Observations From the Back Row: 5-3-11

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“De Omnibus Dubitandum”

I went back into my files because there wasn’t anything the particularly struck me last night. I think killing the terrorist mastermind of 911 has sucked the air out of everything else. I am a looking at some issue that involves HAARP. Don’t ask….I still don’t get it. But at this point I think this is a fascinating issue and will follow up when I have enough time to dig into it.

These articles go back a little way. I intended to write an article about the anti-vaccine movement last year and so I started saving source articles. My problem is that I have way too many articles that I have started and stopped. Often times I need to do more research on the information, or I just don't have time and then I forget about the article because some other issues arose. I started saving these articles last year and then forgot about them until today. I intend to be more attentive to this subject.

Another dangerous loon who wants to "protect" people from vaccinations: The man who encourages the sick and dying to drink industrial bleach - Vulnerable people with cancer, Aids, influenza and malaria are being urged to drink Miracle Mineral Solutions (MMS) – described by the FDA as 'industrial bleach' (Guardian)

Unfortunately the antivaxxers pop up from time to time, attempting to waste everyone's time and create fear and havoc in health care. Here's a small sampling of recent community health problems due to lower than optimal vaccination uptake:

Vaccine superstitions have consequences: Baby boy dies from whooping cough A five-week-old South Australian boy has died from whooping cough, as state health authorities report a rise in the number of cases of the highly contagious disease. The five-week-old boy was admitted to hospital last Saturday but died in intensive care on Tuesday, SA Health said. He was the first infant to die from whooping cough in the state since 2001.

SA Chief Medical Officer Professor Paddy Phillips said "babies and young children are the most vulnerable to complications following infection, as tragically demonstrated in this case".

"Vaccination provides the best protection against whooping cough," he said.

"It's important that everyone makes sure their vaccination is up-to-date."

Prof Phillips encouraged families to protect babies by ensuring everyone who has regular contact with them is vaccinated.

"Babies under six months of age are not able to complete the required series of vaccinations so they remain especially vulnerable," he said.

There have been more than 1000 additional cases of the disease in South Australia so far in 2010 compared with the same time last year. (AAP)

Deadly Whooping Cough, Once Wiped Out, Is Back California is in the midst of its worst outbreak of whooping cough in a half-century. More than 2,700 cases have been reported so far this year — eight times last year's number at this point. Seven of the victims, all infants, have died.

And here's what really worries pediatricians like USC's Harvey Karp: Doctors thought they wiped out whooping cough when they developed vaccines decades ago.

The disease hits young children hardest, especially ones who are not vaccinated or who have not yet built up full immunity. The prescribed vaccination regimen begins with a shot at two months and continues until children are 5 years old. For many children, it can take that long for complete immunity to develop — and until then, they're vulnerable. (NPR)

Deadly Diseases Making a Comeback Whooping cough, measles, rickets: These diseases, once considered Victorian plights, are making a comeback in the U.S. Decades ago, such diseases bloomed due to poverty, malnutrition and a lack of health care; these days, they're in due mostly to anti-vaccine anxiety and a modern lifestyle. Dr. Camille Sabella, who practices pediatric infectious diseases in the Center for Pediatric Infectious Diseases in the Pediatrics Institute and Children's Hospital at Cleveland Clinic, gives us some insight into why these illnesses are once again causing outbreaks. (AOL)

Measles outbreak alarms health authoritiesHealth authorities across New South Wales and Queensland are urging residents to make sure they are immunised against measles.

A spate of outbreaks across the eastern seaboard has doctors worried that a pandemic that was raging in South Africa during the World Cup is quietly spilling across the Indian Ocean.

GPs say the reluctance by some parents here to immunise their children has put the public in danger of a major outbreak. (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)

Americans' immunity to mumps less than idealAbout 90 percent of young to middle-aged Americans have antibodies against the mumps virus -- a level of immunity that is at the low end of what's needed to prevent significant outbreaks of the infection, a government study finds.

The findings underscore the importance of having children receive the recommended two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

Mumps is a viral infection that causes fever, headache, muscle aches and swollen glands around the jaw. Most people recover in a few weeks, but in a small number of cases the infection can have complications such as inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) that can be life-threatening; hearing loss (usually temporary); or painful inflammation of the testicles or ovaries. (Reuters Health)

UN health agency reports on spread of polio outbreak in Angola and DR Congo
8 September 2010 – The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) reported today that the recent outbreak of polio in Angola is spreading into other, previously polio-free parts of the country and the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The wild poliovirus 1 (WPV1) outbreak that began in April 2007 has now been recorded in the DRC’s Kasai province, which borders Angola. (UN News Centre)

Antivaxxers take note: vaccines stop polio outbreak in Tajikistan This is wildly good news! Through Vaccine Central I learned that a major polio outbreak in Tajikistan has been stopped! How? Through vaccination.

Yup. The first reports of polio were confirmed in April — 413 of them. However, that ended in late June, when no new cases were reported. That is credited to the thousands of doctors and nurses who not only vaccinated at least 97% of the children in each region of the mountainous country, but also flooded the area with multi-lingual informational leaflets, posters, and banners.

And they succeeded! With no new reports, it appears this outbreak was stopped cold. And with the AVN in Australia getting hammered repeatedly in the press, I can now have some hope that the movement here in the United States, spearheaded by Jenny McCarthy, will die off as well. Vaccinations work, and they save a lot of lives. (Bad Astronomy)

My Take - These celebrity "epidemiologists" need to be prosecuted for every sick child that dies.  And so does the doctor whose fraudulent research was the basis for much of this stuff. 

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax -

Of cabbages and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings."

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