Slashdot Mirror
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."
It's a good argument for ensuring you don't have half-assed vaccines, which is a legitimate concern.
It's the same problem as those people who are prescribed antibiotics and don't finish their full course: that's how you get antibiotic resistant bacteria. You half-assed the treatment, now the surviving bacteria are the individuals with adaptations that were best able to resist the antibiotic. Usually, the disease would progress where the antibiotic vulnerable bacteria would compete. With the help of the incompletely used antibiotic, there's now only resistant bacteria left to infect a new host.
This is not an anti-vaxxer argument, as those fools think that the vaccine causes problems unrelated to what it is supposed to be preventing (like autism), rather than this case being that the vaccine was simply too weaksauce to do the job right, so it made the problem worse by selecting out the bacteria more likely to succumb to the vaccine-adjusted immune system.
...they worry it will reinforce doubts about the merits or safety of vaccines...
This attitude about let's not discuss any possible downside because it will give the anti-vax people ammunition is part of the problem. Often forgotten is that a certain percentage of people who get vaccines die. That's an extreme form of take one for the team. At least some of these deaths could probably be prevented but rather than examine that more seriously we get polarized into vaccines are always good with no room for an opposing view. Any opposing views must be the opposite end of the spectrum and must be 100% against vaccines. While vaccines have been outstanding public policy in general that doesn't mean that it couldn't be improved upon. As long as people die from vaccinations there is room for improvement. The fact that we don't seem to be looking into how to lower that number is a problem.
Government coercion was effective enough to eliminate one or two dread diseases.
I'm not a big fan of government coercion as the solution to everything, but vaccinations are a public health issue where you are affecting more than yourself whenever you sneeze. That means your refusal to vaccinate your child or yourself might condemn people to death who currently have no choice to avoid interacting with you, and no idea if you're someone they should stay away from.
We could suggest that those against vaccines go live in a quarantined compound somewhere and not have to have vaccines, but that would seem to be counterproductive for everyone.
Past outbreaks of diseases currently vaccinated against have probably killed billions of children in the past. There was no home remedy or frontier method of survival. They either somehow fought off diseases like smallpox or measles and possibly were scarred for life, or they simply died. I am not certain what philosophical view, other than some sort of odd Darwinism, would make a return to that scenario attractive.
I don't think the strains that survive an incomplete round of antibiotics have mutated.
You then proceed to describe exactly the process through which the antibiotic sensitive bacteria die so the mutations that have resistance become dominant. Where do you think those antibiotic resistant bacteria got their immunity to that specific antibiotic? They didn't order it from Amazon Prime, just sayin.
It's survival of the fittest only.
And those "fittest" become so because ...?
> The only group that is really helped by other people's vaccinations is a small percentage of the population that cannot get vaccinated.
You obviously don't remember polio. I do. You apparently also don't remember when the flu killed so many people in winter, and fail to understand how modern cities and especially air traffic make pandemics far more likely and far more dangerous.
Yes. You need to kick the non-vaccinated out of the public school system. Like we used to.
Most vaccines are not 100% effective. You need a certain percentage of the population to be immune for herd immunity to mean that they have little chance of contracting the disease (and, if they do, a good chance of being an isolated statistic rather than the centre of an outbreak). It only takes a few percent opting out of the vaccine to eliminate the herd immunity and make the entire population more vulnerable.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News