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 It doesn’t matter that one of them has been rescinded and the other’s author sternly disavowed and discredited.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

The following is the verbatim text of the endemic measles declaration from the Pan American Health Organization. The declaration was drafted by Daniel Epstein Published Date: 2016-09-28 10:20:41 Subject: PRO/EDR> Measles update (50): Americas, measles-free Archive Number: 20160928.4520243MEASLES UPDATE (50): AMERICAS, MEASLES-FREE******************************************* From: Daniel Epstein <epsteind@paho.org> [edited]Region of the Americas is declared free of measles

This short video shows the agent of African eyeworm disease, Loa loa, via bright field wet mount microscopy. This video was capture by Dr. Ryan Relich at the IU School of Medicine. Recently we published this paper in the journal PLOS One. The paper, “Differential Evolutionary Selection and Natural Evolvability Observed in ALT Proteins of Human Filarial Parasites”, had a major goal: using evolutionary biology to understand how infectious microbes change. Why care about chang

Bathroom Art at UNECOM featuring"Before the Shot", by Norman Rockwell This print of a Norman Rockwell painting and the Hippocratic Oath hangs outside of my office door (okay, full disclosure, it is actually hanging in the bathroom outside my office door. I work in a quirky place). I love it; it is a constant reminder of the philosophy and mission of medical science. People tend to think of the Hippocratic Oath distilled into three words: "do no harm". As you see it is far

Today, news stories abound with the findings from a study involving 95,000 children: MMR vaccines do not cause autism. Why am I not celebrating?? Won't THIS convince anti-vaxxers to finally seek the preventative care that will protect their children and unvaccinated children everywhere? No. I have no confidence that it will. Why do I feel that way? Because this study didn't. Or this one. Not this one, this one, or this one either. This one? Nope. What about this on

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