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Study: Certain Vaccines Could Make Diseases More Deadly
sciencehabit writes: New research suggests that vaccines that don't make their hosts totally immune to a disease and incapable of spreading it to others might have a serious downside. According to a controversial study by Professor Andrew Read these so-called "imperfect" or "leaky" vaccines could sometimes teach pathogens to become more dangerous. Sciencemag reports: "The study is controversial. It was done in chickens, and some scientists say it has little relevance for human vaccination; they worry it will reinforce doubts about the merits or safety of vaccines. It shouldn't, says lead author Andrew Read, a biologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park: The study provides no support whatsoever for the antivaccine movement. But it does suggest that some vaccines may have to be monitored more closely, he argues, or supported with extra measures to prevent unintended consequences."
Pathogens don't "learn". They evolve, ok. They adapt, ok. But they aren't sentient. They are not thinking. And especially they aren't thinking "hey, if they vaccinate, they won't die anyway, at least not as fast, so let's get more deadly!" This isn't the fucking Pandemic flash game for crying out loud!
There is no interest of killing a host for a parasite. It's an side effect. Unintended, and actually harmful for the parasite in the long run. Just like poisoning the seas is harmful for us. We ain't some comic book villain who does it for ... well, for being evil. We do it 'cause it cuts costs. The oil spill is only the side effect, not the reason we do it.
So yes, they COULD get more deadly because we don't die as fast and a more deadly mutated strain would kill itself off with the host if there was no vaccination. But that is hardly an argument against vaccination. It only means that at worst we're with vaccination where we are now without. AT WORST. If, and only if, the pathogens mutate in such a way that they get more deadly. Which is neither in their interest nor anything they would (evolutionary) strive for.
What's the benefit for a pathogen to be more deadly? Killing the host is actually bad for it, since that ends spreading (with this host at least).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't care to debate you about "morally justified" but you're definitely wrong about "effective in achieving high vaccination rates". It's pretty clear that states with more stringent vaccination requirements have higher vaccination rates:
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/re...
"In many but not all states, philosophical exemptions are easier to get than religious exemptions, which typically require parents to cite and explain the religious doctrine in question. Overall, states with philosophical exemptions have 2.5 times the rate of opt-outs than states with only religious exemptions."
The fact that we don't seem to be looking into how to lower that number is a problem.
The problem is you don't spend 15 seconds on Google before spouting off. A quick search would have found you this page: Goal 1: Develop New and Improved Vaccines. The national vaccine plan says, "Research to improve existing vaccines also provides opportunities to improve on a range of vaccine characteristics such as efficacy, safety, and vaccine delivery."
As a bonus to you, the page lists these recent advances in vaccine technology:
* Advances in scientific understanding of diseases and vaccine responses, especially for pertussis, pneumococcal disease, dengue and hepatitis C.
* New vaccine production techniques and technologies.
Research a little and your posts will be more coherent; your brain will be clearer.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The idea is that if you vaccinate people but they still get the disease and don't get it as badly, they might not die as quickly, or might not die.
However this is not how vaccines work. I suspect the fine article got a lot wrong.
The idea is that if you vaccinate people they have an increased immunity to the pathogen and have a greater chance of not becoming infected if exposed. This slows or stops the spread of the pathogen amongst a community.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yup to what you said.
I truncated my earlier post because I got a call from downstairs that salad, baked chicken, yellow rice was on the table, and strawberries had been cut up for the home made ice cream in the freezer. I believe my priorities are in order.
Reading the study makes it clear that what is happening with these chickens is important to the poultry industry, it's not just a what-if study, it's a "this has happened and we need to find out why" kind of thing.
Anyway, for the benefit of readers who may not have time to read the actual study, in the study, the author mentions what we said, that the increased virulence example that he had discovered for this virus, Marek's virus, had not been seen in human hosts for human diseases.
From the article:
"The imperfect-vaccine hypothesis attracted controversy [11–14], not least because human vaccines have apparently not caused an increase in the virulence of their target pathogens"
Furthermore, the author says:
"Our data do not demonstrate that vaccination was responsible for the evolution of hyperpathogenic strains of MDV, and we may never know for sure why they evolved in the first place. Clearly, many potentially relevant ecological pressures on virulence have changed with the intensification of the poultry industry."
The study also discusses similar phenomena that occurred naturally when exposed survivors in the wild harbored an increasedly virulent pathogen due to their acquired partial immunity after exposure.
What I think is interesting is that the increased virulence of Marbek's is only found relative to unvaccinated chickens. The vaccinated chickens do not experience the increased virulence.
If there is a lesson in this for human vaccines, it is that when we vaccinate, we need to vaccinate as much of the population as is possible, and that you really do not want to be the unvaccinated ones if an analogue does appear in the human population.
Anyway, this actual study is interesting, and I don't see any problems with the way it was executed or written. As is so often the case, the problem comes from people extrapolating from a study things that are not found in the study.
Anti-vaxxers are idiots. Just like that bozo who refused to pay the fire department and then wanted the department to put the fire in his house down.