Posts tagged vaccine
HIV Vaccine?
Jul 14th
We are in the midst of a media explosion surrounding the possibility of a vaccine for HIV. For years this has seemed a hopeless situation, so a great deal of effort and money has been spent on the campaign to educate people about transmission and prevent infection. Unfortunately, according to recent reports (http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-07-12-hiv-vaccine-the-only-real-answer), the number of new infections is still an alarming 7400 per day! In addition, less than half of the 9.5 million people in low-middle income households infected with HIV have access to anti viral treatments.
These staggering statistics demonstrate very clearly that efforts to help infected individuals are available More >
Pharm Crops
Apr 19th
What if vaccines could be eaten instead of injected? Scientists began developing subunit vaccines in the late 1980s; these are vaccines which contain isolated pathogen proteins. It seems that proteins from viruses, bacteria, and parasites can trigger an immune response (are antigenic) even when the pathogens are not present. Furthermore, these proteins can be antigenic when eaten, which has led scientists to explore whether we can genetically modify food sources to create edible vaccines.
Dr. Charles Arntzen (Co-Director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, The Biodesign Institute and Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Chair, Arizona State University) has spearheaded the More >
The Autism-Vaccine Link and Trusting Science
Feb 8th
Almost twelve years after its original publication, The Lancet medical journal has formally retracted the infamous paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues that had posited a link between vaccines and autism. This follows a partial retraction in 2004, and succeeds the stern judgment by the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel “that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et. al. are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.”
So that finally puts the autism-vaccination link to bed, right? Wrong. To read some responses in the blogosphere, one could assume that The Lancet had declared war on all More >
