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Yet another panel of scientists has found no evidence that a popular vaccine causes autism. But despite the scientists’ best efforts, their report is unlikely to have any impact on the frustrating debate about the safety of these crucial medicines. “The M.M.R. vaccine doesn’t cause autism, and the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn’t,” Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, the chairwoman ... --snip-- The panel did conclude, however, that there are risks to getting the chickenpox vaccine that can arise years after vaccination. People who have had the vaccine can develop pneumonia, meningitis or hepatitis years later if the virus used...

GOP presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry is taking a lot of heat from some conservatives for issuing an executive order in 2007 that required middle-school-age girls to be vaccinated for HPV -- a sexually transmitted disease that is a main cause for cervical cancer. Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical Association (CMA), says his group sent a letter to Governor Perry at the time. While remaining neutral, the CMA told him they were not opposed to his mandate, as long it included an easy opt-out for parents -- which it did. "In most states, and Texas...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, under questioning from voters in recent days, has switched positions on a 2007 executive order he issued mandating the vaccination of all young girls before they enter sixth grade to ward off cervical cancer. Mr. Perry's order that Texas school girls receive the vaccine, Gardasil, made by Merck & Co., was overturned by the state legislature and never got off the ground. But it still has roiled conservatives and Christian groups for years. After long defending the decision, Mr. Perry has apologized repeatedly for the order since launching his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. As...

For years, Gov. Rick Perry has taken flak for his 2007 attempt to require girls to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, the most commonly sexually transmitted disease and the principal cause of cervical cancer. At the risk of angering fellow conservatives, Perry has always insisted he did the right thing. That unapologetic approach changed this weekend. A few hours after unveiling his campaign for president, Perry began walking back from one of the most controversial decisions of his more-than-10-year reign as Texas governor. Speaking to voters at a backyard party in New Hampshire, Perry said he was ill-informed when...

WASHINGTON, August 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The California legislature is now pushing through a bill to remove parental notification for children as young as 12 to receive the dangerous STD vaccine Gardasil. The American Life League reports that each treatment of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, has an average cost of over $360, a sum that would be footed by taxpayers. Gardasil, the most popular HPV vaccine, has been found to cause dangerous side effects and as many as twelve deaths in the United States alone. The state had attempted but failed in 2007 to mandate HPV vaccinations for all girls...

Nabi Biopharmaceuticals said Monday that its experimental anti-smoking vaccine NicVAX did not meet its main goal in a late-stage test, sending the company's shares plunging. The company said about 11 percent of patients who were received a dummy shot were able to quit smoking, and patients who were treated with NicVAX quit at a similar rate. Nabi said it is evaluating the data and waiting for results from a second late-stage study. "We are clearly surprised and deeply disappointed with the results of this first NicVAX Phase III trial," said President and CEO Raafat Fahim.

Christian Right leaders are not rallying behind Michele Bachmann for president and it’s “probably” because they are sexist, contends a writer for Time. .....“Totally unfair and inaccurate” is how Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America, described [Amy] Sullivan's characterization. Nance was invited to join the conference call but was unable to do so. “Social conservatives are ready for a woman president,” Nance said. “In fact, the McCain campaign really took off,” added Nance, “after Sarah Palin was nominated.” Nance remembered that during the 2008 election she was mostly standing on the sidelines until Palin was added to the...

When Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order in 2007 requiring all Texas girls to receive a vaccine against the human papillomavirus before entering the sixth grade, lawmakers balked and blocked it. Critics said the vaccine, Merck & Co.'s Gardasil, was too new to declare safe. Some said too that Perry's order would infringe on parental rights or give girls a false sense of security, leading them to be sexually active too young. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, one of Perry's opponents in the GOP gubernatorial primary, frequently slams Perry's stilled order. Perry has stood by his action, most recently casting...

Having read the history of Smallpox and the types of vaccine used in experimentation, I would like to debate on whether or not cowpox would be a better alternative than using the vaccine procedures that use live vaccine. Cowpox was after all the first vaccine used against Smallpox and wouldn't it be easier to gather and use, with a lower risk of failure or accidential infection with a fully active virus that would result in a full blown infection?

Triggers protective immune response while preventing fatal inflammationFebruary 22, 2011 — (BRONX, NY) — Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have developed an experimental vaccine that appears to protect against an increasingly common and particularly deadly form of pneumococcal pneumonia. Details of the new vaccine, which was tested in an animal model, are reported in a paper published today in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Pneumococcal pneumonia can occur when the lungs are infected with the bacterial species Streptococcus pneumoniae (also known as pneumococcus). "Like many microbes that cause pneumonia, pneumococcus is spread from person to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court ruled that federal law shields vaccine makers from product-liability lawsuits in state court seeking damages for a child's injuries or death from a vaccine's side effects. The high court on Tuesday ruled for Wyeth, which is now owned by Pfizer Inc, in a lawsuit brought by the parents of Hannah Bruesewitz, who suffered seizures as an infant after her third dose of a diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine in 1992. Pfizer and other vaccine makers had argued that a Supreme Court ruling for the plaintiffs could open the door to a flood of lawsuits -- many...

Davos, Switzerland (CNN) -- Microsoft founder Bill Gates sat down recently with CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta in Davos, Switzerland. The billionaire philanthropist was attending the World Economic Forum to push his mission of eradicating polio by 2012. Gates, through his foundation, also pledged $10 billion to provide vaccinations to children around the world within a decade. Gupta asked Gates for his thoughts about the alleged autism-vaccine connection. He also asked: Who holds ultimate accountability for the billions of dollars being spent on aid? Is a certain amount of corruption and fraud expected? Below is an excerpt of their...

A team at Oxford University has had success testing a vaccine that can neuter any strain of flu virus. Photograph: Science Photo Library The treatment ... targets a different part of the flu virus to traditional vaccines, meaning it does not need to be expensively reformulated every year to match the most prevalent virus that is circulating the world. Developed by a team led by Dr Sarah Gilbert at Oxford's Jenner Institute, the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains, instead of those that sit on the virus's external coat, which are liable...

Bill Gates speaks at the mHealth summit. WASHINGTON, DC, January 18, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the keynote address to the mHealth Summit held in November last year, Bill Gates introduced a plan to use cell phone technology to register every birth on the planet in a newborn vaccination database. Attributing the decline in the number of children who die before their fifth birthday from 20 million in 1960 to 8.5 million today to infant vaccination, Gates told the audience of more than 2,000 at the conference, “About one-third [of that improvement] is by increasing income. The majority has been through...

In 2005, Salon published online an exclusive story by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that offered an explosive premise: that the mercury-based thimerosal compound present in vaccines until 2001 was dangerous, and that he was "convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real." The piece was co-published with Rolling Stone magazine -- they fact-checked it and published it in print; we posted it online. In the days after running "Deadly Immunity," we amended the story with five corrections (which can still be found logged here) that went far in undermining Kennedy's exposé. At the...

TUESDAY, Jan. 11 (HealthDay News) -- The disgraced doctor who published a study more than 10 years ago claiming that a common childhood vaccine -- the measles-mumps-rubella inoculation -- causes autism may have been motivated more by money than conviction, investigators say. ..... in a three-part investigative series in the medical journal BMJ, Dr. Andrew Wakefield was retained by a lawyer seeking to extract money from vaccine manufacturers as his research was just beginning. He also allegedly applied for a patent for an alternative vaccine, set up a business to profit from that vaccine as well as diagnostic kits and...

On Wednesday, the British Journal of Medicine published the first of several articles detailing the systematic fraud Andrew Wakefield engaged in writing a study in 1998 claiming measles-mumps-rubella vaccine triggered autism in 12 children. News outlets have posted accounts of the fraud as 'breaking news." They also note Wakefield's false research led to fear of vaccines and to kids dying from lack of shots. Wakefield's fraud is beside the point. He was able to do so much damage for so long because the media, the scientific community, politicians and trial lawyers found it in their interest to believe and lionize...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- When Lesley Ley, an Oklahoma City-based practical nurse heard that a national company was hiring nurses to administer flu shots in a local mall, she jumped at the chance to make some extra money prior to a trip. Ley said she first became aware of the flu clinic, to be set up at Penn Square Mall, in September. She provided a copy of an email that was circulated and stated: “WellCheck will be operating its 2010 seasonal flu shot program in 150 malls in 35 states.” The email was sent out on Sept. 3, 2010 by a...

Anyone who thinks the vaccine case now before the Supreme Court is merely a matter of giving injured plaintiffs their day in court has misconceived the stakes for those who reap the benefits of vaccines. The U.S. Supreme Court has just heard oral arguments in the case of Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, in which the parents of a severely disabled child wish to sue the manufacturer of a childhood vaccine for causing their child’s disability. At this stage, the dispute is over a purely legal issue: the scope of federal preemption. The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act largely removed childhood...

I just got my flu shot on Tuesday and for the past couple of days I have been lightheaded and having mild nasuea. I checked and discovered that the swine flu strain was included in this years vaccine, even though I asked the nurse if this was for the seasonal flu only. This is also the first time I have ever had a reaction to a vaccine.