Infectious News

The past few days have been remarkable in the fight against vaccine-preventable diseases, and not for good reasons. Two stories broke, one of them major news, and I fear that both will be referenced and cited by vaccine adversaries for years to come. It doesn’t matter that one of them has been rescinded and the other’s author sternly disavowed and discredited. It’s already too late. They’re out there, and they both have high potential to reverse whatever progress we’ve ma

April 12, 1955, 60 years ago today, a much celebrated medical breakthrough was announced. Before this breakthrough, those suffering from the disease it prevents could be left with partial paralysis, atrophied limbs, confinement to braces, wheelchairs, or iron lungs. That is a description of survivors, of course. Not everyone lived through polio. It was a disease that primarily affected children, though its most infamous patient was the longest-serving president in U.S. hi