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CNN reports that the number of whooping cough cases in California has officially reached epidemic proportions with 800 cases reported in the past two weeks alone. And the number of actual cases may be even higher, because past studies have shown that for every case of whooping cough that is reported, there are 10 more that are not officially counted. The public health department in California is strongly urging people to make sure their vaccinations are up to date, especially if they're pregnant. State health officials are working closely with schools and local health departments to spread the word.
But there's a vaccine for whooping cough so why is there an epidemic? According to Dylan Matthews it's hard to blame any single cause for public health problems like the recent rise in whooping cough, but it's clear that anti-vaccine activists aren't helping. Researchers at Johns Hopkins, Emory, and the California Department of Public Health found that California communities with large numbers of parents claiming "nonmedical exemptions" from vaccines from their kids (that is, parents who don't vaccinate for religious, personal, or other reasons not backed by medical professionals) were 1.73 times more likely to see outbreaks of whooping cough; another study looking at Michigan found high-exemption areas were 2.7 times as likely to experience high levels of the disease. "Unlike some other vaccine-preventable diseases, like measles, neither vaccination nor illness from pertussis offers lifetime immunity," says Dr. Ron Chapman. "However, vaccination is still the best defense against this potentially fatal disease."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19 2014, @05:35AM
There is no replacement for the FDA. Without its oversight, you could be sold water as a vaccine. How would you know?
What is necessary is better oversight of the agency.
FDA is also not responsible for anti-trust proceedings. That's the purview of Federal Trade Commission, or FTC. As well as any affected party, so feel free to organize a suit.
The science is *not* bereft of any integrity. The vaccines are being independently validated from time to time, including effectiveness. Also in studies not sponsored by the medical companies, because it's a public health issue.
How do you think we know there is an outbreak right now?
If you cannot trust any publication, then I pity you. Welcome to the tin foil hat club.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday June 19 2014, @06:14PM
In order to be a member of the tin foil hat club there has to be NO PROOF OF ANY KIND that what you are saying is true.
So you allege that my statements regarding the integrity of scientific publications is wholly without merit? There are articles HERE, ON THIS WEBSITE, about how journals are having issues with integrity. How many experiments themselves have been conducted showing most are not even peer reviewed, and many are never even read or cited.
A rancher in the Midwest talking about aliens anal probing his wife and mutilating his cattle on orders from the CIA is wearing a tin foil hat.
These days talking about the VERY REAL AND PRESENT dangers of corruption and greed's influence on science is not tin foil. Article after article, scandal after scandal, it's become crystal clear that regulation has failed utterly and horribly to reign in the influence of money on science, and it's applications in wide ranging fields. That is due, in no small part, in how regulation itself has been hijacked by the very element of society it was supposed to regulate. I need to no further proof than a high ranking executive of Monsanto leading the FDA.
NO. You cannot claim I have tin foil on my head, when I'm directly reacting to what is KNOWN TO BE TRUE. The argument I would have with anybody is the EXTENT to which the corruption has spread, not IF there is corruption.
I dare you to say I have tin foil on my head when thousands of Americans every year are harmed by medicine and a medical community that has failed us. That's real. It's because of money. The FDA and science has failed to protect us.
Science can only ask for our trust and belief in their findings when they conduct themselves appropriately. They are not.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.