How providing anti-vaccination proponents with a platform sidelines the greater discussion to be had regarding autism research “Vaccines worked so well… that people have forgotten the agony of infectious disease.” Kathryn Edwards, the chair of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University, made this remark concerning humanity’s unfortunate amnesia about the destruction of life wreaked by diseases throughout […]
Tag: CDC
Low Vaccine Rates: How Our Past Is Catching Up to Us
America is under attack from enemies we’ve known about for quite some time now. In the year 2000, the United States was able to declare that measles had officially been eliminated from the country. Fast-forward 14 years later, the United States is caught up in the throes of one of the largest measles outbreaks in recent […]
Ebola Ethics
Sporadically emerging from its natural reservoirs, the Ebola virus has recently captured global attention. Looming over West Africa, the Ebola pandemic has been transmitted and transported over national boundaries, now finding itself on U.S. soil. But the Ebola virus is not new; this disease was first noted in Zaire, the predecessor of the Democratic Republic […]
A Not So Innocuous Crisis
The horrific nationwide outbreak in measles has caused a renewed interest and discussion regarding vaccinations of such diseases. While in 2013 there were just under 200 reported cases in the United States, there were around 650 cases in 2014, and in the first two months of the 2015 calendar year, there have already been 173 cases across […]
To Vax or Not to Vax: This is Not the Question
As the lights of University of Phoenix Stadium darken at the end of Super Bowl 49, health officials are waiting for fallout. Thousands of football enthusiasts traveled to Phoenix, Arizona the weekend of Super Bowl Sunday to share in the festivities. However, before their arrival, Arizona health officials were tracking over 1000 people who may […]
The Not-So-Common Cold: Enterovirus D68
Cold-and-flu season is well under way in California, but this fall, young children in Southern California are being exposed to a different kind of runny nose. Enterovirus D68, also known as EV-D68, was first identified in the state of California in the winter of 1962, when four children were hospitalized with respiratory symptoms that imitated the […]