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<p>LOS ANGELES, April 2 (UPI) -- Federal health officials say they plan no warning about a mercury-laced preservative in some flu vaccines that go to thousands of infants this fall.</p> <p>Officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there is no proof of harm from exposure to the preservative thimerosal, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. They confirm they won't advise parents and doctors to choose a mercury-free version of the flu vaccine.</p>

The military's anthrax and smallpox immunizations are safe to administer to service members, a senior military medical officer told 2004 Tricare conference attendees here Jan. 28. "The vaccination programs we operate are designed to keep troops healthy, to help troops get back home safely," said Army Col. John D. Grabenstein, deputy director of clinical operations for the Military Vaccine Agency. Concerns about the safety of the vaccines, Grabenstein said, have been thoroughly checked, with findings provided to federal health officials and civilian physicians. Service members, he explained, are medically screened before receiving the vaccines. Very few serious ill effects have...

The Defense Department will stop anthrax vaccinations until the legal situation around a recent court decision is resolved, defense officials said. Defense officials and lawyers with the Justice Department are examining a decision handed down by a federal judge in Washington Dec. 22 that ordered DoD to stop anthrax vaccinations for U.S. service members without their consent, Pentagon officials said Dec. 23. "The lawyers are examining it," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said during a Pentagon press conference Dec. 23. "And at the appropriate time, they will be making a recommendation as to the way forward." DoD still considers anthrax...

<p>Earlier this week, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued its fourth report to Congress on the smallpox vaccination program. While the committee that produced it made a few worthwhile recommendations, it also took far too cautious an approach to preparing Americans against a potential attack.</p>

The following vaccines are grown on aborted fetal tissue - rabies, some mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis a, smallpox (some), ipv. One of the single measles vaccines is further attenuated in diploid cells This can be seen in the package inserts - referred to as diploid cells

Vaccines and other diseases. I participated in a thread recently that tried to blame the increase in autism on vaccinations. I have no personal experience with autism, but I went through the very same thing when my son was diagnosed with Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes at the age of five. He is now 26 and has no signs of complications. Naturally, I read everything I could find about diabetes. The incidence of Type 1 diabetes has increased dramatically in recent years. So have many other auto-immune diseases. Some people have blamed the increase on vaccinations. Others on NOT breast-feeding. Others...

After learning some popular vaccines are developed from aborted fetal tissue, Shannon Law decided her three children should not get a chicken pox immunization. The state of Arkansas, where the immunization is mandatory, disagreed. The Little Rock mother argued that to give her children the vaccine would be a violation of her Catholic faith. Because abortion is a grave sin, she said, to expose her children to the vaccine would be tantamount to complicity in the original 1966 abortions used in the product’s research and development.Arkansas health officials denied the exemptions and threatened to keep two of Law’s children from...

Scientists cheered in 1972 when Congress created the Office of Technology Assessment, a PhD-laden think tank that was dedicated to providing policy analyses and technical evaluations for the House and Senate. They wept in 1995, when, in a burst of political pique and boastful penny-pinching, Newt Gingrich and his Republican Revolution abolished OTA. Resuscitation efforts started then, and continue--in futility. Thus, in the current Congress, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), one of the few scientists in Congress, reintroduced the Office of Technology Reestablishment Act. Like its predecessors, the bill disappeared into the black hole of legislative losers, never heard of again....

GI reacts badly to smallpox vaccine By Laura Meckler, The Associated Press February 1, 2003 WASHINGTON - One soldier inoculated against smallpox has suffered a potentially serious skin reaction to the vaccine, and officials are investigating whether a second ill soldier also is reacting to the shot, the Pentagon said Friday. It was the first report of any serious reaction among Americans receiving the vaccinations, which began in December for the military and are just now getting under way for civilians. The first case, a 30-year-old Army soldier at a U.S. base, was a skin reaction called generalized vaccinia, and...

Air Force Print News01/09/03 - WASHINGTON -- The Air Force chief of staff has directed the immediate implementation of the smallpox vaccination program. In a Jan. 6 policy memorandum to major command commanders, Gen. John P. Jumper outlined details of the commanders' force protection program against the deadly biological warfare agent. The first Air Force people to be vaccinated will be medical people and designated forces that constitute specific mission-critical capabilities. The identified medics include Smallpox Epidemiological Response Team members at Brooks City-Base, Texas, those responsible for administering the vaccine to other airmen, and base-level smallpox medical team members (medics...

Dangers, Experts Warn Against Vaccinating Children s smallpox vaccination for the public comes closer, many experts say the risky vaccine should not be offered to children and teenagers, even on a voluntary basis. While federal health officials have not yet said whether children would be vaccinated under the plan President Bush is to announce today, they and doctors who advise the government on smallpox policy suggested yesterday that in the absence of a smallpox attack, good sense dictated that only adults get preventive vaccinations. Vaccinating even part of a population can drastically slow an epidemic, experts said, and children are...

CHICAGO, Dec. 2 — The American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday issued revised recommendations for flu shots, saying for the first time that youngsters between the ages of 6 and 23 months should be vaccinated.

VASHON ISLAND, Wash. — Kate Packard, the school nurse here, has a nightmare she sums up in five words: "measles coming across the water." If measles did make the 20-minute ferry ride across Puget Sound from Seattle — hardly unthinkable, since a case occurred last year near a ferry terminal in West Seattle — public health officers say the whole Vashon Island school district could be shut down until the island's last case disappeared or an emergency vaccination drive took effect. Eighteen percent of Vashon Island's 1,600 primary school students have legally opted out of vaccination against childhood diseases, including...

Source: Emory University Health Sciences Center Date: 11/15/2002 Targeted Smallpox Vaccinations Could Be Effective Intervention Against Deliberate Attack Targeted vaccination of the close contacts of infected individuals following a smallpox outbreak could rival the effectiveness of mass vaccination, given a sufficiently high level of immunity within the population, according to a new study by biostatisticians at Emory University. The research is published in the Nov. 15 issue of Science. Since targeted vaccinations would lead to fewer adverse vaccine reactions and would prevent more cases of smallpox per dose of vaccine, a targeted strategy would be desirable given an equally effective...

Panel: Impure Polio Shots May Have Caused Cancer WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A monkey virus that contaminated some batches of polio (news - web sites) vaccine in the 1950s and 1960s had the potential to cause cancer, but there is not enough evidence to tell whether it actually did, a panel of experts reported on Tuesday. Studies do not seem to suggest that people who got the vaccine have experienced a higher rate of cancer, but the virus, called SV40, does have the potential to damage cells and turn them cancerous, the Institute of Medicine (news - web sites) panel said....

Millions of doses of the smallpox vaccine are to be stockpiled by the government to prepare for mass vaccination in the event of a bio-terrorist attack. The Department of Health said that while there was no evidence of a specific threat it was carrying out "intensive planning" just in case. Key health workers, including doctors and nurses, will be first to be offered the vaccine. They will form the first line of defence in any outbreak, caring for those taken ill in isolation.We should have in place enough vaccine to vaccinate on a mass population basis if necessary .... However,...

<p>The acceleration of a three-year-old outbreak of an exotic, mosquito-borne infection is worrying public health experts across the country. Louisiana has been hardest-hit this year by the West Nile virus, with at least 85 cases and eight deaths, but since infections were first found in the U.S. three years ago, cases have been discovered in 35 states and the District of Columbia. By next year, the virus is expected to cross the Rockies and spread to the Western states.</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - Though there is still no clear consensus, a majority of researchers told a quasi-governmental health panel Thursday that simian virus 40 (SV40) has become established in humans, and that it plays a role in causing cancer, including in people who had virus-contaminated polio vaccines in the 1950s and 1960s. The experts addressed the Institute of Medicine ( news - web sites)'s (IOM) Immunization Safety Committee, which met to hear the latest epidemiologic and lab data on SV40. In 2 to 3 months, the committee will issue a report, along with recommendations based on their assessment of...

Hospitals are usually eager to tout their expertise in treating various diseases. But there is little upside, it seems, in becoming St. Smallpox.Across the country, state and local officials developing smallpox-response plans at the behest of the federal government are discovering that hospitals are reluctant to be tapped for the duty. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that planners identify a "Type C," or facility for contagious smallpox patients, in each community or region, to be activated in the event of an outbreak. Such centers would house confirmed and probable cases.Hospitals, though, see little advantage in being designated...

<p>In a major shift in public health policy that underscores government concerns about bioterrorism, federal health officials are gathering enough smallpox vaccine to inoculate the entire country and are considering a widespread vaccination campaign.</p> <p>By December, according to public health leaders in Washington D.C., the U.S. government will have more than 100 million doses of the vaccine in hand, an amount they say could be effectively diluted to make the shots available to everyone in the country. An inoculation effort using the sometimes risky vaccine would be new to millions of Americans born after the United States stopped offering the shots in 1972.</p>