Saturday, October 8, 2011

THE MUMPS VACCINE EPIC FAIL!

WOW!!!!!!!! Voodoo science at its worst! All of the people who are getting the mumps in this outbreak have had 2 doses of the MMR. The funny thing is they are now just making it up as they go along and are claiming a person needs 3 doses if they live or work on a college campus. I heard the same crap a few years ago when there was an outbreak in NYC, a Dr was pushing a 3rd dose on teens and said he would like to see it become a 4 dose series or perhaps even more. 

If anyone has any information on this outbreak please pass it my direction.


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http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_19057560?source=rss

BERKELEY -- Hundreds of UC Berkeley students and employees lined up outside the campus health center Thursday for free vaccinations after a mumps outbreak infected up to 20 students.
A spokeswoman for the health center said the university and state public-health officials expected to vaccinate more than 1,000 people by the time the clinic closed at 6 p.m. The university will hold another free clinic from noon to 6 p.m. Oct. 14.
The state Department of Public Health was monitoring the rare outbreak this week. A department spokesman said he had no update on the number of students infected. Seven cases had been confirmed and 13 other students were being tested.
Although health officials initially wondered whether the outbreak started with students who had not been vaccinated, a spokeswoman for the city of Berkeley said all the patients had received the two recommended doses before becoming ill. Three vaccinations are recommended for people living and working on college campuses, a city health official said.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

These liars will stop at NOTHING!!!

WOW!!! THE SPIN DOCTORING AND THE LIES TO PUSH THIS VACCINE ON BOYS AND MEN!!! Reminds me of some of the lies they use to get people to take the Hep B vaccine.

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http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/10/hpv-its-not-just-for-ladies-anymore/246213/

Researchers examined 271 throat-tumor samples collected over 20 years ending in 2004 and found that the percentage of oral cancer linked to the human papillomavirus, or HPV, surged to 72 percent from about 16 percent, according to a report released yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. By 2020, the virus-linked throat tumors -- which mostly affected men -- will become more common than HPV-caused cervical cancer, the report found.

. . . Until recently, head and neck cancer mainly occurred in older patients and was associated with tobacco and alcohol use. The HPV-linked head and neck cancers, usually of the tonsils, palate or tongue, hit men their 30s, 40s, and 50s, Gillison said. It is unclear why women are affected much less often than men, she said.

. . . In a 2007 epidemiology study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Gillison and her colleagues found that having a high number of oral or vaginal sex partners are risk factors for HPV-associated throat cancer. The cancer may also be spread by open-mouth kissing, Gillison said in the interview. "Nobody paid attention to oral HPV infections until 2007," she said. "We are about 15 years behind in the research" compared with the data on cervical cancer and HPV, she said.
The most troubling thing for me is that I imagine that this is going to be harder to detect than cervical cancer. (ENTs and cancer docs, please feel free to correct me).  As an OB-GYN said to me, "HPV just loves the cervix", which means that as long as you're getting regular pap smears, the doctor is very, very likely to catch a genital infection before it turns into terminal cancer.  (I don't mean to imply that the treatments are no big deal, because they aren't--they range from uncomfortable to excruciating and can mean infertility.  But they're still preferable to being dead.)

But the throat's got a lot of stuff in there, a lot of nooks and crannies where HPV could hide--can we catch potentially cancerous oral infections the way we do when they're in the reproductive tract?

The other question I have is whether this is going to change the terms of the debate around HPV vaccines.  Me, I figure if we can possibly wipe out a virus that gives people cancer, we should do our very damndest.  Regardless of how the cancer is contracted.  But from the extremely emotional response I got when I blogged about Gardasil a few weeks ago, this is obviously not the universal view.