Category Archives: vaccines

When An HIV Vaccine Goes To Trial, It’s A Good Thing

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This is awesome news! And it’s Canadian! I know, weird eh?

The FDA has approved clinical trials for an HIV vaccine. This is huge news, and hopefully gives a little hope to those afflicted with the virus. HIV, in case you are unaware, is a shit little disease that should be punched in it’s face. And this vaccine offers the potential to defend us against it.

Now, I’m sure the anti-vax crowd will be moaning about the horrible, awful, no good AIDS vaccine, especially if we actually do something like (assuming it passes its clinical trials and proves to be a safe counter to HIV) letting it be a part of children’s immunization shots. Because children don’t have sex ever (or get transfusions, or come into contact with body fluids or use needle drugs) and so they should be taught to abstain from those activities. Let’s use AIDS as a warning for kids! That’s way better than actually helping them not die from mistakes. What kind of parents would we be?

Jim

Return Of Old Friends

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Some old friends you miss, and some you don’t. For example, I don’t miss the little weasel used to be my good buddy and got me to start playing in bands. That prick is such a self-aggrandizing monster, absolutely certain that he is responsible for every decision I’ve ever made because once upon a time he told me to buy a bass guitar. Also, I hate having friends who get so drunk that they tell you the only reason their brother doesn’t rape your children is because his psychic powers are holding the evil brother away. Yeah, not missing him. But on the contrary, I very much miss my friend Ian, a truly great person who enriched my life for years before going a bit off the deep end and killing himself.

I bet China thinks polio would be more the former than the latter. But when that weird old friend shows up, you really are stuck with him until you can figure out a fix.

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The HPV Vaccine In Pictures

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I love the web site Information Is Beautiful. They take a lot of information and represent it graphically, which I think we can all agree is often a great way to understand the data. We are a species that relies heavily upon sight to interpret the world, and we are also a species (myself included) that doesn’t often take the time to really read and interpret information.

The Information Is Beautiful stuff is fantastic both because it represents the information in an easy to read format and also because it links to the actual data, so those who want to say that it is skewed or what have you can take a look at where it comes from and determine for themselves. That doesn’t stop people from being wrong, but it certainly goes a long way to allowing people to be right, which is to say more properly informed.

Their latest info graphic is about the HPV vaccine’s effectiveness and safety, and it speaks volumes. Check it out.

Jim

Rabies And The Milwaukee Protocol

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Rabies is a bitch. It’s funny, because we don’t think it’s a bitch here in the west. We all saw Old Yeller and we know that there you just go get rabies shots if you’re bit by Cujo and you’ll be fine. Only rabies is sneakier than that.

Rabies doesn’t always look like rabies. I suppose that’s the same as saying “people with the flu don’t always look like people with the flu”, but we are accustomed to thinking of rabies as that foaming-at-the-mouth disease that comes from bats. Obviously, if we get bit by a dog or a cat that has the obvious outward signs of rabies, we rush to the hospital for our round of life-saving vaccination and rabies-busting antibodies. But what about when the animal in question isn’t foaming at the mouth like Rush Limbaugh touring a Liberal Arts college?

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Why The Anti-Vaccine People Are Wrong

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I’ve touched on my disdain towards the antivaxxers before, but today I feel strongly the need to post this. Many of my readers are aware that I have an ex-wife and several children. One of them has recently become my facebook friend, and I was surprised to see her friending a local-to-her filmmaker who sprays out this anti-vax garbage. So while this is a regular blog post for me, it is also an explanation to my darling daughter why I consider these opinions wrong and dangerous.

First off, vaccines are the single greatest innovation in medical science ever. When Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine, it changed the world. People in my daughter’s generation (and my generation) do not have memories of polio because of Jonas Salk, but I have heard the stories. My mother (your grandma) can tell you about iron lungs being used to keep people breathing who were stricken with the disease. On the linked wikipedia page for Iron Lung, look at the second image on the left. It is from 1953, and shows an overhead view of a ward full of polio patients who needed to live their lives in this machine that breathed for them.

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…And This Is Why Vaccine Injury Claims Are Tough

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There are times when it seems like if you choose any disease, you can find the anti-vaxxer who is certain their child got it from a vaccine of some kind. Of course, there is always a possibility that some kind of relationship is present, and these injury claims have to be tracked and investigated to ensure the overall safety of the intervention. And really, that is something that we do with all manner of medical intervention. Vaccines are just a very common boogieman these days.

I was just reading NeuroLogica, and there was a really interesting piece there about a possible relationship that has been suggested between Narcolepsy and Pandemrix, one of the brands of H1N1 vaccine.

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Bill Gates Supporting Vaccines

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I have to say, I love Bill Gates.  Always have. Unlike many in my industry who have Linus Torvalds tattoos on their biceps, I throw my towel to the Microsoft world. And why? It was Bill Gates’s vision of a computer on every desk and their might as a company that made computer use so remarkably mainstream. The end result? I have a job in a field I love, we have computers which can help us see the results of the models we come up with, we can track information and how it pertains to other information… Damnit, it’s just good times.

Today, I watched an interview between Bill Gates and Dr. Gupta which was posted on Skepchick, and was impressed with how Bill explained the Global Health Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gupta asked Bill about Dr. Wakefield, and in just a few short words, Gates expressed himself, tore Wakefield a new research hole, and made me smile all big-like.

Check out the interview, it’s great to hear about their plans.

Jim

Exciting News From The Past

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I’ve had several people forward me this story today from CNN about how Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s landmark study that vaccines cause autism was nothing but farce. Thank you to all of you who passed this on, and I know several of you were doing so because it had made major news, but I can’t help but wonder how many people didn’t know about this.

I of course live in my little nerd bubble, and to me this was old news. Those of us who follow the anti-vaccine movement have known about the ridiculous antics behind this paper since Brian Deer exposed it many years ago. Still, the machinery of the anti-vaccine movement went on the attack and has done a tremendous job of spreading the lie of the vaccine-autism link, and later the mercury/thimerosal-autism link.

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Pox Party Bingo! Let’s Give It A Whirl!

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My friend Tammy emailed me today asking if I had ever heard about Pox Parties. I have, and I think they’re disgusting, but for reasons unknown have never thought about writing up my thoughts on them for a Meddling Kids episode. But now that it’s on my mind, ain’t no stopping men.

First off, the idea of these parties is just sinister and disgusting. Parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children against the chicken pox (because nobody dies from THAT anymore) gathering all their children together to purposely expose them to the virus is the kind of irresponsible and ignorant parenting that should in my mind be considered child abuse. Sadly, though, the ignorance around the disease just rages on and on, and these parents actually think that they’re doing their kids a favor.

Wrong.

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