Vaccines save lives
August is National Immunization Awareness Month (NIAM) and this year vaccines and immunology are probably on many more people’s minds than usual – for obvious reasons. While medical professionals and researchers work tirelessly on developing and testing a COVID-19 vaccine (amongst others), let’s briefly remind ourselves how far we have come in such a brief segment of human history.
224 years, 40 vaccines
The first vaccine, developed in 1796 for smallpox, was not put into mass production until many years later – but was a monumental breakthrough in Medicine. It took almost another 100 years before the next vaccines ...
Source: GIDEON blog - August 6, 2020 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Kristina Symes Tags: News Source Type: blogs
Vaccines for COVID-19 moving closer
As the world reels from illnesses and deaths due to COVID-19, the race is on for a safe, effective, long-lasting vaccine to help the body block the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The three vaccine approaches discussed here are among the first to be tested clinically in the United States.
How vaccines induce immunity: The starting line
In 1796, in a pastoral corner of England, and during a far more feudal and ethically less enlightened time, Edward Jenner, an English country surgeon, inoculated James Phipps, his gardener’s eight-year-old son, with cowpox pustules obtained from the arm of a milkmaid. It was widely believed ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 21, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Shiv Pillai, PhD, MBBS Tags: Coronavirus and COVID-19 Health Infectious diseases Vaccines Source Type: blogs
Planning for Future Pandemics Including Smallpox Outbreaks: Interview with Dr. Phil Gomez, CEO, SIGA Technologies
The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant global consequences, with healthcare systems stretched to their limits, a growing death toll, and economic devastation as economies came grinding to a halt.
The pandemic
and its aftereffects will be with us for some time to come, but this isn’t the
first pandemic humanity has weathered, and it won’t be the last. Given accelerating
advances in medical technology, there is plenty to discuss in terms of how we
can be better prepared for the next infectious disease event.
While COVID-19 is widely thought to have arisen naturally through transmission between an animal and a hu...
Source: Medgadget - May 27, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Medicine Public Health Source Type: blogs
A digital vaccination scar for the 21st century
In the 1800s, smallpox ravaged the world. Fortunately, a vaccine had been developed that could protect individuals. This vaccine left a scar at the site of injection and identified the individuals as “immune.” As we look towards the future of the COVID-19 pandemic, unless the virus burns out or an effective therapeutic intervention becomes available, […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 23, 2020 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/kumanan-wilson" rel="tag" > Kumanan Wilson, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions COVID-19 coronavirus Infectious Disease Source Type: blogs
The Unlikely Rise Of Science And Digital Health During COVID-19
Over the past weeks, we have covered many aspects of coronavirus. From symptoms and digital health technologies, artificial intelligence, the rise of telemedicine and investigating why some countries have managed to keep the pandemic under control, through issues of privacy and mental challenges of healthcare professionals. We analyzed the possible outcomes of what will, what can and what should change in our lives after COVID-19 and even created a Handbook on the fight against the pandemic.
But one of the most important aspects in all this is how different leaders around the world have responded to this pandemic. Were ...
Source: The Medical Futurist - May 5, 2020 Category: Information Technology Authors: Judit Kuszkó Tags: Artificial Intelligence Digital Health Research Future of Medicine science covid19 leadership coron Thunberg Fauci Trump Topol Barabasi Brilliant Harari Queen Source Type: blogs
COVID-19: Physicians in Shackles
By ANISH KOKA, MD
A number of politically tinged narratives have
divided physicians during the pandemic. It would be unfortunate if politics
obscured the major problem brought into stark relief by the pandemic: a system
that marginalizes physicians and strips them of agency.
In practices big and small, hospital-employed
or private practice, nursing homes or hospitals, there are serious issues
raising their heads for doctors and their patients.
No masks for you
When I walked into my office Thursday, March 12th, I assembled the office staff for the first time to talk about COVID. The prior weekend had been awa...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 2, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Medical Practice Physicians Anish Koka medical autonomy Pandemic Source Type: blogs
The real cost, and longer term implications, of the Wuhan coronavirus
It ' s too soon to know for sure how the tale of the novel coronavirus will play out,but at this point we have a pretty good idea. A stipulation in both of the scenarios at the linked essay is that yeah, it gets loose into the wild and eventually can show up anywhere in the world. I think that ' s pretty much definitely going to happen if it hasn ' t already.Scenario number 1, and most likely, in my view, it will just be one more virus that causes what amounts to a common cold and in a few people who are otherwise debilitated goes on to be complicated by pneumonia. In that case, for a year or two it will circulate as a nov...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 5, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Childhood Vaccination in the United States: The Current Landscape
The topic of childhood vaccination has
become increasingly tendentious in recent years. While ‘vaccine hesitancy’—a term that
encompasses a wide range of attitudes, from those who have some misgivings
about vaccination to those who refuse all vaccinations for their children—has
existed ever since Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine in 1798, many
point to a now retracted 1998 paper in The Lancet as the origin of today’s
particular brand of vaccine hesitancy.
In the United States, there are three ways
by which a child can be exempt from vaccination. State
laws differ ...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 19, 2019 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bioethics Today Tags: Health Care Adolescent Health Author: Bunch syndicated vaccines Source Type: blogs
Could it really be this easy?
If you take blood pressure medication (and a lot of people do, or should)a new study find that taking them at night instead of morning cuts your risk of cardiac events in half, including death. Normally we like to provide information on absolute rather than relative risk, so here it is:Commenting on the findings, Tim Chico, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Sheffield, UK, said, “The results are impressive. From the 19 084 people who took part and were randomised to taking their tablets at either bedtime or morning, just over 9% suffered a heart problem over the 6.4 years of the study. Of these, ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 1, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The history of antivaccination sentiment
In 1902, a smallpox outbreak infected thousands of people across the northeastern United States. That year, in Massachusetts alone, 2,314 people were infected, and 284 died. This was not unusual for early-twentieth-century Massachusetts: The smallpox vaccine had been invented more than a century earlier and had markedly reduced the incidence of the disease, but the diminished […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 8, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/caroline-castleman" rel="tag" > Caroline Castleman < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions Public Health & Policy Source Type: blogs
Why Measles Making the News Is a Sign of Progress
A set of measles outbreaks in Washington state, New York City, and elsewhere, is making national headlines and frightening parents around the United States. Counter-intuitively, measles making the news is a sign of progress. Not long ago, measles was so common that it was simply not newsworthy. Suffer ing from the extremely infectious disease, which causes spotty rashes and a hacking cough, was widespread and often deadly.It was once the case that even royalty fell victim to diseases now easily preventable with routine shots given during childhood. Measles killed the un-vaccinated King Kamehameha II of Hawaii, a...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 15, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Chelsea Follett Source Type: blogs
The Stupid . . .
.. it burns. A few years back I devoted multiple posts to the Upper Class Twit of the Century, delusional moron Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He returns unwelcomed to our consciousness in the midst of the measles epidemic, which as a reader points out iseven more rampant in Europe, particularly Ukraine, than in the U.S. This is a disease which could have been eradicated from the earth, like smallpox, if not for idiots like Kennedy and scammers like Andrew Wakefield.Unfortunately there are people who assign credibility to celebrities, including people whose only claim to fame is their parentage, so Kennedy ' s anti-vaccine campaign...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 8, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Criminal antivaxxer
Thirty years as a science writer, covering almost every #STEM beat at some point, I just received my first antivax death threat…
“Your criminal bastard david bradley published an article lying about the benefits of vaccinations. The only benefit is for the evil criminal government bastards running this planet who need to be executed! We know vaccines are nothing but toxic bioweapons ow because of Planet X and they are designed to make people too sick and stupid to pay attention! They also spread government-created designer diseases like when they AIDS in smallpox and hepatitis vaccines. So your evil lying bast...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - April 11, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs
The Far Right Goes Anti-Vax
A phenomenon which has always puzzled me is popular resistance to vaccination. It goes back to the very beginning, vaccination against smallpox, which was a terrible scourge that killed 30% of its victims and left the rest disfigured. When Edward Jenner proved in 1796 that inoculation with cowpox, which caused only mild disease, conferred immunity to smallpox, the world was given a priceless gift.Yet popular movements arose almost immediately to oppose vaccination, both in England and the U.S. Eventually smallpox vaccination became widely accepted, and smallpox was eradicated from the earth. Later, the terror of the polio ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 21, 2018 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 19th 2018
Fight Aging! provides a weekly digest of news and commentary for thousands of subscribers interested in the latest longevity science: progress towards the medical control of aging in order to prevent age-related frailty, suffering, and disease, as well as improvements in the present understanding of what works and what doesn't work when it comes to extending healthy life. Expect to see summaries of recent advances in medical research, news from the scientific community, advocacy and fundraising initiatives to help speed work on the repair and reversal of aging, links to online resources, and much more.
This content is...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 18, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
