Uptick In Whooping Cough Linked To Subpar Vaccines 273
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."
Re:Or (Score:2, Informative)
Google "herd immunity".
Re:The problem with vaccines (Score:5, Informative)
Be that as it may, the problem isn't the lawsuits themselves but the culture that fear has created in the medical community. I've worked in the field, and am now in IT support in that field. I can tell you right now that a lot of what goes on in the American medical system is people covering their arses in one way or another.
Re:Or (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Having had a whooping cough outbreak in the fam (Score:4, Informative)
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?
Re:Or (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Or (Score:4, Informative)
Why do you think that HPV is "incredibly rare"?
Population of US : ~251 million [http://www.census.gov/popclock/] [census.gov]
Population of US with HPV : ~79 million [http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm] [cdc.gov]
That is ~31% of the population of a country which is aware of the disease and actively fighting it.
Re:Or (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The problem with vaccines (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is too much conspiracy thinking.
It's not just that.
Vaccines happen at about the age where developmental problems become apparent, so people associate the developmental problems with the vaccines.
Apparently the different european countries have the same sorts of vaccine scares as the UK, but they all have them about different vaccines.
Re:Or (Score:4, Informative)
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.