Uptick In Whooping Cough Linked To Subpar Vaccines

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."

The problem with vaccines

[intermodal]

Vaccines have a great reputation, largely resulting from the highly successful campaigns with smallpox and polio. However, these were done in a less litigious era, and unlike today's medical practice, they could operate without the fear of gigantic lawsuits if something went wrong.

These reduced-effectiveness vaccines are like many "safer", "greener", or otherwise "less harmful" solutions; they have their drawbacks, but only a fool would try to push their solution by advertising those drawbacks. Now we're seeing two effects. A re-emergence of pertussis, and decreased public confidence in vaccines.

Re:Or

[MadMartigan2001]

The vaccine debate is a religious one on both sides and your statement is evidence of that. The data suggesting that vaccines are working is overwhelming and trying to deny that they have worked is ridiculous. There is also risk to vaccines and they can cause harm and trying to deny that is ridiculous. The bigger question is whether or not over use of vaccines is creating a similar problem as the overuse of antibiotics. And in the process are we actually reducing our ability to adapt as a species to environmental pressure and stress.

Can they just stack them?

[foreverdisillusioned]

Couldn't they just give the safe one first and the older, more effective one a few months later? And if not, why not just do the weaker one yearly? I think an elegant solution for a lot of these weaker vaccines is to simply do them yearly, around the same time you get your flu shot. Other than further aggravating the Jenny McCarthys of the world, I think this would be a fine solution.

Re:Paging Mr Darwin

[ColdWetDog]

Give Libertarians an inch ....

Having had a whooping cough outbreak in the family

[KYPackrat]

For any parent, guardian, or patient to make an informed decision, we have to have two pieces of information: how well a medicine generally works, and what risks there are to take it. Number One Son does this with several medicines: Colcrys controls the symptoms of his Familial Mediteranian Fever, at the risk of messing with his liver. He takes the flu shot because of the risk to the 1 and a half lung he has left are higher than the risks of the vaccine itself.

A vaccine that doesn't work, or doesn't work well, means that vaccinated patients are accepting the vaccine risk for no significant reward.

I am not anti-vaccine, I am just against unneeded risk. My kids got a round of the Salk vaccine, because the Sabin vaccine might wear out. We also did the chicken pox vaccine, to try to prevent shingles later in life (both families have had extreme shingles outbreaks later in life). 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.

My own anecdote is that the reporting on pertussis is off by at least half to two-thirds. Little Miss fought a persistent cough (with antibiotics) for weeks until her allergist said "oh, you have whooping cough. You sound exactly like I did last week." There was no use testing her, because she'd been on antibiotics. Milady and I both caught it from her. The nurse ruined my test by doing it wrong, and Milady's doctor flat-out wouldn't test her (she just got antibiotics, because she was #3 in the house to catch it). The scuttlebutt in the health profession was that the Health Department was desperately trying to keep their numbers down, by hook or by crook.

With my kids' various lung-related issues, they needed a vaccine that actually helps prevent whooping cough. The current one isn't it.

Re: Or

[Rich0]

Agreed. If anything antibiotics and vaccines have completely opposite mechanisms of action.

An antibiotic taken as a medication kills bacteria directly, assisting the immune system and making its job easier. In the case of bleaching every surface in your house, it means that the immune system never sees the bacteria in the first place. The same is true of other external use of antibiotics (killing of bacteria before it gets into your body).

A vaccine provokes your immune response against a pathogen without exposing you to the risk of developing the disease (or a greatly reduced risk). Your immune system does all the work, and as a result it is able to do the job entirely on its own much more effectively at a later time.

Comparing the approaches, the disinfectant approach is like bleaching your house 3x/day, and the vaccine approach is like rolling around in the mud and not washing before dinner. I'd be very hesitant to associate the problems of the one with the other.

Childbirth

[ThatsNotPudding]

We must accept the fact that sometimes we forced to take risks, and sometimes those risks will go badly.

Tell that to runwaway juries making OB-GYN a no-go zone. American mothers have now become convinced (mostly be daytime TV, I'll warrant) that there should be an absolute, 100% guarantee that absolutely nothing will ever go wrong during the birth of their above-average snowflake. If not, here come the ambulance chasers taking in ~80% of the millions in lawsuit damages, doing nothing but increasing the angle of attack of the medical cost spiral.