vaccines

It s not an infection that sits on the tip of your tongue, but an effective treatment for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an unmet medical need that has been shrugging off attempts to control it for many years.
In a recent New York Times column, Jane Brody encourages pregnant women to get vaccinated, both for their own health and for the benefit of their newborn babies.
Vaccine preventable diseases have made a recent comeback thanks to the anti-vax movement. However, recent data show that views among parents are changing and one new study points out the best way to convince them of the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
In a piece dripping with sardonic disgust, Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Tabatha Southey took on the new curriculum at the august University of Toronto recently. Entitled Anti-vaccine course brings U of T one step closer to offering a masters of pseudoscience, Ms. Southey takes note of the recently-released official report of the approval of a course called Alternative Health: Practice and Theory, to be taught (so to speak) by the well-known homeopath Beth Landau-Halpern.
Every time we as a society face an emerging pathogen (think H1N1 in 2009 and Ebola right now), scientists race to create a vaccine so we can start mass immunizations to protect the public. But why do we do this only for human diseases?
California gets a lot of criticism from us for often not being on the side of science. But in the past few months, they ve done some serious good for the public health.
At last: we in public health have been awaiting an expert opinion on vaccine safety from media celebrity Jim Carrey for such a long time and now he has spoken! He has strong opinions, but each one is Dumb and Dumber than the last. And his words can do much harm.
Although it may seem that when California legislators and governors relate to public health they get it wrong (for example with Proposition 65), but sometimes they really do the right thing.
ACSH friend and Fox News host John Stossel has penned a commentary bemoaning the current status of scientific discourse in America. We here at ACSH agree, sadly, with the main thrusts of his cri de coeur: fixed beliefs based on ideology are the opposite of science.
Follow-up on two of our recent, important Dispatch items. California s Assembly has cleared the next-to-last legislative hurdle toward removing the state s non-medical exemptions for children s vaccinations. And an FDA panel has approved overwhelmingly a new type of cholesterol-lowering medication.
Rotavirus, which causes severe gastroenteritis, doesn t get the same degree of attention that others viruses like measles or chickenpox get, but it can be a troublesome infection especially for young children. The CDC lists a number of daunting statistics for children under 5. Rotavirus causes: 70,000 annual hospitalizations, more than 400,000 doctors visits and 200,000 emergen
New research found that a single dose of the bivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine (Cervarix) may offer a similar level of protection against the serotypes of HPV types 16 and 18, which cause 70 percent of cervical cancers as the current two and three dose schedules. The findings come from a new analysis of two large phase