Posted on 03/21/2005 12:12:21 AM PST by neverdem
The invisible "chain of transmission" of rubella virus has been broken in the United States. With it disappears a disease that a little more than a generation ago struck fear in the heart of every pregnant woman.
Fewer than 10 people a year in this country now contract the infection known popularly as German measles. Since 2002, all cases have been traceable to foreigners who carried the virus in from abroad.
Between those rare events, however, no rubella virus has circulated in the United States because the bug simply cannot find enough susceptible hosts. After years of assiduous vaccination, virtually the entire U.S. population is immune.
Mild and often entirely unnoticed in children, rubella infection can be devastating to developing fetuses. A woman infected with the virus in the first three months of pregnancy will probably suffer miscarriage, or deliver a stillborn or permanently disabled child. In the last great U.S. epidemic of rubella -- 40 years ago, before there was a vaccine against the disease -- about 12,000 babies were born deaf or deaf and blind.
The outbreak so swelled the number of congenitally deaf Americans that Gallaudet University, the District's educational institution for the hearing-impaired, eventually acquired a second campus to accommodate them.
"This is a milestone," said Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It is a major step forward in our ability to eliminate this problem in the Western Hemisphere, and then in the world." She will announce rubella's disappearance from the United States at the opening this morning of the National Immunization Conference here.
The disease's decline began after the introduction of rubella vaccine in 1969. The infection's virtual disappearance, however, required more than high levels of immunization in the United States. The disease also needed to become less common...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
DU will probably start a thread about how this is more evidence of Bush's anti-environmental policies.
Some good news!
Or how it's devastating to the deaf community. Or how the Rubella virus should be put on the endangered species list and its habitat protected.
Seriously, I saved a copy on one of their thread where the story was about how fit the President is and how the Secret Service agents have problems keeping up with him in the summer heat. I read it thinking that finally there would be some praise of him for keeping fit and providing a great example for the rest of us. But would you know it, they condemned him! Here's a sample:
Reptiles get more energetic in the heatAnd many more similar childish comments.
Hopefully he'll have a heat stroke
he is emotionally immature....kids can run longer...
He sure isn't reviewing security reports
Well, that just proves he's an idiot!
He should try running in full military gear
Why would Satan be bothered by heat?
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
A few million undocumented aliens should undo this development in no time.
I doubt it has been eliminated. Personally, I don't think any disease has ever been totally done away with.
The world is a very, very big place. Every human being alive could be fit in the grand canyon with room to spare.
Just last fall I started a thread about Whooping Cough in Seattle and alot of people said "So what?"
The "so what" part is that children have been getting vaccinated against it for years, the standard DPT vaccination (Diptheria, Pertussis, Tetanus).
I agree these are a bit exotic. And you can bet that if there was a serious disruption in the water supply or whatever that simple cholera would claim hundreds of thousands.
As population density increases, the number of the mutations of the pathogens goes up, aided by the survivors of the antibiotics and viral suppressors.
It is only a matter of time before some bug evolves: very rapid reproduction rates, high degree of communicability, and non-immediate lethality.
The last one is the only good thing about Ebola. It kills people so fast they don't have a chance to spread it.
Care to place a wager on when the next case of smallpox will strike?
I doubt it...I suspect it just isn't diagnosed. There's a lot of folks out there refusing to get their kids vaccinated with MMR, and not to mention the illegal Mexicans etc...
According to the text, their definitons mean the following:
"Eliminated" means the disease is no longer endemic -- all new cases arise from imports. "Eradicated" means there are no cases from any source. Global eradication of rubella, while conceivable, is a distant goal.
Making the diagnosis will probably require specific antibody serology, viral culturing or DNA typing.
Only Russia and the US state that they maintain reference stocks of smallpox.
Does this mean that the evil MMR vaccine actually did some good?
Aren't you the cheery one! we are DOOMED!
I wouldn't bet on it. But then again, I would not be surprised in the least if some real old dude is a carrier, say some guy from the Congo or something.
Or some very long-lived animal species. Aren't there a couple of real nasties you can get from those cute little turtles they give away at carnivals? Turtles live till they're like 100 years old.
The history of disease is somewhat fascinating. Take syphilis, for example. Around the time of Columbus, there was a discomfortable skin rash type disease in the Honduras and Dominican Republic. It was a non-genetic form of syphilis. Kids would all get it when they were young, like the measles or chicken pox, they'd have a fever and skin blisters for a week or so, then get over it. And acquire lifelong immunity from the deadlier genital form.
It might be possible to eradicate a disease. But I wouldn't bet the farm on it. There is probably enough viable anthrax spores in the average persons back yard to get you good and sick.
A good friend who is very liberal didn't even know what I meant when I quoted something off DU to him. I think they are the crazy aunts and uncles of the Dem party, who are living on delusions that they are the "real" democrats.
You betcha!:>(
On the other hand, how many elected Republicans would stand by everything they read here?
Couldn't have put it better myself.
From the article:"........After years of assiduous vaccination, virtually the entire U.S. population is immune........" [emphasis mine]
This means that the indigenous population is now immune (hopefully) and any introduction of the virus by an 'Illegal' would NOT lead to an epidemic since the general population would not serve as good hosts and the virsus couldn't spread.
Unfortunately, with Illegal Immigration being what it is today, we will have to maintain that immunity by continuing vaccination of our population as long as people are entering the country unmonitored.
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