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thousands of nurses and other front-line healthcare workers are fighting mandatory flu immunization policies being put in place by some U.S. hospitals. The H1N1 pandemic, which has killed about 3,900 Americans so far, has stoked tensions over the best way to safeguard medical caregivers and their patients from flu. Nurses unions have won some early battles against compulsory vaccination. data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that only about 40 percent of U.S. healthcare workers ever get shots for seasonal influenza. mandating that healthcare workers get vaccines is misguided, ineffective and ultimately counterproductive. "There is no...

Brooklyn Mumps Outbreak Cases also reported in New Jersey Updated: Friday, 23 Oct 2009, 11:30 AM EDTPublished : Thursday, 22 Oct 2009, 4:55 PM EDT By Luke Funk MYFOXNY.COM - New York City's Health and Mental Hygiene Department is warning doctors about a mumps outbreak in Brooklyn.The cases started turning up in late August.The outbreak began among children from Borough Park who attended summer camp in Upstate New York.  Now, a similar outbreak is being reported in New JerseySo far, 57 confirmed or probable cases have been identified in New York. Cases of mumps have continued to occur in Borough...

Rumors swirl, but a Swedish prosecutor will only confirm a "preliminary investigation" into allegations that pharma giant AstraZeneca fixed the Nobels for financial gainThey say it's Sweden's silly season, a time when journalists are desperately seeking a new spin on a century-old story: the Nobel Prizes.Last week, as luminaries gathered for Nobel Week in Stockholm, Radio Sweden reported a potential scandal surrounding the Physiology or Medicine prize. Allegations were swirling, the state-owned station said, that London-based drug manufacturer AstraZeneca, PLC, had, in essence, paid off members of the Nobel voting committee to help secure a win for Harald zur Hausen...

Passionate intensity, but little rationality, in the anti-immunization movement Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, by Paul A. Offit (Columbia University Press, 328 pp., $24.95) For some reason, the immunization of children has always aroused opposition of almost religious fervor. For example, a mass movement led resistance to smallpox vaccination in Britain for 70 years and was supported by intellectuals of the stature of George Bernard Shaw, who never believed in the germ theory of disease and thought that Pasteur and Lister were charlatans. Politicians have won or lost elections on their attitude...

ABC Show Will Go on, Over Protest by Doctors By EDWARD WYATT Published: January 29, 2008 ABC said on Monday it would include a disclaimer about the plot line of the debut episode of the drama “Eli Stone,� which links childhood vaccines to autism, and direct viewers to a government Web site that discredits such a link. ABC’s decision follows a call by the American Academy of Pediatrics for ABC to cancel the opening episode of “Eli Stone,� which is scheduled to be broadcast at 10 p.m. Thursday. In a letter to ABC executives on Friday, Dr. Renee R....

Hundreds of grumbling parents facing a threat of jail lined up at a courthouse Saturday to either prove that their school-age kids already had their required vaccinations or see that the youngsters submitted to the needle. The get-tough policy in the Washington suburbs of Prince George's County was one of the strongest efforts made by any U.S. school system to ensure its youngsters receive their required immunizations.

In a puzzling and potentially troubling development, an AIDS vaccine tested in a closely watched trial might have increased the risk among vaccine recipients of becoming infected with H.I.V., researchers reported yesterday at a scientific meeting in Seattle. But the researchers said not enough data existed to determine the meaning of the findings about the vaccine, which is made by Merck. The increased risk was principally among a group of people who had pre-existing levels of immunity to a common cold virus known as adenovirus type 5, which was modified to become a critical part of the vaccine. Researchers emphasized...

The world’s most promising malaria vaccine has been shown to work in infants less than a year old, the most vulnerable group, according to a study being published today. The study, being published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, was small, comprising only 214 babies in Mozambique, and intended to show only that the vaccine was safe at such young ages. But it also indicated that the risk of catching malaria was reduced by 65 percent after the full course of three shots. “We’re now a step closer to the realization of a vaccine that can protect African infants,”...

Yet another study has found that a controversial vaccine preservative appears to be harmless. But the study is unlikely to end the increasingly charged debate about vaccine safety. The study examined whether thimerosal — a mercury-containing vaccine preservative that was almost entirely eliminated from childhood vaccines by 2002 — is associated with neurological or certain psychological problems in children ages 7 to 10. Some parents’ groups and prominent legislators contend that thimerosal has caused an epidemic of childhood autism. Several studies have examined this question and found no evidence that thimerosal is associated with autism. The most recent study did...

A much-heralded H.I.V. vaccine has failed to work in a large clinical trial, dealing another serious setback to efforts to stop the AIDS epidemic. The vaccine’s developer, Merck, said yesterday that it had halted test vaccinations after the vaccine failed to prevent infection or reduce the severity of infection among volunteers who became infected during the trial. The trial was closely watched because experts considered the vaccine one of most promising to be tested on people so far. This was also the first of a new class of H.I.V. vaccine to get this far in clinical trials. The failure of...

Theodore Dalrymple: Thanks for the Immunity - Maurice Hilleman was one of the twentieth century’s unsung heroes. 20 July 2007 Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases, by Paul A. Offit (Collins, 272 pp., $26.95) Considering the practical effect they have upon our lives, great scientists are seldom as famous as people of equivalent stature in other fields. Apart from a few iconic figures, such as Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, most are completely unrecognizable to us; you could walk a long way before finding anyone who could tell you who invented the transistor or discovered the insect...

The first vaccine against avian flu won government approval yesterday, even as federal officials conceded its usefulness in a flu pandemic might be limited. The vaccine, made by Sanofi Pasteur, is directed against the H5N1 strain of influenza virus, which some public health experts say could possibly spark a deadly epidemic of flu in humans. The federal government has already stockpiled enough of the vaccine to treat 6.5 million people. But yesterday’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration means the vaccine is no longer considered experimental and therefore could be dispensed during a pandemic without requiring each recipient to...

BALTIMORE, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- U.S. states that have easily obtained personal belief exemptions for school immunization requirements have higher rates of new cases of pertussis. All states and the District of Columbia require children entering school to provide documentation that they have met the state vaccine requirements, but as of March 2006, all states permitted medical exemptions to school and daycare immunization requirements. Saad B. Omer, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and colleagues analyzed state-level rates of non-medical exemptions at school entry from 1991 through 2004 and data for incidence of pertussis, or whooping cough...

Nuns and Jews, cow warts and rabbit horns. The common link: they were all crucial elements in the search for the world’s newest vaccine. There are fascinating stories behind every advance in medicine, be it hand washing or brain surgery. But the 70-year history behind the creation of a vaccine against human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer, is more fraught than most with blind alleys, delicate moments, humor and triumph. Although cervical cancer is being beaten in rich countries thanks to Pap smears, it is still a great killer of the world’s poor. Fulminating tumors that can hemorrhage the womb...

DECEMBER 5, 2005. UPDATE (12/6): During my appearance on the Noory show last night, I also pointed out that, because of the enormous PR and propaganda blitz concerning "the imminent--could be--may be" bird flu pandemic, Senate Bill 1873 has a chance of passing into law. THIS is one of the payoffs from all that propaganda. Establish, on the basis of no fact, the illusion of a pandemic---and then bring this heinous, unconstitutional, and repellent bill into the Congress. snip This is a bad one, folks. It will give the federal government---if Senate Bill 1873 passes---the right to shove drugs and...

NEWARK, N.J. -- An infant died Thursday after being stricken at a downtown office of the state child welfare agency, police said. The month-old boy, who has been in foster care since birth, had just arrived about noon at an office of the state Division of Youth and Family Services from a doctor's visit. He had received immunizations for hepatitis B and polio at the doctor's, said DYFS spokesman Andy Williams. (snip) "It appears the baby had a reaction to an immunization," Williams said. An autopsy is to be done to determine the cause of death, police said. (snip)

I love L.A., but every so often I come across something that makes me think maybe people here really are crazier than average. Take this horrifying Sept. 24 Los Angeles Times story about Christine Maggiore, an influential HIV-positive activist who believes that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, isn’t infectious, shouldn’t be treated with “toxic” anti-retroviral drugs like AZT and certainly needn’t prevent HIV-positive mothers like herself from breastfeeding. In May, Maggiore’s three-year-old daughter Eliza died of AIDS-related pneumonia. Her regular doctors were two pediatricians popular with the Hollywood crowd: Paul Fleiss, the anti-circumcision crusader and tax-evading father of Hollywood madam Heidi...

ATLANTA, June 30 - To reduce the rising number of whooping cough cases in this country, a panel advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Thursday that a new booster vaccine be routinely given to all 11- and 12-year-olds. During a two-day meeting here, the 15-member panel, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, also strengthened recommendations on vaccines against hepatitis B and chickenpox. The booster vaccine for whooping cough, or pertussis, is needed because immunity to it wanes 5 to 10 years after the initial vaccination. But an additional shot will not be needed because the...

When Jeanna Giese, 15, arrived at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin last October with rapidly worsening neurological symptoms, the fact that she had handled a bat a month earlier raised the possibility that she had rabies. Dr. Rodney E. Willoughby Jr., who examined Jeanna, did not think it was likely. But as a pediatric infectious disease specialist, he called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to seek the agency's help in performing rabies tests. Dr. Willoughby told the C.D.C. rabies expert that over a five-day period Jeanna had developed fatigue, tingling and numbness in her left hand, double vision, an...

Whooping Cough Outbreak Communities throughout the U.S. are experiencing whooping cough (pertussis) outbreaks - the worst in 40 years. If the school nurse or the health department informs you that there is a pertussis outbreak in your school or community, you may need to call your pediatrician. The school or health department will tell you if your child was directly exposed and requires antibiotics. Health departments across the country are acting quickly to prevent the spread of pertussis, so your cooperation in contacting your pediatrician is crucial. Please follow the instruction of the health department. The care of children in...

An experimental vaccine can reduce both the incidence and the severity of shingles by more than half, doctors reported yesterday, in a development that could spare hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans from an extremely painful disease. The effectiveness of the vaccine was determined in an unusually large clinical trial involving more than 38,500 people over the age of 60, the group most prone to shingles, a skin and nerve infection. "I think the results are quite clinically significant," said Dr. Michael N. Oxman, the leader of the study, which is being published today in The New England Journal of...

Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, a microbiologist who developed vaccines for mumps, measles, chickenpox, pneumonia, meningitis and other diseases, saving tens of millions of lives, died yesterday at a hospital in Philadelphia. He was 85. The cause was cancer, said a son-in-law, Greg Slamowitz. Raised on a farm in Montana, Dr. Hilleman credited much of his success to his boyhood work with chickens, whose eggs form the foundation of so many vaccines. Much of modern preventive medicine is based on Dr. Hilleman's work, though he never received the public recognition of Salk, Sabin or Pasteur. He is credited with having developed...

For six months last year, Jill Wilson had a persistent cough. "It was so harsh and deep that I broke ribs," she said. Various medical specialists told Ms. Wilson, an otherwise fit 60-year-old, that she had bronchitis, asthma, allergies and perhaps even a serious lung disorder known as interstitial pulmonary fibrosis. "All wrong," said Ms. Wilson, a retired president of a real estate management company who lives in San Antonio. It wasn't until she saw an infectious disease expert that Ms. Wilson learned that she had pertussis, or whooping cough. Commonly thought of as a childhood illness controlled by routine...

Responding to growing concerns about its ability to monitor the side effects of vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided last week to separate its national immunization program, which advocates vaccination, from its vaccine safety branch, which monitors the potential risks of the vaccines. The action comes at a time of increasing public outcry over the government's handling of drug safety issues. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would create a board to advise it on drug complications and to warn patients about unsafe drugs. Critics of the disease-control agency have argued for...

The Chiron Corporation said yesterday that it had received a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration demanding more information about the company's plans to fix widespread sanitary problems at its flu vaccine factory in Liverpool, England. The letter comes after an inspection of the plant by the F.D.A. in October, during which the agency found many problems, including bacterial contamination and lax quality-control procedures. Citing similar findings, British regulators suspended Chiron's manufacturing license for three months in early October, eliminating half of the United States' expected supply of flu shots for this winter. This week, the British regulators...

In ordering a new $877 million anthrax vaccine last month, the federal government said it was a major step toward creating a "bioshield" to protect Americans from germ warfare. But delivering that protection may be difficult: the vaccine is unproven in humans, the maker has legal and accounting troubles, and health officials are not prepared to distribute the vaccine quickly if it is needed. Bush administration officials, as well as the top executives at VaxGen, the manufacturer in California, say they are confident they can fulfill their promise. "This program needs to be a success for all of us -...

The threat, not well understood outside the medical community, has been rendered with authoritative starkness since news broke of the flu vaccine shortage. Lives are at risk. Every year, we are told, influenza kills multitudes of vulnerable people, and the death toll is often repeated: 36,000 die annually in the United States alone. The lethal efficiency of the flu has come as a surprise to many, it turns out, because almost no one is ever officially classified as dying of influenza. There is no public national accounting of who had influenza listed on their death certificate. But of the roughly...

A committee of experts meeting in Atlanta will debate today whether the government can afford to pay for a vaccine that could save the lives of nearly 3,000 people, many of them teenagers, from deaths caused over the next decade by a virulent bacterial meningitis. The price of the new vaccine will most likely be $80 a dose. Vaccinating all 40 million people from age 11 to 20, as some experts have suggested, would cost the government $3.5 billion next year. That is more than $1 million a life spared, far more than health officials are normally willing to spend....

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals doesn't make flu shots anymore, and it doesn't miss them one bit. For two decades, Wyeth made injectable influenza vaccine at a plant in Marietta, Pa. For the winter of 2002-03, it made 21 million doses in a labor-intensive, time-crunched process and shipped them to clinics and doctors' offices early in the fall. But it turned out a lot fewer people wanted it. Flu vaccine can't be saved from year to year. So, sometime the next spring Wyeth threw away 7 million unsold doses, for a loss of $30 million. It then quit making flu shots. It eventually...

This article was reported by Denise Grady, Lizette Alvarez, Gardiner Harris and Andrew Pollack and was written by Ms. Grady. Scene by disheartening scene, the spectacle of a severe shortage of flu vaccine is unfolding around the country. Last week, elderly and chronically ill people waited in line for hours to get flu shots; some were turned away. One died, after hitting her head when she passed out or fell while waiting. Price gougers demanded $800 for $60 vials of vaccine. States threatened to fine or jail doctors and nurses who gave shots to anyone not in the high-risk groups....

For the first time, researchers say, a vaccine against malaria has shown that it can save children from infection or death. The vaccine, tested on thousands of children in Mozambique, was hardly perfect: It protected them from catching the disease only about 30 percent of the time and prevented it from becoming life-threatening only about 58 percent of the time. But because malaria kills more than a million people a year, 700,000 of them children, even partial protection would be a public health victory. The disease, caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes, is found in 90 countries, and drug-resistant...

The Justice Department has started an investigation of the Chiron Corporation, whose British factory where flu vaccine was being manufactured was shut down last week, depriving the United States of nearly half the flu shots it was expecting for this winter. Chiron, a California biotechnology company, said yesterday that it had received a grand jury subpoena from the United States attorney's office in Manhattan requesting documents related to its flu vaccine and to the suspension of manufacturing at its Liverpool factory by British regulators. The company, which said it would cooperate with the investigation, provided no further information and the...

BANGKOK, Sept. 29 - With Thai and international experts confirming the first probable human-to-human transmission of a virulent strain of avian influenza in this country, public health officials around the world are facing major hurdles as they try to prepare for a possible pandemic. Scientists say they cannot predict how quickly, if at all, the strain may develop the ability to spread easily among people, and whether it will remain as lethal as it has proven so far. The strain, A(H5N1), has killed 30 of the 42 Southeast Asians it infected in the past year, and millions of chickens and...

REUTERS New evidence rebuts a controversial theory that the AIDS pandemic was touched off by contaminated polio vaccines used in the 1950's in what was then the Belgian Congo, American scientists reported yesterday. The theory holds that the vaccines were tainted with chimpanzee tissue that contained an ancestor of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. But in a study published yesterday in the journal Nature, a team of researchers led by Dr. Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona said it had discovered a new strain of chimpanzee virus near Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo that is very...

A federal judge ruled Jan. 7 that the Defense Department could again legally administer anthrax immunizations to troops. That same day, DoD personnel chief Dr. David S.C. Chu noted in a departmentwide memorandum that military commanders "should immediately resume the anthrax vaccination program." The department's anthrax vaccine immunization program had been in hiatus since Dec. 23, after an injunction granted the previous day by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia caused DoD to suspend the program. The department, Chu wrote in the memo, "remains convinced that the AVIP complies with all legal requirements, and there is now...

Anthrax Vaccine Safe, Effective, Health Chief Says By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON -- With almost a million shots given, the anthrax immunization is proving to be one of the safest vaccination program on record, said Dr. Sue Bailey, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “The vaccine that we are administering to our troops for protection against anthrax is effective and entirely safe,” Bailey said during a Pentagon interview. She said service members are experiencing few serious adverse reactions from the shots. The most recent reports show only 14 reactions were serious enough that the service...

By Sandra Jontz, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Wednesday, December 24, 2003 ARLINGTON, Va. — The Pentagon isn’t sure how it will deal with troops who refuse to get the anthrax vaccine now that a federal judge has temporarily banned the Defense Department’s policy that it be mandatory.“We are considering all options,” said William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, adding he did not know if troops would continue to face punishment if they refuse the vaccine.While officials work it out, the Pentagon still is administering anthrax vaccines to troops deploying to high-risk areas, but on a voluntary...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 25, 2003 Contact: Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director Children of God for Life (727) 538-5558 Email: debi@cogforlife.org http://www.cogforlife.org MERCK REQUESTS SHAREHOLDERS VOTE AGAINST RESOLUTION TO STOP THE USE OF ABORTED FETAL TISSUE IN VACCINES (Clearwater, FL; Front Royal, VA) Pro-life organizations, Children of God for Life and Human Life International charged today that pharmaceutical giant, Merck & Co. has betrayed their stockholders by refusing to include language in Shareholder Proposal No. 7. that would have revealed: - An organized boycott of all Merck products - A resolution by the Catholic Medical Association to use alternatives to their...

LifeSite Daily News Thursday January 30, 2003 NEW WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION CHIEF INVOLVED IN POPULATION CONTROL VACCINE SCANDAL GENEVA, January 30, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dr. Jong Wook Lee, a relatively unknown World Health Organization (WHO) insider beat out high profile competitors to become the head of the World Health Organization Tuesday. Other candidates for the post included Dr. Julio Frenk Mora - currently Mexico's Minister of Health and Dr. Pascoal Mocumbi - the Prime Minister of Mozambique. However, Lee's work with WHO included being in charge of and weathering one of the most scandalous accusations to be brought against the...

CDC Says Smallpox Plan Ready to Go By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health officials said on Friday they have confidence in their plan to immunize 400,000 emergency workers against smallpox and were taking into account worries about side-effects from the vaccine. Earlier on Friday an Institute of Medicine (news - web sites) panel recommended that the plan move slowly, and questioned loopholes about who pays when people inevitably become sick, disabled and even are killed by the vaccine. The plan is to quickly vaccinate upward of 400,000 "first responders," and eventually millions of health...

June 22, 2002 Smallpox Proposal Raises Ethical Issues By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN TLANTA, June 21 — The decision by a government advisory panel to recommend smallpox vaccination for about 15,000 health care and law enforcement workers raises logistical and ethical issues involving not just the people who will get the vaccine but also those who will come in contact with them. If experience from the time when smallpox vaccine was routinely administered to the public is a guide, doctors say, some of the 15,000 "first responders" who receive the vaccine may suffer serious — potentially even deadly — complications. Steps...

Broader flu shots for kids ordered By M.A.J. McKenna / Cox News Service 06-21-02 ATLANTA -- Federal health authorities moved one step closer Thursday to requiring flu shots for all children older than 6 months, to protect them and the adults who live with them. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which sets vaccination policy for the government, voted to include young children's flu shots in the public programs that provide vaccinations for low-income and underinsured children. The decision is not binding on private doctors or health care plans, but it is meant to serve as strong encouragement. "It is...

5-2-2 This Emergency Health Bill - Mandated Vaccination and other demands, is pending (or passed) in every state, but under different names. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said that all Americans should know that they "have their name on a vaccine shot in our inventory." Hope you can stop this in your state-- we couldn't. Sponsored by Rep. Greg Underheim and Rep. Frank Urban-Wisconsin The Assembly Bill # 849, 850 without a name or titled, (Mandated Vaccinations/Emergency Health Powers Act ) was passed under Rep. Greg Underheims directions. Underheim deserves all the credit for the passage...