Pertussis (whooping cough) epidemics continue to increase in the US, with 50,000 recorded cases this year. Most people who got pertussis have been fully vaccinated.  Thanks to investigative journalist Sharyl Atkisson for pointing out the baboon research, discussed in the NY Times and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year.  FDA’s Office of Vaccines…

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is investigating a laboratory mistake that has potentially exposed workers to the Ebola virus. From the NYT:  A laboratory mistake at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have exposed a technician to the deadly Ebola virus, federal officials said on…

Email Share Tweet Save More Dick Cheney. CreditWin McNamee/Getty Images From the Sunday NY Times of December 21: Since the day President Obama took office, he has failed to bring to justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects — an official government program conceived and carried out in the years after the attacks of…

The UK is paying out about $1.7 million dollars per victim.  Although the media rarely reported on the severity of narcolepsy cases, vaccine-induced narcolepsy patients are much sicker than most people with narcolepsy.  It isn’t only a matter of falling asleep; there is additional brain damage, including personality changes. Now scientists in Finland, where the…

I chose the following short AP report from the WaPo because it gets right to the point: NATIONWIDE (AP) – The Government Accountability Office says the science the Federal Bureau of Investigations used to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks was flawed. The GAO released a report Friday on its findings. The agency didn’t take a position on the FBI’s…

Here is the GAO report released today, two years in the making, a study done for unnamed “congressional requesters.” In past years, the requesters have been listed, but in this case, they are not. This most likely reflects the sensitivity of this matter. Why so sensitive? Because the FBI botched its investigation, never had even…

CDC has created a litany of excuses for why it recommends flu vaccines for kids despite poor protection against the majority of this year’s influenza strains (H1N1 and H3N2). See below for the data on the poor vaccine match this year. Below are the reasons CDC says parents should still give the current vaccine to their children….

NYC’s unelected health department demanded last December that children aged 6 months to 5 years receive yearly flu vaccinations. This was one of outgoing mayor (and newly minted health expert) Michael Bloomberg’s gifts to the city, along with the banning of extra large soft drinks. Are soft drinks a threat to others?  What right has any…

Yesterday, authors from the NIH, NY and Toronto published a paper describing their screening system for compounds against Ebola.  The method has identified a large number of approved substances with potential benefits. Many of them have been mentioned in this blog previously, such as clomifene, antimalarials and antiarrhythmics.  Ninety-five additional compounds were also found to…

I wrote about the fact there was a “post-Ebola syndrome” here, which might include visual problems (usually due to uveitis), joint pains, and psychological issues.  It was not well defined due to the small size of previous epidemics and small number of survivors. Now Al Jazeera has written about several people whose post-Ebola survival is complicated…

The NEJM published a piece written primarily by Medicins Sans Frontieres clinicians who have worked in Liberia, describing the clinical course of Ebola patients, and concluding with the paragraph below, acknowledging the need to provide more comprehensive care than MSF was able to provide earlier in the outbreak. I believe we are now arriving at a…

Just out as a provisional pdf (final version is in production), 3 scientists have reviewed the totality of the published data on Ebola therapeutics, and come up with a framework for combining the use of drugs for their potential synergistic effects.  For me, this put many disparate facts about Ebola into focus, providing much of…

The following story describes this year’s publication of the famed Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International. This annual country metric gets widely discussed. The new index shows that most governments (2/3) “show very high levels of corruption.”  Corruption is criminal, it keeps the criminals in power, it leaves little room for meaningful change and advancement…

I have been talking about how one might improve clinical care of Ebola patients, and the need for trials to identify the best treatments, best empiric iv fluids, etc.  This is necessary both to improve survival rates and also to give Ebola patients a reason to come to Ebola treatment centers, which many perceive to be…

I guess 53 beds (located in 35 hospitals) is progress, but not a lot of progress… when you consider that in Africa there have been more than 53 cases from a single town. From the WaPo: … The 35 designated hospitals will have total treatment capacity of 53 beds.In trying to establish a network of…

The WaPo explores which hospitals will be approved by CDC to treat Ebola patients, and whether hospitals will lose or gain from such a designation. Treating an Ebola patient scares other patients away, puts staff at risk, and demands extraordinary levels of intensive care that exceed what can be reimbursed by insurers, and sometimes what can…

I have been desperately seeking ideas to get us to that sweet spot: where medical providers will know how to manage Ebola in Africa, and their treatments will keep most Ebola victims alive, while not costing a million dollars per patient, or more. I envision patients having access to lab tests, iv fluids, convalescent serum, automatic…