To wipe out whooping cough, create a better vaccine

The Washington Post ^ | October 2, 2010 | Miranda Walker

[RogerFGay]

As a Californian and a student studying public health, I find the whooping cough resurgence in California extremely troubling ["Whooping cough makes a comeback," Health and Science, Sept. 28].

People who refuse to be vaccinated, though misguided, are easy scapegoats, but they are not the driving force behind this trend. In the short term, more needs to be done to encourage booster vaccines in teens and adults to protect the most vulnerable: infants too young to be vaccinated.

[Momto2]

My daughter got the vaccination and at about the age of 4 contracted Whooping Cough. Her pediatrician didn't seem surprised and said it happens all of the time.

[grania]

Yeah, let’s poison our kids with even more vaccines. Better yet, how about controlling our borders and who is in the US so these diseases don’t re-emerge?

[oh8eleven]

create a better vaccine
My guess is that there's nothing wrong with the current vaccine.
Too many whackos won't vaccinate their kids - and the border is still OPEN!!

[Don Corleone]

UNLIMITED illegal immigration is the culprit. We had Whooping Cough pretty much under control a generation ago.

[Crim]

All kinds of third world deceases we already wiped out in the US are making a comeback...

[Don Corleone]

UNLIMITED illegal immigration is the culprit. We had Whooping Cough pretty much under control a generation ago.

[exDemMom]

Some of the diseases currently prevented by vaccinations are always around us, and many of us even carry the causative germs. Although I agree that allowing illegal immigration to continue unabated is probably bringing in a lot of new diseases, it is not responsible for the resurgence of whooping cough. That is a direct consequence of parents refusing to vaccinate their children.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

"Our Diversity Is Our Strength" This epidemic is only a tiny taste of what is to come. Diseases about which Americans have never heard.

It is hard to believe that people are so enamored with equality that they will subject themselves and their loved ones to death by disease and violence.

[BenLurkin]

Try closing the borders.

[aNYCguy]

Yeah, let’s poison our kids with even more vaccines. Better yet, how about controlling our borders and who is in the US so these diseases don’t re-emerge?

The only thing keeping these diseases from re-emerging is vaccines. The only thing that drove these diseases into countrywide remission is vaccines.

If you would stop and think for one second, you'd realized that the only reason immigrants might bring these diseases into the country is that they are less likely to have been vaccinated.

[JohnBovenmyer]

No research was done at the Post! We already have a new, improved Pertussis vaccine. The first acellular Pertussis vaccines started to arrive in 1991. Actually eight such new vaccines were licensed from 1997 to 2008 as replacements for the old DPT vaccines. All are acellular Pertussis vaccines. The older cellular Pertussis components caused most of the reactions to the old DPTs. Even in the "good old days," where Pertussis was (inaccurately) perceived to be nearly absent, the risk of death or serious injury from those vaccines were far less than the risk of same from Pertussis. In addition to no longer having the risk of reactions to Pertussis cellular debris, these new vaccines are also thimerosal free, removing another falsely maligned issue. The "vaccines containing thimerosal cause autism" myth has been disproven by the lack of a fall in European autism rates 20+ (IIRC) years after removing thimerosal from all vaccines there. And more dramatically disproven by the recent admission that the original article claiming an autism-thimerosal link was fraudulent.

The anti-vaccine crowd has no more legs to stand on than the global warming crowd, but is equally actively treading water in many forums, including this one. My own community, in eastern Iowa, isn't known for our illegal immigrant population but has had multiple large Pertussis outbreaks. We are known for hosting the founding institution of the largest alternative medicine "profession" in the country. One that is well known in the medical community here for advising parents against vaccination. Pertussis is a miserable disease for most and a life-threatening one for a few. I blame my local anti-vaccine crowd for a lot of needless suffering.

[Grampa Dave]

“UNLIMITED illegal immigration is the culprit. We had Whooping Cough pretty much under control a generation ago.”

“All kinds of third world deceases we already wiped out in the US are making a comeback...”

Don Corleone and grania sum up what is happening in America re Whooping Cough and other “T*RD World diseases”!

[Spudx7]

As a mother of a 2 month old (who was a preemie) I am very torn about vaccinations. At issue is the amounts of vaccines given at one time. Some shots have 4 vaccines in them...can that really be good for anyone? Especially if one weighs only 10 pounds.

When our daughter was 2 years old, she had missed one round of vaccines so they “caught her up at the next visit”. She threw up a several hours later, and for the next 4 days her eyes were glazed over and she was very unresponsive to the world around her. She walked like a zombie. Thankfully, and I believe due to divine intervention, she went back to her normal bright eyed and funny self.

I didn't get my baby vaccinated yesterday at his two month well baby visit because if he wasn't early, he would be only a month old and that's too young for the DTaP vaccine. According the the chart at our doctor's office, 8 individual vaccines are given at the two month well baby visit. It's my understanding that each vaccine is tested for safety individually, not in combination with 7 others.

[djf]

Yup.
These things would never take hold if people got their kids vaccinated.

Expect polio and smallpox to make a comeback also.

[Spudx7]

the only reason immigrants might bring these diseases into the country is that they are less likely to have been vaccinated.

---

It’s not the only reason. There are tremendous differences between sanitation and hygiene practices in third world countries and the US. Polio, for example, was found to have been spread through fecal matter. Improved public sanitation systems, chlorinating pools, etc. have helped to reduce these diseases.

[Mase]

Yeah, let’s poison our kids with even more vaccines

It's going to be difficult to create community immunity with attitudes such as this. This is a bigger part of the problem than open borders. The anti-vaccine crowd is larger than most people realize. Ship of fools.

[The Great RJ]

"...Given the expense of developing and testing vaccines and the facts that the vaccines are used once or a few times in an individual's life and therefore create much less revenue than everyday drugs, there are few incentives for developing a better vaccine. "

The expense of developing and testing a vaccine also has to include the cost of law suits claiming the vaccine caused some harm. What company would want to spend the millions and years needed to get new vaccine approved by government regulators then have to run a gauntlet of trial lawyers looking for millions in claims.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Little kid's "jobs" are learning new things. This includes their immune system learning new things. It's a big, nasty world, full of germs and they have to learn to fight it. They get some initial protection from Mom's antibodies in their blood, but that wears off in months. After that they're on their own. Fortunately God designed them well. Our immune system normally is its strongest and fastest when we're little kids; it's just untrained. The immune system can deal with more than one thing at a time. Multiple bugs at various cuts and scrapes get stomped simultaneously. Little kids are always getting sick, but most bugs they shake off quickly. Often a lot quicker and easier than if their poor Mom or Dad catch the same bug!

For some of the more dangerous bugs, ones that used to kill rather than just sicken many little kids we've been able to develop vaccines. They make the kid a little sick because training the immune system is work for them. Just like training the immune system with every "natural" cold and flu bug is. But that can't make them as sick as the real infections would. There are some rare circumstances in which vaccination won't work and rarer ones in which it can be risky, but most kids, even 'sickly' kids do fine with it. Millions of kids are getting all these vaccines, several at a time just like yours, and there is no epidemic of serious side effects. When to vaccinate is a trade off. Vaccinate too soon and you don't get as good a take; in part because left over maternal antibodies get there first and save the kid's system from having to respond. Vaccinate too late and you end up with more children catching the real disease and really getting sick. A lot of work has gone into optimizing the schedule.

There are more shots now than a generation ago because we've been clever enough to develop vaccines for more things that used to harm many children. With some vaccines we may eventually end the disease and the need for that vaccination. We accomplished that with smallpox and the first vaccine, the one with the most side effects. Smallpox and its vaccines (we have improved, safer ones now) came back in the news because atheist idiots in the old USSR may have let some escape and we can't trust their faithless denials. Polio should have been eradicated by now and that vaccination could now be stopped. One of its three types has been eradicated. But in this case pious idiots, especially in Nigeria and a few other Muslim countries, have delayed the end of polio by resisting vaccination. Progress has resumed and the battle against polio will probably still be won in a few years. Once passage of time has proved victory kids world wide can celebrate getting fewer shots! In countries, like ours, where polio has been well controlled they've switched from the stronger but riskier oral polio vaccine to the safer, but a bit weaker, injected polio vaccine. Fondly remembering my polio stricken grandfather I eagerly await polio's demise.

After polio measles is the next target for disease, and then vaccine, eradication and a lot of progress has already been made there. It used to kill millions, now this Dermatologist has only seen one case in 20+ years. Vaccinations, along with modern sanitation, are the most effective, and in spite of their higher current price tags the most cost effective, health interventions mankind has invented. If their price tags bother you complain to two groups. Secondly to the legal system parasites and primarily to overly concerned average citizens who demanded much more extensive, and expensive, safety testing. The older safety standards were much cheaper, and had produced effective vaccines with safety records that impressed the heck out of our grandparents. But society decided that child safety was worth spending even more money.

[webstersII]

“The only thing that drove these diseases into countrywide remission is vaccines.”

Over time, populations will become more and more resistant to infections just as a natural course.

Vaccines are not the only way.