Ian
Senior Member
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There has been a lot of news and buzz recently about the whooping cough outbreak. The outbreak has been blamed by the news media on the anti-vaccination crowd.
ie
Now back to reality.
ie
http://www.forbes.com/sites/science...epidemic-blame-the-anti-vaccination-movement/It’s not a coincidence that California is the center of the new pertussis epidemic. Vaccination rates among adults in California have been dropping in recent years, large due to the influence of anti-vaccination zealots such as Jenny McCarthy and groups such as Age of Autism. Anti-vaccination sentiments seem to strike a chord with relatively well-educated segments of the population – the same people who favor organic food and want to use “natural” products as much as possible. Anti-vaxers appeal to this group by arguing that vaccines are unnatural, and that the body’s own immune system can be “boosted” by various natural treatments. Appealing though this may sound, it has no basis in science.
Now back to reality.
An investigation by California doctors has revealed that the state's latest outbreak of whooping cough centered around children who had already received the whooping cough vaccine, Reuters reports.
After examining the records of juvenile whooping cough patients over an 8-month period, the doctors discovered that 81 percent of patients had received the full series of whooping cough shots, and 11 percent had received only some of the shots. The remaining 8 percent had not received any immunizations for whooping cough.
http://digitaljournal.com/article/323187Unfortunately, drug maker Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK), the manufacturer of the whooping cough vaccine, did not bother to perform long-term studies of its effectiveness.