Study: Certain Vaccines Could Make Diseases More Deadly 195
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."
Not the best summary... (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea is that if you vaccinate people but they still get the disease and don't get it as badly, they might not die as quickly, or might not die.
So if they get sick but don't die, the disease has longer to spread.
So I suppose if you're an Anti-vaxxer it's a great argument for why only you should get vaccinated for highly virulent diseases, but you should just let everyone else die faster.
Re:Not the best summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I hate it every time some research comes out that tries to shines some light at shortfalls in current research and then it is "controversial" because it "could give an argument to the anti-XYZ". This comes up with vaccine research, climate research and whatnot. I think every person that utters something like that is actually undermining the entire legitimate research community. The forced need to appear to be united give the opponents more suspicion, not less.
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It's still a moron argument. Any argument that goes by the "if he only died faster none of this would have happened" is a bad argument. Corpses can also spread disease as well FWIW.
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Corpses can also spread disease as well FWIW.
Only if you keep them around. Which is chiefly a religious and cultural choice, not a scientific one.
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No, it's not the same problem at all. *No* vaccine is perfect, whether it's because the pathogen mutates slightly, or because the immune system doesn't learn that the (harmless) pathogen in the vaccine was harmful. The way vaccines work isn't perfect immunity, but herd immunity. They work well enough to prevent outbreaks, which is a public health concern, and if you're one of the lucky ones for whom the vaccine worked, then you're better off too. Unfortunately, there's no way to know, beforehand, whethe
Re:Not the best summary... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't care to debate you about "morally justified" but you're definitely wrong about "effective in achieving high vaccination rates". It's pretty clear that states with more stringent vaccination requirements have higher vaccination rates:
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/re... [pewtrusts.org]
"In many but not all states, philosophical exemptions are easier to get than religious exemptions, which typically require parents to cite and explain the religious doctrine in question. Overall, states with philosophical exemptions have 2.5 times the rate of opt-outs than states with only religious exemptions."
Re:Not the best summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. You need to kick the non-vaccinated out of the public school system. Like we used to.
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Re:Not the best summary... (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering that the US average vaccination rate is equal to or below that of the places where the illegal immigrants are coming from, you're wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
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Not all, but the overwhelming majority of them.
The measles vaccine isn't perfect, two doses are required and even them it's possible to get the disease. But the chances of it spreading are greatly reduced if everyone is immunized. [latimes.com]
Health officials have immunization records of 43 measles patients; 37 were unimmunized, one had only one shot, and five were fully immunized.
Re:Not the best summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The problem with this statement is it makes one big assumption... Namely that everyone is NOT vaccinated. In short, if coming
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Then you just shot down your whole argument that everyone be immunized. Again, if you fear your kid getting a disease then keep your kid away from others or immunize them. You can control that where you can't control the actions (or inaction) of others.
And to answer the AC below about babies, they inherit the mother's antibodies through th
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if you fear your kid getting a disease then keep your kid away from others or immunize them
Ignoring the shear absurdity of your suggestion, that's not the point. For the life of me, I cannot understand people who refuse to listen to science. The CDC is your friend. Seriously, please read this [cdc.gov].
You need to learn about "hurd immunity". Here, I'll quote the NIH (another friend) for you: [nih.gov]
When a critical portion of a community is immunized against a contagious disease, most members of the community are protected against that disease because there is little opportunity for an outbreak. Even those who are not eligible for certain vaccines—such as infants, pregnant women, or immunocompromised individuals—get some protection because the spread of contagious disease is contained. This is known as "community immunity."
We all love a good conspiracy theory, but this one has been thoroughly debunked. By advocating for non-immunization, you're putting innocents at risk.
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The problem you miss is that of immunocompromised or otherwise medically exempted individuals - namely, people who don't have a choice whether they get vaccinated or not. It's not just a personal choice - if you choose not to get yourself or your kids vaccinated, you are potentially putting my kids at risk by doing so.
Maybe those people should go live in a quarantined compound somewhere.
Re:Not the best summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
Except it looks like the whole herd immunity thing is a theory without any evidence. In China, where it is mandatory to get vaccinated, they still have massive outbreaks. There are plenty of cases in the U.S. also where the vaccine itself was responsible for the outbreak and 95% of the UNVACCINATED local population went uninfected. It is thought to be unacceptable to do a double blind study with vaccines because they are considered to work. So you can't even prove if these things work because we have assume
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As I was saying: If your kids are immunocompromised, they have a lot more to worry about than measles. That is, there are many other diseases they have to worry about besides the few we can vaccinate against.
Why do you keep talking about immunocompromised people? The measles vaccine, for example, only works in about 95% of cases, the other people are not immunised. They have no other autoimmune issues and, unless exposed to the measles virus, will have no issues.
Almost everybody in "the entire population" who is vaccinated is protected by the vaccine and hence not "vulnerable". So "the entire population" doesn't become more vulnerable.
If immunity drops below about 93% for measles, then the population no longer benefits from herd immunity. This means that anyone who is not immune (including those 5% who were vaccinated but didn't receive the benefit) is at a much higher risk of bei
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Because I was responding to DarkSabreLord, who raised that point.
That's wrong. Figures such as "93%" come from simplistic models that treat the population as some big pool with random mixing. That's not what real populations look like or how diseases get transmitted in the real world.
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My son got his first vaccinations at 1 month... By the time he was 2 years old he had over a dozen... We *did* choose to stretch out the vaccination schedule a bit (to avoid giving 4 vaccinations at once, etc.) and we've been very careful to screen which drug company's vaccines we use as many contain "non-medical' ingredients that are actually drugs (below the minimum dosage for adults) that are not otherwise approved for use in children.
Sadly, drug companies are not liable for adverse reactions to vaccin
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My son got his first vaccinations at 1 month... By the time he was 2 years old he had over a dozen... We *did* choose to stretch out the vaccination schedule a bit (to avoid giving 4 vaccinations at once, etc.) and we've been very careful to screen which drug company's vaccines we use as many contain "non-medical' ingredients that are actually drugs (below the minimum dosage for adults) that are not otherwise approved for use in children.
You did read the post you were replying to, right? It was talking specifically about the measles outbreak at Disneyland. My son is 10 months old, so I'm going through this right now. Different vaccines are tested as "safe" for different ages. We have been following the CDC's Recommended Immunizations for Children from Birth through 6 years old [cdc.gov]. The first vaccine (HepB) is given within days of being born. MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) is not recommended until the infant is 12 months old.
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> 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.
How ? Aren't you vaccinated ? If you're vaccinated against flu, and then 5 days later I get the flu and I'm not vaccinated... you still gonna get sick if I sneeze ?
If we throw that argument out of the window, why on earth would you accept governments forcing people into this ? If I consciously decide not to vaccinate myself and
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Viruses mutate dipshit. The more hosts for the virus the faster it will mutate.
Re:Not the best summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
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Flu vaccination is voluntary, and polio vaccination is effectively voluntary as well. So, the argument that government coercion is needed falls apart.
Vaccinations are a good thing. Most people understand that. That's why it is unnecessary to give government the power to force people to get vaccinated.
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all, the vaccinations we're talking about here are for diseases that are rarely fatal and that almost everybody can protect themselves against by getting vaccinated
BS. Even the common flu kills quite a lot of people every fucking year.
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Wars kill many, many more people each year than the flu, polio, etc.
Maybe in war-torn countries in Africa, but in the United States, influenza kills thousands every year.
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Maybe in war-torn countries in Africa, but in the United States, influenza kills thousands every year.
Why is this a problem? As long as the death toll isn't large enough to be a significant cause of a dwindling population, what's the long-term harm?
We all have survival instincts, but death isn't something to fear. Everyone will die. If a small percentage die sooner rather than later, there's no harm to humanity, which easily compensates due to the high human reproduction rate. A risk of dying before old age adds spice to life, and prompts the individual to put more meaning into it here and now.
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You don't understand the difference between risk of death and certainty of death? Or evolution vs eugenics, for that matter?
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Yes, and the common flu has higher mortality rates than measles even in the unvaccinated.
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The only group that is really helped by other people's vaccinations is a small percentage of the population that cannot get vaccinated.
Not true. It's true that there are some people who cannot be vaccinated, and those people are helped by other people being vaccinated. Aside from those people, vaccines are not 100% effective. Some portion of the people who are vaccinated may still get sick if exposed to the virus, and those people are also protected by other people getting vaccinated.
In both of these cases, you can say, "it's a small percentage of the population." Small percentages of the population, however, can still represent a lot
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That is included in the phrase of "those who cannot get vaccinated".
Measles isn't Ebola, it is very rarely fatal, and pretty much never fatal unless there are other conditions present. Even pre-vaccination, the
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That is included in the phrase of "those who cannot get vaccinated".
So in your head, some people who got vaccinated should be included in the classification "those who cannot get vaccinated. Well that says a lot about the strength of your argument.
Measles vaccination is a non-issue and non-risk. Using it to advance the principle that government can force people to inject stuff against their objections by exaggerating and fabricating numbers like "killing 3 million people" as if they had anything to do with measles is outrageously dishonest and deceptive.
I didn't claim that measles would kill 3 million people. I was using simple math to point out that "a small percentage of the population" might still include a whole lot of people.
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Vaccinations are effectively voluntary today (since anybody can opt out) and we still only have around 200 cases per year and no deaths
Which are still the results of mass vaccinations of previous generations, and nothing else.
No, because as the parent post points out, the death rate was about 500 in 500,000 *before* the vaccine was introduced. In the UK it was even lower, the death rate averaged about 75/year over the decade before the single measles vaccine was introduced (1958-68) with a similar birth rate (and hence incidence rate). So, unless you can make an argument that measles has become much more serious over the last 50 years, or there has been some significant societal change, thise figures are upper bounds on what we
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Not true. MMR vaccine is effective in 95% of children after the first dose, meaning that 5% might still be vulnerable.
Which is why "fully immunized" means two doses. That's give about 99% protection. Intentionally eaving 5% of the population vulnerable is stupid.
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What's your point? Of course, people should get vaccinated. But the current system where anybody can opt out is obviously working fine. The current statistics show that it is working.
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Don't forget about how Merck was found to be lying about the effectiveness of the Mumps part of the MMR. It is more like 35% effective. So you can believe the lies if you want. I would rather have the facts and would like to see true scientific studies done on these things. Something like a double blind study, which is not allowed with vaccines since they are assumed to work, so we can't withhold treatment of them for a study. Sounds like circular reasoning to me.
Merck was accused of lying about the effectiveness of the Mumps component of the MMR. Mumps Vaccine Effective Waning Immunity [skepticalraptor.com] has links to three peer-reviewed research papers on the effectiveness of the effectiveness of the mumps component of the MMR vaccine and found it to be about 85-88%. These studies had nothing to do with Merck, so whether they were fudging numbers or not is irrelevant.
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One could also take a position that not vaccinating your children is tantamount to neglect as they are incap
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Unfortunately it's against that law to just leave you to die for your own stupidity in such cases and society invariably ends up bearing the costs. It's far less expensive to vaccinate people than it is to deal with the fallout from not doing so. Up until we can agree that you can contractually permit society ignoring any consequences for your poor decision, the pragmatic solution is to require it.
I don't know the situation in the US, but in the UK, the figures show that unvaccinated kids visit the doctor a *lot* less than vaccinated kids (there is even research that uses this fact to explain vaccination/allergy correlation in the raw data), so maybe the non-vacinnating parents should demand a rebate from you.
One could also take a position that not vaccinating your children is tantamount to neglect as they are incapable of making such a choice at that age and you're merely forcing your own beliefs on the child whether they would objectively want to make that decision in later life or not. Again, were there a system by which society could be absolved of having to deal with the consequences of an individual's poor decisions, this wouldn't be an issue, but we do not live in that world.
One could also take the reverse position, you are forcing something on them that they might not choose later in life. It's not morally justifiable, but the laws that are in place make coercion
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I don't know the situation in the US, but in the UK, the figures show that unvaccinated kids visit the doctor a *lot* less than vaccinated kids
And as we all know, correlation equals causation. There's no way this could possibly be because parents that don't get their kids vaccinated don't take them to see the doctor for other routine care.
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in the UK, the figures show that unvaccinated kids visit the doctor a *lot* less than vaccinated kids
Tell me about it! My infant son has been to the doctor 4 times this year just to get his vaccination shots.
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That's the same kind of arguments used for forced sterilization, segregation, and forced euthanasia, both in the US and in Nazi Germany. You are an evil fuck.
And you aren't even consistent. A few hundred measles cases under our current (effectively voluntary) vaccination system cost very little. One of the biggest financial drains on our medical system is obesity; so, by your reasoning, govern
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Yes, the government should force the obese to get their act together, especially since that same government is now forcing me to pay for their medical care whether I want to or not.
The same for drug users, smokers and alcoholics.
If the idea is to make people more healthy by forcing them to hand over their money to a private company then to get the most bang for the buck forced government coercion to get people to live more healthy lives is the way to go.
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Indeed, the "anti-vaxxer" argument has nothing to do with the science of vaccines. It has to do with the fundamental right to determine what happens to your own body.
I don't believe that anti-vaxxers are defenders of such "fundamental rights". Any who make these claims are just using weasel words to lend sympathy to their cause by attaching their motives to a political/moral concept with which some non-anti-vaxxers might agree. In reality they're just conspiracy theorists, who through willful ignorance do not understand vaccination and therefore reject it. IMO those who are defending the "fundamental right to determine what happens to your own body" are people like euth
Re:Not the best summary... (Score:4, Informative)
Anti-vaxxers are idiots. Just like that bozo who refused to pay the fire department and then wanted the department to put the fire in his house down.
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This seems very affirmative. It looks like you have access to the absolute moral code. Could you give us a link to this document ? Thank you.
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I have access to history and I know what happens when you give government that power: forced sterilization, eugenics, forced euthanasia; all of those state actions were justified by the same reasoning as forced vaccinations. That's not my hypothesis, it's the reasoning SCOTUS used:
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Okay, let's remove the coercion then and have a proper libertarian solution. No one has to get vaccinated, but anyone who is not vaccinated is liable for and harm done by anyone that they infected with a disease, including joint liability for all outbreaks of that disease where the vaccinated number dropped below the number responsible for herd immunity.
By all means, go ahead and defend your right to kill people as a result of your negligence.
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No, that is not a libertarian solution at all. The libertarian solution is to let people choose whether to get vaccinated or not, and whether to associate with people who are vaccinated or not. When it comes to vaccinations, that means nothing more than privatizing schools, a good idea for many reaso
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That's the only place vaccine requirements are currently being considered. Furthermore, most other places are already private and could impose vaccination requirements if they wanted to.
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Do you mean to say that you get infected by consent???
That used to be the case. Kids were sent to measles parties to catch the disease. Most would survive.
The inherent problem with vaccines is that they really are safe and effective. They save lives.
This is great for the individuals who gets saved, but it's very short-term thinking and harms the herd long-term.
Without vaccinations, childhood diseases kill more weaker individuals than stronger ones. The healthier you are, the greater are your overall chance of reaching reproductive age and reproducing. It
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Oh Adolf, welcome back, we thought you were dead.
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
You are very ignorant. Nazism sought to control who got to live and who didn't. That's called eugenics, which I find despicable.
Taking away the ability to control who lives is not eugenics. If anything, it's the opposite.
Right now, parents in the rich world will vaccinate our child, without also ensuring that a poor child gets vaccinated.
There are an awful lot of mini-Hitlers around who will jump at a chance to give their sub-tribe an advantage. Whet
Re:Not the best summary... (Score:5, Informative)
The idea is that if you vaccinate people but they still get the disease and don't get it as badly, they might not die as quickly, or might not die.
However this is not how vaccines work. I suspect the fine article got a lot wrong.
The idea is that if you vaccinate people they have an increased immunity to the pathogen and have a greater chance of not becoming infected if exposed. This slows or stops the spread of the pathogen amongst a community.
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The argument is "leaky" at best too (Score:5, Informative)
Pathogens don't "learn". They evolve, ok. They adapt, ok. But they aren't sentient. They are not thinking. And especially they aren't thinking "hey, if they vaccinate, they won't die anyway, at least not as fast, so let's get more deadly!" This isn't the fucking Pandemic flash game for crying out loud!
There is no interest of killing a host for a parasite. It's an side effect. Unintended, and actually harmful for the parasite in the long run. Just like poisoning the seas is harmful for us. We ain't some comic book villain who does it for ... well, for being evil. We do it 'cause it cuts costs. The oil spill is only the side effect, not the reason we do it.
So yes, they COULD get more deadly because we don't die as fast and a more deadly mutated strain would kill itself off with the host if there was no vaccination. But that is hardly an argument against vaccination. It only means that at worst we're with vaccination where we are now without. AT WORST. If, and only if, the pathogens mutate in such a way that they get more deadly. Which is neither in their interest nor anything they would (evolutionary) strive for.
What's the benefit for a pathogen to be more deadly? Killing the host is actually bad for it, since that ends spreading (with this host at least).
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Machines are said to learn, but are not sentient and do not think. Memory plastic isn't sentient either.
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That OP is silly to call out the use of the term 'learn' for a non-sentient thing.
Re:The argument is "leaky" at best too (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The argument is "leaky" at best too (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ...?
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That's the wrong interpretation of "fittest." I don't know who coined the phrase (it certainly wasn't Darwin) but in the context of evolution "fittest" means the individual organism that is best suited to the environment it lives in, which is not necessarily the strongest individual.
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That's the wrong interpretation of "fittest."
That's exactly the definition of "fittest". Able to survive in the environment (in this case exposed to an antibiotic) better than others of the same species. Whether you use the word "fittest" or "strongest" is irrelevant.
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Exactly, this is something many people seem to get confused by. survival of the fittest really means just that, the organism with the right mix of traits will win.
No, that's a common misconception.
The driving force is that the less fit will lose more often. This may sound like it's a different way of phrasing the same thing, but it isn't.
Say you have three variants of a species: one that can run 4 mph, one that can run 6 mph, and one that can run 8 mph. And a predator that can run 5 mph.
Evolution doesn't reward the fittest - it increases the risk of the least fit. Given a few generations, the first variant will dwindle, while the two other variants will intermingl
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I would correct that even further.
It isn't about the fittest or death risk, it's about being able to procreate and survive.
In your species example of the 4, 6, and 10 mph creature. If the live birth rate of the creature declines as their speed increases (musculature takes energy/hormones away from breeding, high speed movements cause more lost pregnancies, etc...) than the 4mph species may actually be the winner as they will out-bread the 6 and 10mph variants.
Now, throw a 5 mph predator into the mix and the
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I think you are confusing "fittest" in the "physical fitness" sense and not the specific meaning that has been ascribed to that term when discussing evolution.
No, i'm not. The problem isn't the word stem "fit", but the qualifier "-est". There is no evolutionary reward for being fittest; nature only tends to weed out those least fit. Which rewards both the fittest and those slightly less fit as long as they're fit enough. The fittest may not be the winners - everyone fit enough have a fair chance at the game, and sometimes the fittest lose to those just fit.
The tally of the score after the fact is what we call evolution; evolution itself causes no changes, of
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Not materially different from your immune system killing off the weaker individuals. A few stronger individuals may survive, and then what has your immune system done? Selected for a stronger pathogen.
I remember a paper from a few years ago which concluded that this was basically how we wound up with deadly diseases in the first place -- being the ones that throughout history have managed to be stronger than the host's immune system.
Vaccine simply cuts out the stage where lots and lots of hosts get sick or
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Our assumptions about evolution is that its driven by the need to survive. When a pathogen is faced with a change in their environment bought on by a pharmaceutical treatment it is possible for a pathogen to adapt to fight or avoid that treatment. This does not mean they'll automatically adapt (they're not the Borg), in fact in most cases the opposite can occur
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> evolution does not consider risks and benefits, changes are random
Interestingly, not all changes are random. There are some fascinating changes in DNA triggered by environment, many of them studied as "epigenetics". And there are certainly changes in organisms that are defensive responses to environment. The darkening of skin under sunlight is a classic example. Evolution occurs at _many_ levels. These include environmental, biological, behavioral, cultural.
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In fact the human vaccines to treat the most virulent viruses, the one's that don't kill quickly but rather maim, have worked well. Small pox is eradicated, and Polio has not been seen in Nigeria for a year. Some people get sick from Vaccines, but they likely would have the most susceptible and the carriers anyway.
What is being seen is
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Someone's got to cheer for the little guy (Score:2)
a counter-example (Score:2)
We have for a real-world counter example the (live) attenuated disease vaccines.
Foe example, the live polio vaccine and we have the vaccinia vaccine. (anti-smallpox vaccine)
Have either of those resulted in increasedly virulent strains of those diseases?
I'm not 100% sure, but the eradicated disease that no one knows about, rinderpest, I believe, used an attenuated vaccine as well.
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Where the Oral polio vaccine does sometimes cause polio, it hasn't yet caused a new more virulent strain of polio to appear. What they say is that sometimes the attenuated Polio virus mutates back into the non-attenuated version and can infect the recipient. The injectable version of the vaccine never causes Polio. This vaccine has been in nearly constant use since it came out in the late 60's, so I think that for Polio at least, the vaccine hasn't had this affect of creating a SUPER POLIO virus, but it
Re:a counter-example (Score:5, Informative)
Yup to what you said.
I truncated my earlier post because I got a call from downstairs that salad, baked chicken, yellow rice was on the table, and strawberries had been cut up for the home made ice cream in the freezer. I believe my priorities are in order.
Reading the study makes it clear that what is happening with these chickens is important to the poultry industry, it's not just a what-if study, it's a "this has happened and we need to find out why" kind of thing.
Anyway, for the benefit of readers who may not have time to read the actual study, in the study, the author mentions what we said, that the increased virulence example that he had discovered for this virus, Marek's virus, had not been seen in human hosts for human diseases.
From the article:
"The imperfect-vaccine hypothesis attracted controversy [11–14], not least because human vaccines have apparently not caused an increase in the virulence of their target pathogens"
Furthermore, the author says:
"Our data do not demonstrate that vaccination was responsible for the evolution of hyperpathogenic strains of MDV, and we may never know for sure why they evolved in the first place. Clearly, many potentially relevant ecological pressures on virulence have changed with the intensification of the poultry industry."
The study also discusses similar phenomena that occurred naturally when exposed survivors in the wild harbored an increasedly virulent pathogen due to their acquired partial immunity after exposure.
What I think is interesting is that the increased virulence of Marbek's is only found relative to unvaccinated chickens. The vaccinated chickens do not experience the increased virulence.
If there is a lesson in this for human vaccines, it is that when we vaccinate, we need to vaccinate as much of the population as is possible, and that you really do not want to be the unvaccinated ones if an analogue does appear in the human population.
Anyway, this actual study is interesting, and I don't see any problems with the way it was executed or written. As is so often the case, the problem comes from people extrapolating from a study things that are not found in the study.
this attitude is part of the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
...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.
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I'd say that people who insist that evil scientists are refusing lower that mortality rate are a much bigger part of the problem. Um, that research is still happening. The fact that you haven't heard of breakthroughs recently can just as easily mean that 1) nobody bothered to write about it or 2) it's a really hard problem, despite the large amount of money thrown at it.
Also, maybe it sucks, but if you have limited research resources, it's more efficient to try and develop a new vaccine to save millions o
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Also, maybe it sucks, but if you have limited research resources, it's more efficient to try and develop a new vaccine to save millions of lives than it is to improve an old one and save dozens.
Or you could just spend more money on your PR and advertising. Like Merck did with the MMR. The Mumps part of the vaccine has been sold to us as being 95% effective. Well it seems they have been lying to the government and the population for a few decades now and it is much closer to 35% effective. Why spend money unwisely when you can control what people believe so easily. And anyone who doubts the effectiveness of a vaccine is labeled an "anti-vaxxer" who should be shot on sight. Yeah, the pro-vaxxers are
Re:this attitude is part of the problem (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that we don't seem to be looking into how to lower that number is a problem.
The problem is you don't spend 15 seconds on Google before spouting off. A quick search would have found you this page: Goal 1: Develop New and Improved Vaccines [hhs.gov]. The national vaccine plan says, "Research to improve existing vaccines also provides opportunities to improve on a range of vaccine characteristics such as efficacy, safety, and vaccine delivery."
As a bonus to you, the page lists these recent advances in vaccine technology:
* Advances in scientific understanding of diseases and vaccine responses, especially for pertussis, pneumococcal disease, dengue and hepatitis C.
* New vaccine production techniques and technologies.
Research a little and your posts will be more coherent; your brain will be clearer.
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Do you feel more superior now?
No, but if one more person checks Google a little more often, it will make our conversations on Slashdot that much better.
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You should first find out what the people died of. The people who "die from a vaccine" often die from something completely unrelated to the vaccine. If you calculate the number of people who really die because of the vaccine it might be such a small percentage that it's not worth the effort to improve the vaccine.
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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.
Your claim has no source so I'll provide one [skepticalraptor.com]. Summary there is currently no evidence to support a causal relationship between vaccinations and death. So there is no evidence that vaccines are causing the death of anybody at all. Zero deaths given the huge power of the study (13 million people and 24 million vaccinations).
Monday 11PM (Score:3)
I'm impressed that slashdot can push out this clickbait Monday evening, and that less than 64 people dispute that vaccines suck (excepting those who responded: trolls.)
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This article was almost as bad as the one about the self-destruct e-mails.
Misleading summary (Score:2)
The title of the paper is "Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens". Note the absence of any question marks or qualifiers such as "could...?"
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The science behind the study does though.
Only if you think Chickens and Humans share enough commonality in our immune systems and the viruses that infect us will act the same in a human host as in a chicken.
Of course the anti-vaxxers are accustom to threading together some pretty sketchy evidence to create their "science" to start with, so why not let them have this.... Most of them are still on the "vaccinations cause autism" band wagon, which has about as much evidence as Neil Armstrong not having been to the moon.... Why should this little s
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Only if you think Chickens and Humans share enough commonality in our immune systems and the viruses that infect us will act the same in a human host as in a chicken.
If humans and chickens didn't share the biological basis for virus and antibody action, then testing vaccines on chickens would be a waste of time. As animals that evolved on planet Earth, we both have the same mechanisms for mutations, virus replication, and antibody systems, even if the biology isn't identical and not every virus that will infect a chicken will have the same effect on a human. If humans and chickens do NOT share enough commonality, then why do they call it "chicken pox"?
It's ridiculous
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It's just as ridiculous to claim that a study on chickens means the same thing happens in humans....
Does it mean it's worth looking into in primates? Sure... But it's not time to break out in unified song that such stuff happens in humans and all this vaccination stuff is BAD BAD BAD...
By the Way "Chicken Pox" is in no way related to chickens... Nobody really knows why the word "chicken" is in the name to start with. It didn't come from chickens nor does it infect chickens.... Some theories say it's nam
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It's just as ridiculous to claim that a study on chickens means the same thing happens in humans....
"Can happen" is not "does happen".
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Got to love a joker like you..
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Not nearly as bad as some viruses. Those actually can change your DNA. They are called retro-viruses.
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Yes. Don't vaccinate them. So they will die faster.
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