
First off, let's get this out of the way. "Conspiracy Theory" is ultmately a mistrust in the systems we are required to live in. Especially lately, many of the things people have been label "conspiracy nut" over have come to light as either likely or simply the truth. This can be especially marked by the general non-acceptance of the Boston Bombing story. People just aren't believing any longer.
Now, the thing about vaccines is that it's supposed to be an inert version of a virus which is introduced to the body giving the person's immune system a chance to develop and immune response to the 'real' disease. This immunity response does vary from person to person and from disease to disease. But this is the first time I've heard a variation based on the "quality" of the innoculation. Think back to the first innoculations. They had to have been of crude quality and yet were highly effective to the point that it eradicated smallpox.
If you ask me, I would be more concerned about other factors which may lead to such problems and there could be MANY.
But the thing I'm getting at is now they are going to start recommending even more and frequent innoculations. Now under the current state of general government mistrust, I have to worry about what other things they might pull. I know the suspected links to autism and vaccinations are extremely unpopular discussion, but I have to wonder why, with all of our other redundant and seemingly useless studies why everyone seems so unwilling to allow any sort of studies over the links between autism and vaccinations? (For that matter, I'd like to see a study on autism and GMO foods.)
And before anyone starts into it. I want you to think about what 1 in 88 children means. And the numbers are worse for boys 1 in 53 boys is the current rate of autism. That's beyond what would normally be considered an emergency epidemic and yet it's not being treated as if it were any sort f emergency. Instead they are lowering the criteria for what is considered "autism" and are redefining it to change the numbers. If ever there was something that needs to be looked at, it's this. A significant portion of the human gene pool is being affected by this. This is serious. And yet no studies on the subject are allowed and any attempt will result in the end of a career.
Please elaborate. My understanding is that antibiotics work in the role of parts of your immune system where vaccines work by triggering parts of your immune system. It doesn't seem like that the same logic would apply.
>>- back in the day old people had the grace to die of diabetes or a heart attack, now they live until 90, but don't work the last 30 years of their lives, effectively eating the seed corn of the new generation.
If you're able and society needs you to work, then you should work, even in the last "30 years of your life" and even if you've done far more than provide for your own retirement.
Good human beings don't live solely for themselves--they also work to help others out.
However, I'm NOT in favor of the masses continuing to work all the way to death solely so that the 1% can pile more gold up onto their hoards.
--PM
May I ask why not?
By the way, did you know that mercury is no longer in vaccines (and was never in elemental form) and MSG is a food additive?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"All natural, no dyes. That's a good business - all-natural children's toys. Those toy companies, they don't arbitrarily mark up their frogs. They don't lie about how much they spend on research and development. And the worst that a toy company can be accused of is making a really boring frog. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get them in frog green, fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protect the kid for six months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you'll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they'd rather let their kid die then cough up 40 bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop *really* fast. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Kaiser Permanente introduced the vaccines gradually, and have children of the same age with one or the other (or both). This is the source of the 5.6x more likely to get it number.
The older one has more antigens. The older one also had more lawsuits, even though science to this day cannot prove it caused the other problems.
And statistically we'd still be better off with the old one, unproven problems and all, compared to the new one. But there was a telling comment by a scientist -- western societies would no longer "accapt" the old one.
Thank your lawyers. They got rich (Congress even set up a fund for "victims", even though no connection was shown) and people died in increased numbers because of their actions.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A better study would group effectiveness by age group. Thanks to new vaccine children can be vaccinated earlier with fewer life threatening side effects therefore are more effective preventing death in younger patients.
For any parent, guardian, or patient to make an informed decision, we have to have two pieces of information: how well a medicine generally works, and what risks there are to take it. Number One Son does this with several medicines: Colcrys controls the symptoms of his Familial Mediteranian Fever, at the risk of messing with his liver. He takes the flu shot because of the risk to the 1 and a half lung he has left are higher than the risks of the vaccine itself.
A vaccine that doesn't work, or doesn't work well, means that vaccinated patients are accepting the vaccine risk for no significant reward.
I am not anti-vaccine, I am just against unneeded risk. My kids got a round of the Salk vaccine, because the Sabin vaccine might wear out. We also did the chicken pox vaccine, to try to prevent shingles later in life (both families have had extreme shingles outbreaks later in life). OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior and the real side-effect rate to the vaccine is a lot higher than the manufacturer is reporting.
My own anecdote is that the reporting on pertussis is off by at least half to two-thirds. Little Miss fought a persistent cough (with antibiotics) for weeks until her allergist said "oh, you have whooping cough. You sound exactly like I did last week." There was no use testing her, because she'd been on antibiotics. Milady and I both caught it from her. The nurse ruined my test by doing it wrong, and Milady's doctor flat-out wouldn't test her (she just got antibiotics, because she was #3 in the house to catch it). The scuttlebutt in the health profession was that the Health Department was desperately trying to keep their numbers down, by hook or by crook.
With my kids' various lung-related issues, they needed a vaccine that actually helps prevent whooping cough. The current one isn't it.
IT is only so natural that having a large of the population poor and without conditions to pay a minimum standard of living, that many old diseases will make a comeback. It has nothing to do with the effectiveness of vaccines.
Agreed. If anything antibiotics and vaccines have completely opposite mechanisms of action.
An antibiotic taken as a medication kills bacteria directly, assisting the immune system and making its job easier. In the case of bleaching every surface in your house, it means that the immune system never sees the bacteria in the first place. The same is true of other external use of antibiotics (killing of bacteria before it gets into your body).
A vaccine provokes your immune response against a pathogen without exposing you to the risk of developing the disease (or a greatly reduced risk). Your immune system does all the work, and as a result it is able to do the job entirely on its own much more effectively at a later time.
Comparing the approaches, the disinfectant approach is like bleaching your house 3x/day, and the vaccine approach is like rolling around in the mud and not washing before dinner. I'd be very hesitant to associate the problems of the one with the other.
And so can having chicken pox at any point in your life.
Potato.
I took the new TDaP vaccine last year (Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Pertussis). It made my whole upper arm, from shoulder to elbow, turn black and I was unable to move it for 2 days... 2 days I spent the barely moving with intense fatigue and a low grade fever. None of this is unheard of. Now I've had a few TD (Tetanus/Diphtheria) shots over the years and never had a reaction before, and I don't suffer from any allergies. So, if this is what the current Pertussis vaccine does, what horrors were wrought by the previous one? Was it really that much worse?
Please don't confuse vaccines with medication (antibiotics). There is plenty of evidence that antibiotic use leads to resistance. There is plenty of evidence that vaccine overuse leads to less disease, and extinction of the pathogen. Completely different situations. Completely different conditions. Completely different theories. There is nothing they have in common. Don't worry. Common mistake.
$CONSPIRACYTHEORY
Ooh, ooh . . . let me play . . . I'm good at this!
"The government has been working on vaccines that cause autism to use against political enemies by the IRS, which will be running Obamacare, which is why the IRS sorted out the political enemies' tax exemption forms, because those political enemies are against Obamacare, so they won't get the Obamacare autism causing vaccines, which is why the IRS planned to delay processing the tax exemption forms, until the paper borne version of the virus could complete testing in Libya, but the Libyans discovered that the IRS papers distributed to them by the US embassy were the cause of their autistic births, and then stormed the embassy, which was covered up by the government to look like an average Islamic riot, which was working, until the Associated Press found out about it, and was planning to publish, but IRS found out about that, and told then the FBI to tap the phone lines of the Associated Press, so they could find all the journalists and the government leaks, so they could be given a potent adult version of the autistic causing vaccine, and therefore silence them all up, and so this is why the Associated Press reporters are acting all autistic now, and . . . "
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Let's see. Overwhelming evidence that vaccines prevent disease, save lives, improve quality of life. No evidence to suggest mercury and msg are harmful AT THE GIVEN DOSES. None at all, other than theoretical maybe, sort of, kind of, possibly, could be. Rational people go with the odds, and stick with what we know. Should have given you a -1 irrational, not troll.
But why vaccinations? Maybe it's tap water. Maybe it's video games. Maybe it's birth control pills. Maybe it's Flying Spaghetti Monster causing autism. All these anti vaxers are looking for a way to blame vaccines for autism. Maybe instead of looking for a link to autism which, so far, has not been established, leave it up to scientists to find a link to anything? One million concerned mommies on the internet willing it so are not going to somehow create the link to vaccines that you all have collectively decided must be the cause. Leave science to the scientists.
MSG? Stop getting your vaccines from Chinese takeouts. Also, the whole MSG is "poison" thing was proven bogus a long time ago. As for thimerosal (which is rarely used anymore anyway), if you are worried about that then I seriously suggest you never eat wild caught fish. Ever.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
This summed it up. Because vaccines help on the macro scale any questions about them are hushed up or mocked. Unfortunately on the micro scale vaccines kill some people and it appears that little or no effort is being made to reduce this. Which leads to kids who die or have negative effects from vaccines and then parents who then rail against vaccines. Then we ridicule the parents because on the macro scale vaccines help. The parents loss was real, the damage on the micro scale is real, and the advantages on the macro scale are real. Why not work on either improving vaccine safety or work on detecting who might be at risk for a bad result and just keep them from being vaccinated? This is the problem with the vaccination discussion. I'm sure that we could find a better way if we looked, but instead we take the typical American approach of there must be no middle ground or room for compromise. Tragic.
haha, I knew that would get me a troll. but seriously, even if they work at all, its not worth the risk of the poisons they put in them (mercury, msg, etc).
MSG? Why is that in vaccines? To enhance their flavor? As far as I know there has been no conclusive evidence regarding the harmful effects of MSG. It takes 5 times as much MSG per weight to kill you vs. table salt. You can buy MSG at most grocery stores.
HPV is preventable in behavior? Pray tell, how? LOL.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I just had whooping cough myself, contracted it on a business trip in china.
One of my symptoms was throwing up repeatedly after every meal that was bigger than an apple. This went on for 6 weeks. I'm now 4 months down the road and the symptom still comes back every once in a while if I eat a little bit more than I should. It's like "involuntary" bulimia, not that any eating disorder is voluntary.
Lost 14 pounds and everyone tells me I am more handsome than usual, but I would have rather used the gym card I bought after new years.
Anyway, a friend of mine who is from malaysia develops vaccines. Since the disease is common there I guess they have a bit higher focus on it. He told me that the current vaccine has to be boosted every 15 years or so.
In my case I had it as a kid, and that didn't prevent me from getting it again either.
So, if you are 25 or older and haven't had the vaccine boosted, perhaps it's about time.
OK, so this vaccine needs a booster every decade or so. Lots of vaccines are like that. The vaccines against tetanus and hepatitis A and B all need to be re-administered every few years. No big deal.
Or maybe people should stop refusing to have their child vaccinated because of $CONSPIRACYTHEORY. Just a thought.
This.
From the article (emphasis mine):
During the 1980s, U.S. parents successfully sued manufacturers, alleging that the whole-cell vaccine also caused long-term brain damage. A 1991 Institute of Medicine report concluded that this was unproven, but by then many pertussis vaccine manufacturers had withdrawn from the market, leading Congress to create a federal vaccine injury compensation program for families who could show a strong case for vaccine damage.
Sound familiar?
One of the first areas in the US hit by a modern pertussis outbreak was here in California. It wasn't among poor people who couldn't afford the vaccine, like you might expect in emergent epidemics. Instead, it was in Marin County, home of highly affluent post-hippy folks like (say) George Lucas. These folks have been reading all of the holistic alternative medicine literature for years and have convinced themselves that every single article is another threat to the precious, precious unborn babies that they plan to have spring from their middle-aged wombs, and so huge numbers of them have decided to stop vaccinating altogether. Shock, horror, when the result is a resurgence of a disease that had been all but unseen in the area for decades, and a couple of those precious babies actually die.
You see the same thing all over the world. In France, there's some kind of conspiracy theory going around that the measles vaccine is bad. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases around. In 2011, there were 118 cases of measles in the entire United States in the first five months; in France, which has only about twice the population of California, there were 17,000.
On the positive side, people, including childless adults, can help to stop the spread of pertussis by getting a booster vaccination, which helps to increase herd immunity. If you catch whooping cough as an adult, you won't die, you'll get a very lousy respiratory illness for a while. But if you don't catch pertussis, you can't spread it to people who are more vulnerable, like children and the elderly. Right now, doctors believe you need a booster about once in your adult life. It's easy to get -- you can get it bundled with your tetanus vaccine, which if you're smart, you're getting every 10 years or so anyway. Last time I got a tetanus shot, I got the pertussis booster with it, and there was no change in price (i.e. both were fully covered by insurance).
Breakfast served all day!
Actually, MSG is indeed present in certain vaccines as a stabilizer. Reports of its toxicity are, of course, bunkum, but it is there.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Vaccines are not like antibiotics. There is almost no way for a virus to adapt. "Overuse" does not create strong virus's, it creates extinct virus's.
From what I see all the denial is coming from one side. Doctors and scientists have never said that vaccines are 100% effective or that they are 100% safe. Like all medication, there are risks and side effects. For the vast majority of people, the side effects are rare and not serious. There is a large database to keep track of side effects and a special vaccine court set up to hear cases of side effects. The court was started to bypass the lengthy trials that normally is associated with a civil suit and is a no-fault system. However in the case of autism, the court (and science) has found no credible link. The initial claim of a link has been discredited due to fraud. Even the study that first suggested a link has been retracted due to this fraud.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
We went from a few thousand a year dieing to less than a handful. We went from 20-30k people being maimed by some of these things to nearly none. Over a 10 year period lets, say 1k per year 20k per year maimed, that is 10k less deaths and 200k less people who are bound to a wheelchair. If the person died from the vaccine think what would have happened if they got the real deal (they would have been part of the 1k per year)?
Yeah your way sounds so much better. Maybe we should stop putting chlorine in local swimming pools while we are at it. Unfortunately at this time we have no tests for this. Sure we can maybe eventually have that. But right now? We dont.
...which is why they're used for the most dangerous diseases
Like chicken pox? I'd be interested to also know your thoughts on the HPV vaccine considering the disease it protects against is already incredibly rare.
Smallpox vaccine causes shingles in people over 50.
The United States hasn't included the smallpox vaccine in routine immunizations since the 70s. I don't think you could get it if you asked for it. Most doctors and pharmacies don't even carry it. You might be able to get it if you're in the military and are being deployed to certain regions known to be iffy about chemical/biological weapons.
Breakfast served all day!
This article talks about how in England there has been a huge increase in the number of measles cases since Wakefield published his claptrap about vaccines causing autism and other nonsense.
For those not bothering to read the article, this is part which you need to know:
This year, the U.K. has had more than 1,200 cases of measles, after a record number of nearly 2,000 cases last year. The country once recorded only several dozen cases every year. It now ranks second in Europe, behind only Romania.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Is this like y2k?
There was a massive push to raise awareness and prevent something. It worked, and since it worked, nothing bad happened. So it must have been a hoax all along and you're dumb for worrying about it.
Let me tweak that idea for you a bit. Despite the childish selfishness of many of their ideas, a few of the memes the right wing is shopping are essentially correct.
Their "government shouldn't pick winners" mantra is well supported by the entirety of US history; what the government should be doing in the marketplace is identifying losers. Penalizing bad behavior that would otherwise be rewarded by a free market is one of government's primary functions - for example, murder-for-hire would be incredibly profitable if it weren't for laws that make it much less so. Theft and contract violation are legitimately penalized by government and not by armed vigilante action by businesses that have been harmed. I'll stop there but you can see the list is long!
Carbon taxes and sin taxes were once right-wing ideas - and good ones, too; taxation can be used to redress the externalization of costs by corporations and individuals. We currently punish people for working (income tax) and encourage successful companies to distort both the market and political governance (regulatory competition and so-called business inducements). A wiser course would be to eliminate income tax and outlaw state government "tax break and cash grant competitions" at the federal level, and finance federal government by taxing actors who physically harm the entire citizenry through air, water and ground pollution. If the only way to make something the people want entails high pollution, then the costs will be very high and profit margins slim - until human ingenuity, harnessed by greed if necessary, solves the problem. This is a market approach, but one where the government picks losers, based on quantifiable harm and not pie-in-the-sky techno-dreams of politicians whose sole scientific qualifications are an ability to read opinion polls.
If it's true that anti-vaxxers are harming society as a whole, make them pay for the harm. Tax them extra! Don't un-tax the winners, tax the losers; you can claim it's mathematically the same, but socially and psychologically it's entirely different. Let me pay a "nonvaccination tax" if I have some objection to preventing pandemics, and you'll cut the number of anti-vaxxers down to insignificance in a decade or less.
Vaccines have undoubtedly had an effect on our improved health as a species, but not nearly the impact that most people believe. Even 60 years ago many areas in the US didn't have running water, designed sanitation systems, educated doctors & homes above 45 degrees in the winter. Hygiene, nutrition, education and residential heating have improved massively in the past 100 years, that is probably the biggest reason for our improved health. Vaccinations are probably a distant second.
There is no confusion on this subject with me. I am simply saying that if a vaccine does not protect sufficiently against a certain strain, that strain will be the one that continues while the others decline. It's how natural selection works no matter what the scale; create a change in an environment and the traits that make survival possible and/or most likely are the ones that will flourish.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
In fact the vaccines are highly effective for many of the disease mentioned provided a minimum threshold of immunity - provided by vaccination preferably than real infection-illness-survival .
Instructively the De Bijbelgordel [Bible Belt] of the Netherlands has lower vaccination rates for reasons of religious belief (Christian, if it matters). This provides an excellent test for confounding factors over a distance of a fews 10s of kms.
[Relevant points: the Netherlands is small and densely populated with high education / standards of living, good social care, and ubiquitous access to 1st-rate medical care without payment (if needed). Public (& Private) transport is heavily subsidised and widely used by the population; hence there are low barriers to population movement].
Also relevant is that high and national or regional 'average' rates can mask low local, sub populations/networks of vulnerable people that interact together.
See:
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/47/9/1143.full.pdf
No. Just no. The 'damage' that vaccines do is barely statistically significant, the benefits they provide are so fundamental that there are core aspects of our culture and society that have changed since their introduction. Your argument that vaccines are going to destroy our immune systems or cause the diseases to mutate shows a lack of understanding to how vaccines works; they train the immune system in the exact same way contracting the virulent disease would. Not only does it not weaken the immune system (in fact it strengthens it) it also prevents a large reservoir of the disease from ever building up in the population. Smaller reservoir means that mutations are less likely simply because the numbers are smaller.
Vaccines have saved more lives than the next 5 medical breakthroughs combined with the possible exception of basic sanitation (if you can call that a medical breakthrough). Trying to argue that "The vaccine debate is a religious one on both sides " is ludicrous, like saying the debate between the theories of relativity and the flying spaghetti monster are on equal ground. They're not, one is backed up by a mountain of evidence so large that people forget that the mountain isn't a natural feature of the world. Before vaccines, parents lived in real fear that their children would catch any one of a half dozen diseases that would maim or kill them, today parents spend hours worrying about a syndrome that has a .05% chance of happening to their newborn.
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior and the real side-effect rate to the vaccine is a lot higher than the manufacturer is reporting.
Hate to say this, but going by teen pregnancy studies parents who make statements like this are the one's who's kids are most at risk.
Also, what sort of creditable study do you have that the risks are higher than what the manufacturer claims? If so, wouldn't the CDC be shutting them down?
I don't read AC A human right
Sounds like that would be really bad for the virus long term. Decreased bio-diversity (like what happens when you stop using all strains of corn or soy beans except for the Monsanto ones) is apparently really bad. So bad that it must be about to doom this virus. At least that is what the anti-GMO camp would tell you.
HPV was/is incredibly common, now the particular strain that the vaccine was targeted for was quite rare, but it so happens that the vaccine also provides protection against most of the other strains as well. And yeah... if I can protect future generations from not only the pain and shame of genital warts (90% of which are caused by one of the strains the vaccine protects against) but also cut the rate of cervical cancer while I'm at it (admittedly the actual target of the vaccine) at the cost of... well statistically the vaccine is as safe as a saline injection so I would argue a cost of essentially 0.
Vaccines only achieve "near 100%" effectiveness when something like 99.9% of the population is vaccinated. It's an effect called herd immunity. When too many are not vaccinated, you're left with a per individual effectiveness rate of about 60%. I don't want to chance being in the 40% group. Forced vaccinations for everyone!
Why do you think that HPV is "incredibly rare"?
Population of US : ~251 million [http://www.census.gov/popclock/]
Population of US with HPV : ~79 million [http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm]
That is ~31% of the population of a country which is aware of the disease and actively fighting it.
Dr. House. Brilliant. Rude. Crazy. Determined. I see the quote marks around it - but you never attributed it. Those of us that are fans can't miss it. But I would imagine there are a whole heck of a lot of people wondering what the heck you are going on about.
Never having sex with anyone who ever had sex with anyone. Simple really.
"Is this like y2k?"
From what I understand, no. Even with the best vaccine there are still many people that get the disease in question (from just a minor headache to dieing from it). Beyond the first few cases (I believe on some military base) there wasn't a single confirmed case of the disease.
The shame is that we _could_ do the same to Measles as we did to Smallpox - just wipe it off the face of the earth. Measles is a human-only disease that we have good vaccines for. We are only lacking the willpower to eradicate a virus that has a 1% mortality rate
During the 1980s, U.S. parents successfully sued manufacturers, alleging that the whole-cell vaccine also caused long-term brain damage. A 1991 Institute of Medicine report concluded that this was unproven, but by then many pertussis vaccine manufacturers had withdrawn from the market, leading Congress to create a federal vaccine injury compensation program for families who could show a strong case for vaccine damage.
They don't even really need to make a 'strong' case. All that is required is a doctor's certification that X occurred before time T after Y vaccine's administration and the family is awarded Z in compensation. The key here is that families do not need to prove a causal link between the vaccine and the harm just that it happened. In theory this is the balance for congress making it very difficult for citizens to sue vaccine manufacturers. http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccinetable.html
Like chicken pox? I'd be interested to also know your thoughts on the HPV vaccine considering the disease it protects against is already incredibly rare.
HPV may be one of the most common diseases on the planet, besides chicken pox. Chicken pox, btw, is quite dangerous to adults that have never had it.
If a relatively safe and effective vaccine were to remove either of those, I'd be all for inoculating everyone and eradicating either disease. Both would be preferred.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
That should be ~316 million for population of US and ~110 million for HPV prevalence [http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/STI-Estimates-Fact-Sheet-Feb-2013.pdf] (the STD fact sheet has old numbers).
Prevalence comes out about the same though: ~35%
Another part of the reason these diseases are coming back is the old vaccines also wear off and the FDA delayed approving a booster for adults until decades after use in Europe had proved it safe.
Damn those anti-vaxxers at the FDA!!!
Look, the reality is that no vaccine lasts forever despite the claims of the 1950's and increased population movement means that more people will contract diseases that treatments had locally reduced. Pertussis outbreaks in the US would also be vastly smaller if primary care physicians were allowed to spend the more than 5 minutes with a patient that is generally needed to hear a classic pertussis "whoop" so they'd know to prescribe antibiotics.
So blame airplanes, blame Big Healthcare, blame FDA lazyness..
Vaccines are not used only for the most dangerous diseases. Smallpox? Great vaccine. Chicken pox? The disease is less dangerous than home cooked meals AND has already proven out to be ineffective at providing long term protection.
The bad news: Chicken pox is 10x more dangerous to adults and the prevention of the disease during childhood without protection as an adult will likely lead to higher rates of Chicken pox in adults.
The good news: Chicken pox isn't really dangerous, so the 10x increase in danger will still only be 10x more dangerous than 'not very'.
The current use of the Chicken pox vaccine is totally irresponsible. The vaccine should not be used on people until after puberty. Unfortunately, everybody makes money off of giving it to small children. (except the children who run a higher risk of have to pay for it in adulthood) The money angle isn't a 'conspiracy theory'. The CDC lists a primary reason for giving the Chicken Pox vaccine as a cost savings to the parent by not having to care for their sick child.
because in the evolutionary war between humans and germs, the germs win.
there's more of them, and they breed faster.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
In this case it seems there was some middle ground found. A new Vaccine was released and the debate now is whether it is as effective as the old one.
There are lots of risks in life, when it came to vaccinating my children (and for that matter, myself) I held to the belief that they were better off with the vaccine. The herd immunity/social responsibility issue was not the prime driver for me, though it's a nice bonus. I'll go further, I think that the odds were so lopsided that it is markedly irresponsible to not vaccinate. I hope the vaccines will improve as time goes on and make the case yet stronger for vaccination. I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people working on that very thing.
And who the hell ridicules a parent of a child lost to a vaccine (or any other reasonable medication or procedure) ? I can't imagine there would be anything other than sympathy.
Nullius in verba
Interesting trivia. Home cooked meals kill more people per year than Chicken Pox did prior to vaccinations.
Well, is this such a bad thing? I mean, the 'nut jobs' will be selecting themselves right out of the gene pool, right?
I know you are joking but yes it really is such a bad thing. The problem is that some people cannot get vaccinated due to things like allergies to vaccine components, a weakened immune system or other health issues. The more people that get vaccinated the stronger the herd immunity and the less chance an unvaccinated person has of exposure. These idiots who don't get vaccinated increase the risk to both themselves and the people who through no fault of their own cannot have the vaccine administered. If I may be so crude, they are basically peeing in the gene pool and endangering others in the process.
Plus you have to consider that most vaccines are administered to minor children who legally cannot decide for themselves whether to get the vaccine or not. So basically a scientifically illiterate adult is preventing them from receiving standard medical care. Personally I think that amounts to reckless endangerment of a child and in some cases where the child gets ill and dies I think it is basically manslaughter.
You are indeed correct. To the best of my knowledge, the tetanus booster (at least in the USA) for adults is actually a tdap, so it includes diptheria and pertussis as well. I keep mine current as well - whatever risk there is from a tried-and-true vaccine is almost ALWAYS preferable over the actual disease. That is the part those who refuse to vaccinate themselves and/or their offspring fail to realize.
Wrong. Here is data straight from the CDC website last updated in 2011. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/additives.htm
They DO put MSG in vaccines, and many other nasties I didn't even mention like Formaldehyde. And mercury is still in there. Mod me as flamebait cause you disagree with hard facts, I don't care I got karma to burn.
in the past 100 years expeted lifespan has jumped 30+ years in the western world.
our quality of life, relatively disease free, was previously unknown. it's still unknown in the parts of the world where they cant get vaccines.
100 years ago being crippled by polio was so common one of our greatest presidents was one such victim.
100 years ago becoming deaf from mumps was common; how many deaf kids do you see today? ya. almost none.
we live longer and better. and vaccines are a huge part of that.
if you want to think differently, i suggest you google smallpox, or visit pakistan or northern india where they still have polio cases.
look at old history photos of what disease wards used to look like, the myriad different diseases and the pain and sufferign caused by them.
or just look at the number of measles (one of hte msot contagious diseases in human history; a person with measles walks through a room, that room remains contagious for 4 hours afterward) cases in our own country. prior to the vaccine in the mid 60's there were >500K cases every year. Within 5 years it dropped to fewer than 100 cases per year. It's been declared effectively eliminated in our country and the rest of the western world.
the people who think vaccines are bad, or overrated, have no clue what they are talking about, and would be shocked to death by the difference between todays world and that of just 100 years, and the amount of disease and suffering that people had to put up with.
TLDR: you're an idiot. vaccines are one of the greatest triumphs of mankind.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
because HPV is preventable in behavior
Right, which is why states with abstinence-only sex ed have the highest incidence of teen pregnancy...
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I went to a conference on vaccines several years ago where somebody gave a talk on whooping cough vaccine. He said that there was a problem with the vaccine made from the whole bacterial cell, and it did have a small number of adverse effects, not as bad as whooping cough itself but more common than the other standard vaccines. At that time they were working on a new acellular vaccine, which wouldn't have as many or as serious adverse effects.
Now they have it. That's the tradeoff. Fewer adverse effects but less effectiveness.
None of this is unproven. It's well proven. You can look it up in the textbooks.
If we didn't have so much resistance to vaccines in general, they could have gotten away with a more effective vaccine that had more common adverse effects. It would have been less comfortable but with fewer deaths.
Irresponsible....why?
You spout off multiple times that it is, yet you offer zero as to WHY.
Tell that to runwaway juries making OB-GYN a no-go zone. American mothers have now become convinced (mostly be daytime TV, I'll warrant) that there should be an absolute, 100% guarantee that absolutely nothing will ever go wrong during the birth of their above-average snowflake. If not, here come the ambulance chasers taking in ~80% of the millions in lawsuit damages, doing nothing but increasing the angle of attack of the medical cost spiral.
Religious debates imply that both sides have equally valid claims, typically based on un-quantifiable issues. In this case it is very clear that we can quantify the tradeoffs, and by any reasonable standard (e.g., 10 10,000 type standards) the benefits of vaccines outweigh their risks. To claim that their risks are on the same level as their benefits is absurd and is simply trying to make a two-sided argument for the sake of seeming "balanced." No medical professional denies there are risks to vaccines, they just understand that objectively the risks are so much lower than the risks of not using them.
It would probably be good to get it bundled with your zoster shot, since zoster is fairly common among older people, it's quite painful, and it can often lead to permanent painful neuropathy.
This isn't something that I should worry about. My doctor should take care of it for me. I don't have time to read a stack of literature on every disease I might get. It would be like trying to watch every video on Youtube.
thing is a lot of these diseases dont prevent reproduction of the victim. some of them are fatal, or can be, but many arent. they simply make the quality of life nearly unbearable (polio cripples, mumps causes deafness, etc) compared to health people. and there's also garuntee of getting the disease before reproduction instead of after. so any evolutionary pressure is weak or non-existant
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Death of the unvaccinated and susceptible increases herd immunity. It's called 'biology.'
Don't use the disease analogy; use predator/prey relationships to analyze it.
Too bad stupidity is not a disease we can vaccinate against.
And, unfortunately, this means they become a victim of their own success. People today (and I include myself in this) don't remember when polio or measles or smallpox ran rampant. They don't remember the fear of catching one of these or how serious it is. I've read enough accounts so that I understand intellectually, but I'll never know in a "living it day to day" way. Something for which I'm extremely thankful.
Sadly, some people, in ignorance, assume that these diseases were "basically like colds." You get the measles, stay home for a few days until the bumps disappear and you're good to go. They ignore all of the death or life-long disabilities these diseases brought with them. Next, they buy into the "vaccines are so risky" crowd's talk (vaccines have "toxins" in them. [scary voice]TOOOOOXXXXIIIINNNNNNSSSS!!!!!!{/scary voice]) and mentally increase the risk of the vaccines.
The end result is that these people decide not to vaccinate because they see the vaccines as more dangerous than the diseases when the reality is the exact opposite. In such a big way, mind you, that saying "the exact opposite" still feels like an understatement. And when large groups of these people make these faulty risk assessments, they increase the risk of not only them and their children, but of people who can't be vaccinated for valid reasons (too young, immune system issues, allergies, etc.).
I guarantee you that almost none of these anti-vax folks would be complaining about the MMR if measles was as rampant today as it was before the vaccine was introduced. The ones that would still be complaining would be shouted down by the crowds flocking to get the MMR.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Because this isn't just natural selection. If it just affected kids of those who didn't want to vaccinate, it might be "Natural Selection", but it affects people who CAN'T be vaccinated for valid reasons (allergies, immune system issues, or just plain too young).
For example, Person A decides they won't vaccinate because they think it's all a plot by Big Pharma. Their kids wind up carriers for measles. They cough on their hands and touch a supermarket shopping cart*. An hour later, you put your 4 month old baby in the shopping cart to go into the store. Congratulations! Your baby has been exposed to measles and there's nothing you could have done to stop it. Your baby might now die thanks to Person A - someone who you've never seen in your life.
* In case you say "well, I'd take precautions against shopping cart contamination", this could just as easily be a box on a shelf or something else that you or your baby would touch.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I did not mean that MSG is not used in vaccines, I know that it is. I meant that it is a food additive, so I'm puzzled by the characterization as a "poison".
Mercury is still in some specialty vaccines, but it no longer is present in the childhood vaccines that the autism crazies were fingering. I should not have used such absolute terms - my bad.
In any event, the mercury that was used was not of the "poison" variety.
Formaldehyde is indeed a "poison" in large amounts, but it is naturally present in your body at more than an order of magnitude larger than what gets introduced in any vaccine.
I (quite obviously) didn't mod you or I couldn't be replying to you.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
There are some similarities with religious debates, that's true. Unfortunately that similarity is mostly that one side is dominated by reasonably rational minds while the other is mostly stark raving mad.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Your vaccination choices are interesting in that they are almost the opposite of mine. I would get my daughter the HPV vaccine because the behavior that leads to HPV is almost guaranteed to happen. Conversely, the Chicken Pox vaccine only offers temporary protection, adults who get Chicken Pox are 10x more likely to die from the disease, and the disease can be given after natural immunization for shingles protection.
Please, for the love of KHHHAAAANNNNN, mod the parent up.
Homeopathy is worse. After they finish diluting your pee, you're just drinking Water.
I wonder what the equilibrium point is? it should be mathmatecally determinate: Given a risk of 1 in 750,000 for the vaccine to cause a polio, what percentage of the population would have to take the vaccine to produce a 1 in 750,000 risk of an un-vaccinated person contracting the disease, accounting for socialization patterns, etc.
Further, what would the media impact be? would people be frightened into taking the vaccine before the equilibrium point? or would the media lag so badly we'd wind up in an occillating pattern?
I suggest it as a question for What If...
You can buy lots of things that are bad for you at most grocery stores. That is hardly a convincing argument for it's okay-ness. :)
There may be a smallpox epidemic in this country. Unbelievable. A smallpox epidemic. How could that be possible? And the reason is the smallpox vaccine that we were given, and that I was told was gonna last forever, wore off. And our government waited until a possible emergency condition to inform us. Now, that's a cracker jack group of fuckers, isn't it? How could you fuckin' not call us? 'Hey Lew, uh, your smallpox vaccine wore off. You want another?' 'YOU'RE FUCKING RIGHT I WANT ANOTHER!' Because my whole life has been a delusion. Because everyday I'd wake and I'd go, 'You know, it's gonna suck today, but at least I'm not getting smallpox!'
-Lewis Black
Lots of things are food additives that are ... dubious in their health nature, shall we say. Have you read anything about high fructose corn syrup and problems associated with that? How about trans-fats, which recently underwent lots of legislation and whatnot?
Something being legal or added to food is hardly an argument for it being health neutral. I'm not necessarily arguing that MSG is bad, either; I'm saying that your argument for it being fine is ... faulty. :)
It would probably be good to get it bundled with your zoster shot
Maybe, but that's not how it comes. It comes (optionally) with your tetanus booster. As a poster above mentioned, it's called a Tdap (so if you see that term, it's "tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis"). It's not two separate shots, it's one shot.
This isn't something that I should worry about. My doctor should take care of it for me. I don't have time to read a stack of literature on every disease I might get.
You've been told you need a tetanus booster every ten years since you were a child. Next time you go in for one, your doctor is likely to recommend a pertussis booster at the same time -- if he doesn't just give you it without telling you.
Breakfast served all day!
Lots of things are food additives that are ... dubious in their health nature
Would you seriously consider trace amounts of these as "poison", though? Do you think that consuming a few mg of corn syrup, trans fats, or MSG will make you sick?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's possible, in theory, with some vaccines. But the original pertussis vaccine was a killed bacteria vaccine, which means that the entire organism was present. For it to mutate to survive the immunity it would have to turn into something completely different, so resistance is not a factor in this case.
Some new vaccines may use a limited number of antigens instead of whole organism. If they use few enough, the organism could conceivably mutate to not express that antigen anymore. But even newer vaccines that are in wide circulation include many antigens, so that's still not likely.
You've managed to screw up the basic tenant of homeopathy. Like cures like. So people immune to polio peeing in the water wouldn't do any good. Only people WITH polio peeing in the water. Since there aren't many of those around anymore, we should be seeing huge outbreaks of polio, homeopathically speaking.
good news. Your daughter never needs to have a pap smear, since you are convinced she won't get cervical cancer. If you never want your daughter to have a pap smear, then it still might be reasonable to get an HPV vaccine. Prevent the disease, but don't screen for it. What makes no sense are the people who don't vaccinate their kids, and want them to have pap smears later on in life. If you are going to screen for cervical cancer, shouldn't you do SOMETHING to prevent it?
Agreed, and I wasn't specifically limiting my remarks to merely the pertussis vaccine. Simply examining the possibilities.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I've been told a lot of things, and I can't keep track of them all. I don't want the responsibility of being an informed patient. I want my doctor to make the important decisions. Health care is too important for me to take a chance on making a mistake.
That's not what happens, though. My insurance company sent me a post card to remind me to get my seasonal flu shot. I called my doctor's office and they didn't have them in yet. No coordination at all.
Public health decisions should be made by public health authorities. Unfortunately we have a very uncooperative society. The US Preventive Health Task Force recommends that breast cancer screening start at age 50, and they ran into a firestorm of people who were using or exploiting it to make political or philosophical points, or just to preserve a profitable income stream.
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior
Preventable only if your daughter has no intimate sexual relationships ever.
Who is at risk for HPV?
Anyone who is having (or has ever had) sex can get HPV. HPV is so common that nearly all sexually-active men and women get it at some point in their lives. This is true even for people who only have sex with one person in their lifetime.
How do people get HPV?
HPV is passed on through genital contact, most often during vaginal and anal sex. HPV may also be passed on during oral sex and genital-to-genital contact. HPV can be passed on between straight and same-sex partners --- even when the infected person has no signs or symptoms.
Most infected persons do not realize they are infected, or that they are passing HPV on to a sex partner. A person can still have HPV, even if years have passed since he or she has had sexual contact with an infected person. It is also possible to get more than one type of HPV.
Genital HPV Infection - Fact Sheet
Actually, there HAVE been outbreaks of those diseases. However, those outbreaks appear to be localized in areas where the the anti-vax movement is strongest.
It must be a conspiracy!
That depends on the virus. Some virus like the common flu can take many different shapes and therefore be uncognized by your vaccine trained immune system, but most virus does not change that much, and will continue to be recognizable by the immune system even after several mutations.
Per the CDC:
For those who are sexually active, condoms may lower the risk of HPV infection. To be most effective, they should be used with every sex act, from start to finish. Condoms may also lower the risk of developing HPV-related diseases, such as genital warts and cervical cancer. But HPV can infect areas that are not covered by a condom - so condoms may not fully protect against HPV.
People can also lower their chances of getting HPV by being in a faithful relationship with one partner; limiting their number of sex partners; and being with a partner who has had no or few prior sex partners. But even people with only one lifetime sex partner can get HPV. And it may not be possible to determine if a partner who has been sexually active in the past is currently infected. Not having sex is the only sure way to avoid HPV.
http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/prevention.html
Overall, they recommend the vaccine, but they acknowledge both that there are alternatives and the vaccine is not a cure-all.
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior
On the plus side for her, even if she contracts the virus the most likely outcome is that she will eventually clear it, as most infected individuals do. The risk for cervical cancer arises from the collision of a rather rare outcome with a extremely common exposure; nearly all sexually active adults will unknowingly carry HPV at some time in their lives. Unfortunately, the combination results in some 12,000 cases of cervical cancer per year, in the US.
The original research that identified the HPV-Cancer link actually had to study Nuns to find a sufficiently isolated population; the virus is actually rather common even in monogamous women. Men are not routinely screened for HPV status, and contrary to common belief infections does not necessarily result in genital warts -- for instance, high-risk strain HPV 16 is exceptionally good at producing invisible infections (which may be why it ranks among the more common of HPV strains, actually). These infections may persist undetected for anywhere from months to years, and while your daughter may remain virgin until her wedding night, the same might not be true for her husband (and oral sex counts as far as the virus is concerned, being related to risk of head-and-neck cancers).
An interesting bit of trivia: genetic material from high-risk strains of HPV can be found in some 15-25% of lung cancers tissue samples. We don't have sufficient evidence to make a claim for a causal relationship at this time, but it's a very interesting coincidence. Also interesting is that high-risk strains of HPV have also been found in the CNS of infants with certain forms of intractable epilepsy (Focal Cortical Dysplasia Type II-B). The more we look, the more places we are finding this virus.
MSG? Why is that in vaccines? To enhance their flavor?
MSG is apparently used as a stabilizer.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Chicken Pox is a disease that is less dangerous than home cooked meals.
Citation needed.
Part of the reason that it is so mild is that children naturally fight the disease very well.
And yet some children die from it.
Adults on the other hand are 10x more likely to die from the disease if they catch it than children.
This is not the same as "no risk if you're a child". Not even slightly.
The vaccine has also proven out to only offer short term protection.
OH MY GOD NEWSAT11
The Chicken Pox vaccine wouldn't be a bad vaccine if it were only given to people post puberty, but today that isn't the case.
Literally nothing you've said in any of your puerile, dogmatic posts on this topic actually supports this conclusion.
The pro-vaccine religious nuts call me an 'anti-vaxer' and a murderer for pointing this out. The fact that I am all for an entire host of other vaccines doesn't matter. Either you follow the vaccine dogma that all vaccines are good, or you are a baby killing heretic.
Nah, this non religious nut will instead call you a fucking idiot because you're clearly uninterested in actually exploring the chain of logic behind current chickenpox vaccination practices. You just want to prance around and shout "lookit me, lookit how smart I am, I know better than everyone even though I clearly have no expertise on the topic, lookit meeeeeeee help help i'm being repressed! did you see him repressing me?!".
The trick is that "innocents" can get caught in the blast. One of the reasons that we strive for herd immunity is because the vaccines aren't 100% effective.
Do you even have a vague idea of how many people die from the flu in a regular year?
the problem is disease susceptibility doesn't negatively impact reproduction to the same degree as predator susceptibility.
Well, I can tell you no home cooked meal ever laid me out for a week like chicken pox did. So, citation?
if you want to think differently, i suggest you google smallpox, or visit pakistan or northern india where they still have polio cases.
Actually India has been polio free for the last two years, and has even applied to the WHO to recognize that fact and declare the country free from the disease.
Link
Death of the unvaccinated and susceptible increases herd immunity. It's called 'biology.'
Herd immunity only oscillates around the point where a balance is reached and the casualty rate no longer affects the viability of the species as a whole. This is true even when assuming a 100% mortality rate, where new susceptible children are born, eventually contract the disease (or get eaten) and die. Vaccination (or acquiring weapons) takes that rate far closer to zero than just letting 'natural selection' take its course. And that is ignoring all the non-fatal symptoms and permanent disabilities caused by diseases that are not 100% fatal.
For example, the death rate of infants due to Whooping cough prior to the vaccine being introduced was nearly a thousand times higher than it is now. Even if you ignore the fact that continuous 'acceptable losses' and general misery would be thousands of times higher than necessary, your premise remains faulty.
Or, maybe vaccines aren't effective period.
Yep. It's also possible that bullets are unrelated to shooting deaths. It could just be a statistical fluke that people shot with loaded guns are more likely to die than people shot with unloaded guns.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Originally, we had live attenuated virus. These are GREAT, with one exception: they CAN revert. That was esp. true of the small pox vaccine. So, then they went to killed virus. But this also introduces some issues with cross-over stimulis. So, now, they try to pick one or two proteins and grow just those. That is probably the worse way to do it. We should go back to live virus for the majority of diseases (those that are not killers), and then use the killed virus for those that would normally kill.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Although they have far fewer side effects, the new shots don't offer long-lived protection the way older vaccines do".
...
Child compensated for damage from MMR Vaccine
And there never was any danger with the old ones
AccountKiller
Chicken pox? The disease is less dangerous than home cooked meals
Driving a car is probably more dangerous than eating meat left of the bench overnight, but we still use refrigerators. Improving safety in one area doesn't preclude increasing safety in another.
The bad news: Chicken pox is 10x more dangerous to adults and the prevention of the disease during childhood without protection as an adult will likely lead to higher rates of Chicken pox in adults.
That isn't quite what the research (or the subset of which I've read) indicates. Yes, chicken pox vaccination may currently increase the risk of shingles as an adult, but that is because the immunity is not maintained due to a lack of exposure to chicken pox in the environment, and thus no natural 'booster' effects as a result of exposure post-immunity.
That is: the problem isn't that vaccination doesn't provide long-lasting protection - although that is the case; the problem is that the lack of exposure over time (because there isn't much chicken pox in the community) means that what immunity there is doesn't get natural boosters from exposure when already immune, which triggers the immune system to create antibodies and 'refreshes' the immunity. Much like a booster shot.
The current use of the Chicken pox vaccine is totally irresponsible. The vaccine should not be used on people until after puberty. Unfortunately, everybody makes money off of giving it to small children. (except the children who run a higher risk of have to pay for it in adulthood) The money angle isn't a 'conspiracy theory'. The CDC lists a primary reason for giving the Chicken Pox vaccine as a cost savings to the parent by not having to care for their sick child.
Or alternatively, not providing chicken pox vaccine booster shots to adolescents or adults is totally irresponsible. Depends on whether you think it is ok to try to prevent chicken pox or not. There is an economic argument for the vaccination, and there is a cost of the vaccination, and there is a risk (however small) of a reaction to the vaccine. These can be assessed as a whole to determine whether vaccination is a good or bad idea (although it will necessarily give weightings to each priority which may not match with parent's priorities).
As the saying goes, the 'The dose makes the poison'.
MSG and formaldehyde are certainly not good for you if there is too much, and indeed too much doesn't have to be a very high level. However, saying 'it is bad because it has formaldehyde in it' is silly. Saying 'it is bad because it has too much formaldehyde in it' where 'too much' > 0 can be very sensible and valid.
(Note: I know that 'the dose makes the poison' isn't universally applicable, but for your example it certainly is).
Those are antibodies. They 'mark' the 'bad' cells so the immune system attacks them, and are produced by the immune system itself. That is actually how vaccines work. It takes the body a while to make antibodies when faced with a new invader, so vaccines cause it make the antibodies before it is actually exposed to the real invader, giving it a head start. Antibiotics are weapons that attack the bacteria directly. (The original, penicillin, actually came from mold which was competing with the bacteria). They do that by attacking the cell wall or messing up the reproduction of the bacteria.
Captcha: Syringe
Thanks for helping prove my point.
Cooking fire related deaths: http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/pdf/os.homes.pdf
Pre-vaccine related chicken pox deaths: http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/surveillance.html
A person is 4 times more likely to die from a home cooked meal than from chicken pox without vaccination.
I belong to an older generation than you (evidently), and I had measles as a child.
And it was basically like a cold. A bit itchier, and a lot spottier, but essentially I stayed in bed for a while, swallowing was a bit uncomfortable, then after a number of days - I really have no idea how many - I got up and was just fine.
And that's how it went for the huge majority of people who caught the disease, and how it still goes today for - again - the huge majority. That's why people don't take it seriously - in all but a handful of cases, it just isn't that serious, and never was - at least, not since the invention of warm beds and the economic luxury of 'nursing the sick'.
Why does this story make me wonder if the patent on the current vaccine may be expired or close to expiring, and a new version due to be announced within the next year?
I'm sure someone here knows the answer to that. From me it's just innuendo, but I do know that's how Big Pharma works, and this story has many of the hallmarks of preparing the ground for an upcoming announcement.
Better never eat potato chips! (Especially the BBQ flavored ones)
Or, maybe vaccines aren't effective period. Just a thought.
I always wondered if Jenny McCarthy had an account on slashdot.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
You've managed to screw up the basic tenant [sic] of homeopathy.
He also managed to screw up the basic tenet of immunity. Like imparts immunity to like. People with polio anti-bodies (aka immunity) peeing in the water wouldn't do any good, only people WITH the polio antigens (aka WITH polio) would.
A tenant, by the way, is a person who holds a lease over real property.
At least with mumps and measles ~90% of cases are exactly like that. I had both and apart from them being rather unpleasant suffered no major ill effects. The problem is the last 10% get symptoms ranging all the way up to death. Not to say anything against vaccination which is unequivocally a good thing.
According to wikipedia, measles has killed about 200,000,000 people in the last 150 years.
Hey nice ad hominem reply. The cool thing about ad hominems is that what goes around comes around. You know - turnabout being fair play, and all that? Every asshole knows that, so I'm confident you know it well.
Chicken pox isn't particularly dangerous to any given individual but it's spectacularly contagious. Low risk times large prevalence (if it wasn't controlled by vaccination) equals large harm.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
SHIT. It was a broken line break tag.
- House Season 1 Episode 2 "Paternity" (2004) House, MD
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Assuming for the moment your lil girl does refrain....that's only half the equation. It takes two to tango, and males are just as likely to carry it as women. HPV is the single most common STD in the world.
How much are you willing to bet that her future husband has been perfect up to that point?
Maybe he only fooled around once. Now what about that person? How perfect was he/she?
And on and on.
And Cervical cancer (or any cancer) is no joke. It's caused by the herpes simplex of viruses, which also cause several other diseases. It's the most common STD in the world, with 60% of the population OF THE WORLD carrying it, if not more. And you're saying she won't get the vaccine? you're as big an idiot as those who would deny that vaccines even work.
and yes, the vaccine for it isnt perfect and only protects against a couple strains. but it's still a lower chance of cancer.
She may have self-control, sure. But are you willing to bet your lil girls body parts and ultiamtely her life on other peoples' behaviour when prevention is so incredibly easy?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
actually no.
the highest teen pregnancy rates are among: hispanics and blacks, low income families, and families in urban areas
which puts low income blacks/hispanics in cities in a perfect storm of risk.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
So, this vs. taking the vaccine and its horrible risks. I think I'd rather risk it, you know :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Large harm, like less harmful than home cooked meals? There has been a largely successful campaign to convince people that chicken pox is a scourge that is a real threat. It isn't. Death rates from chicken pox, pre-vaccination, were less than a quarter of those caused by home cooking. A child getting chicken pox was one tenth as likely to die than one who played high school football, and it was only slightly more dangerous than riding a bus to school.
The only way to rationalize chicken pox as a real danger is to apply a completely different set of standard than that applied to all your other activities.
Thanks for the pointers :)
So your daughter eventually marries a fellow who wasn't entirely pre-marital celibate, or was previously married (caught it from his wife, and has since divorced) ... and he gives your daughter HPV...
Now what?? Your daughter, virginal til marriage, is now infected through no direct fault of her own and perhaps not even of her spouse.
It's not about behavior; it's about mitigating future risk that might nail you despite your best behavior.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Wasn't it also implicated in prostate cancer? Thought I heard something about that as well.
I expect if that becomes proven, many minds will change about many daughters.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Last time I got a flu shot I inquired about tetanus and whatever. About fell over when I was quoted $160. Which would come out of my personal pocket. Another $60 for pneumonia shot, ditto.
Well, that's what happens when you sue all but one of the vaccine manufacturers out of existence. :/
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
To all of you claiming chicken pox is not dangerous:
WRONG
It can be very dangerous. It is in fact lethal in some children. I lost my three year old sister to it. The autopsey found it in every organ in her body, including the brain. There were also many cases of lifetime disabilities caused by it.
That is not even talking about herpes zoster or the other effects it has on adults. Just becaus it isn't as virulent, damaging, or lethal as small pox, chicken pox is not something to take lightly.
Don't mind me, I have more fun this way!
It is sad that your sister died of the disease, but it is still less dangerous than a home cooked meal. Someone's sister has also died of drinking too much water. That doesn't mean that drinking water is a serous threat. Your sister was a tragic edge case. Chicken pox IS something to be taken lightly. That doesn't make your loss less tragic, but it also doesn't make it a serous threat to the general population either.
The guy is a fervent Young Earth Creationist. It is neither intellectually inspiring nor particularly faithful. But it explains why his kids are at risk.
http://www.kypackrat.com/2005/06/why-i-am-young-earth-creationist.html
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior and the real side-effect rate to the vaccine is a lot higher than the manufacturer is reporting.
Hate to say this, but going by teen pregnancy studies parents who make statements like this are the one's who's kids are most at risk.
Also, what sort of creditable study do you have that the risks are higher than what the manufacturer claims? If so, wouldn't the CDC be shutting them down?
ROFL
Naive beyond words.
That's all and good, except the HPV vaccine is being sold as protection against cervical cancer which IS extremely rare. That is why is being pushed to young girls, and not boys. If it was just for protecting against genital warts, they would be pushing it equally to boys and girls.
Additionally, HPV is like the flu in that there are multiple strains and the vaccine only protects against a handful that they feel are the most common. Most people with HPV aren't even aware they have it, so it isn't some terrible disease killing and disfiguring people left and right.
to reduce the propagation of the very-stupid.