In Search Of The Anthrax Attacker – Following Valuable Clues   By Meryl Nass, MD February 3, 2002   “Senior Bush administration officials have privately said that little progress is being made in the anthrax investigation, which has involved hundreds of investigators, [who] are no closer to finding the culprit, they say.” So reported Todd…

Various interviewees estimated the that the coronavirus tests they are familiar with are 75%, 85% or 100% accurate: Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner for the division of disease control of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said he recently told a patient with mild symptoms who sought a test and received a negative result…

Janet Woodcock has spent most of the last 20 years as the head of FDA’s Center for Drugs.  Most of that time, while China and India took over the manufacturing of most of the world’s drugs, her head has been buried in the sand.  From FiercePharma: “As the spread of COVID-19 threatens to disrupt pharma…

This WaPo piece provides further evidence that the government is well aware this virus transmits via the airborne route.  As a result, indoor air that is shared with those infected (who may be asymptomatic or presymptomatic) carries risk of infection.  You don’t need to have someone cough on you.  Breathing infected air is enough to…

Unbelievable.  4 years ago, the FDA gave contractor Battelle half a million dollars to study the use of commercial decontamination equipment, using hydrogen peroxide gas, on N95 masks.  Battelle said the method worked in 2016.  But we are only just hearing about it, as thousands of healthcare workers get infected due, in part, to lack…

Here, the WaPo goes into the tawdry story of how DHHS’ Preparedness group and BARDA got prototypes for a machine to produce reusable N95 masks, then dropped the ball despite their $1.5B yearly funding for ‘preparedness.’ From  the NY Times: Few in the protective equipment industry are surprised by the shortages, because they’ve been predicted for…

Nature Medicine ran a 3 page article that claimed to explain why the novel coronavirus is not a lab construct.  USA Today wrote a summary piece explaining it: “If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness,”…

There is a huge disconnect between the personal protective equipment (PPE) healthcare workers (HCWs) should be wearing to protect themselves from coronavirus, and what actually exists right now for them to use.  The White House has told the governors to find their own supplies.  The equipment market is in chaos.  CDC is now telling HCWs to make their own…

From STAT, a report of an online meeting between Johns Hopkins infectious disease doctors and doctors from Zhejiang, one of China’s top medical schools, who had responded to the COVID-19 epidemic:  …We want to work together with you to help fight Covid-19, Wang told the Americans as the hourlong meeting began. Their first question: If…

FiercePharma on other drugs being considered for Covid-19: Other than remdesivir and chloroquine, researchers and physicians are also looking at other existing drugs to treat COVID-19. These include AbbVie’s HIV combo therapy Kaletra (Aluvia), which just failed a clinical study in China in critically ill patients. Chinese authorities, which have been dealing with the virus longer, are…

A view of gloves and boots used by medical staff, drying in the sun, at a center for victims of the Ebola virus in Guekedou.   Nitrile or latex gloves can be rewashed and reused.  Soap and water.  Hang to dry.   Face shields and goggles can be rewashed and reused–avoid bleach solutions which cloud…

This is a preliminary report from a Scottish doctor, and may turn out to be wrong later.  He has analyzed data from Italy on deaths, and concluded that those patients on ACE inhibitors or ARBs (which target ACE receptors, which are also used by coronavirus) had significantly higher death rates. Because coronavirus disease is currently…

Newest on a chloroquine drug trial, to start 3/24:  New York State is about to begin testing drugs for treatment of coronavirus, Gov. Cuomo said Sunday.  The feds have given the state 70,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine, 10,000 doses of zithromax and 750,000 doses of chloroquine. Testing will kick off Tuesday, Cuomo said.  “The president is…

Here’s the story. Oddly, the WHO was initially going to omit studying the cheapest drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, despite support for them by Chinese doctors here and here and French doctors.  But now both have been added to WHO’s mega COVID-19 trial.

Handbook of COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment–a 68 page guide Zhejiang University School of Medicine Thanks to Jack Ma/ Alibaba for the web creation and English translation of the Chinese guidelines found to be most useful in clinical care of COVID-19!

“The Food and Drug Administration late Friday approved the first coronavirus test that can be conducted entirely at the point of care for a patient — and deliver results in 45 minutes. The FDA granted “emergency use authorization” to Cepheid, a California company that makes a rapid molecular test for the coronavirus. The turnaround time for Cepheid’s…

A Medscape Commentary by John Medrola, MD “I have to remind the American doctor that life is changing.… It’s not a normal life. It’s a #COVID19 life. It’s a pandemic life.” With these words, spoken March 18, during a joint webinar of the Chinese Cardiac Society and the American College of Cardiology, Professor Bin Cao, MD, from China, jolted…

Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an open label non-randomized clinical trial 20 patients were treated, 16 patients (unmatched, nonrandomized) were controls, 6 treated patients lost to followup, in some cases due to worsening Update:  on March 25, India banned the export of hydroxychloroquine.  And has approved its use prophylactically: “The…

This paper is designed to help readers understand the new corona virus and why it has inevitably led to the quarantine measures currently imposed.  I will refer to the virus as the COVID-19 virus, as does the W.H.O., instead of using the official, but confusing, name SARS-CoV-2. The official name of the disease is COVID-19. Historical…

From STAT: “NIAID virologist Vincent Munster and his colleagues used a nebulizer — a device that creates an aerosol from liquids — to release samples into the air of both the new coronavirus and the one that caused the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s. They reported detecting viable virus 
in aerosols for up to three hours….

Eric Feigl-Ding@DrEricDing Europe and US are mostly all on the same path. Note log Y-axis (linear=exponential; steeper line is more exponential). Japan also has limited testing. Only SK, Singapore and HK have it under control or improving. #COVID19 Twitter Ads info and privacy

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-covid-19/ Medical staff wait outside rooms at the Red Cross hospital in Wuhan, China.AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Much of the current discourse on — and dismissal of — the Covid-19 outbreak focuses on comparisons of the total case load and total deaths with those caused by seasonal influenza. But these comparisons can be deceiving, especially in the…

https://www.ad.nl/dossier-coronavirus/40-a-50-nederlandse-coronapatienten-op-intensive-cares-meer-dan-de-helft-is-onder-de-vijftig~a058aad2/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialsharing_web Today there are between forty and fifty corona patients in critical condition on Dutch intensive care units. “More than half of those patients are under fifty years old. There are also young people. “” That says chairman of the Dutch Association for Intensive Care (NVIC) Diederik Gommers, in an interview with this site.  Marcia Nieuwenhuis 03/14/20, 9:23…

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/study-highlights-ease-spread-covid-19-viruses?fbclid=IwAR1hJyLkXMqXzrRlmjgshJI0Qyc8jUjT6S7EJB2Eqk-u9BCeBkTnI5MSSOU COVID-19 can be spread before it causes symptoms, when it produces symptoms like those of the common cold, and as many as 12 days after recovery, according to a virologic analysis of nine infected patients published today on the preprint server medRxiv. Also, in a study published in today’s Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers at Johns Hopkins found a median…

https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/pdf–a great compilation of the world literature on decontaminating coronavirus in the environment. What has worked well to kill other coronaviruses on surfaces? Bleach (sodium hypochlorite) 0.21% dilution on a surface for one minute.  Different bottles of bleach have different concentrations, so calculate your dilution accordingly. Hydrogen peroxide 0.5% dilution for one minute Alcohol 70%…

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/short-staffed-and-undersupplied-coronavirus-crisis-strains-seattle-areas-capacity-to-deliver-care/

Number of specimens tested for SARS-CoV-2 by CDC labs (N=3,995) and U.S. public health laboratories* (N=15,749)†

The scope of this epidemic does not fit all the data we have been given. The Rzero number has to be greater than 2.2, much greater, to get so many cases so quickly in Wuhan and Lombardy, if the earliest case occurred in November-December, and the doubling time of the epidemic is 6 days.  The…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2020/03/13/coronavirus-drug-update-the-latest-info-on-pharmaceutical-treatments-and-vaccines/#49181a7e21db Expect to see ASO3 or related adjuvant from GSK in experimental Coronavirus vaccines: GSK has previously developed a pandemic vaccine adjuvant platform, a system that helps to improve vaccines by strengthening the immune response in patients who receive it. In February, the company announced it was partnering with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to use that platform…

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/487329-ohio-health-official-estimates-100000-people-in-state-have-coronavirus A top health official in Ohio estimated on Thursday that more than 100,000 people in the state have coronavirus, a shockingly high number that underscores the limited testing so far. Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton said at a press conference alongside Gov. Mike DeWine (R) that given that the virus is spreading in the community in Ohio, she…

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccines-insight/as-pressure-for-coronavirus-vaccine-mounts-scientists-debate-risks-of-accelerated-testing-idUSKBN20Y1GZ?               CHICAGO (Reuters) – Drugmakers are working as quickly as possible to develop a vaccine to combat the rapidly spreading coronavirus that has infected more than 100,000 people worldwide.  Behind the scenes, scientists and medical experts are concerned that rushing a vaccine could end up worsening the infection in some…

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6796908/Seattle-Times-Coronavirus-Fact-Sheet.pdf

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/flattening-curve-coronavirus/ While this idea at first seems geeky or counter-intuitive, the intent is to reduce the speed of transmission so the healthcare system does not get overwhelmed, and more time is gained to develop drugs, herbs, traditional Chinese medicines, vaccines for Coronavirus.  While the epidemic will last longer if the “curve is flattened”, we might…

The new coronavirus spreads readily, like flu or cold viruses, but is much more likely to affect family members of someone already infected than others.  We Americans are not very good at protecting ourselves from cold and flu viruses.  Maybe we can learn some strategies that will help us avoid Covid-19, as well as helping…

The chart above is from ZeroHedge

Johns Hopkins is keeping track of COVID-19 cases internationally, in real time, here. There have been 51,171 recovered cases and 3,254 deceased, for a 6% mortality rate.  This number should drop, I hope considerably, as we begin to identify more asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases. Update 3/16/20:  Chinese mortality estimate is around 5.8%. One hopeful…

1.  Diagnostic information.  Describe the specific features of the disease in the US (symptoms and signs) so doctors will be able to clinically distinguish most COVID-19 cases from other respiratory infections like colds, influenza, pneumonias, allowing them to isolate, quarantine, treat respiratory infections more sensibly.  CDC and NIH say they will publish articles on this…

The most recent summary on the D/P/T vaccine was published by CDC in the MMWR of April 2018: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/rr/pdfs/rr6702a1-H.pdf There are graphs in the MMWR article showing how cases of all three diseases covered by the vaccine have changed over time. These graphs show that there are almost no tetanus or diphtheria cases in the…

At this time, it appears that COVID-19 can spread by droplet, aerosol, fomites (objects) and through intestinal secretions. The incubation period, it seems, may be up to 14 days.  Or much longer.  People who recover may still be able to spread virus–this is unclear (it depends on their viral load) but adds another problem to…

From today’s (2/29/20) NYT: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Saturday that it was authorizing American laboratories to develop their own coronavirus tests, which should significantly increase the country’s testing capacity.The effect could be rapid. About 80 labs and private companies have applied for emergency approval for tests they have already created. If they…

I think all the advice provided here (dated today 2/27/20) is sound, and is not alarmist. This virus has spread remarkably quickly, frequently triggers lethal illness, and there has not been anything like it since the 1918 flu.   COVID-19 must be spreading within the US in ways we don’t know yet.  The lack of available…

The problem of highly restricted testing in the US The COVID-19 virus is quite deadly (mortality appears to be between 2 and 10% as discussed in my last post) though since we don’t know how many asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases there are, we still can’t be sure of this. Why don’t we know the…

Fomites   These are inanimate objects like doorknobs, shared computer keyboards, surfaces where droplets from coughs and sneezes land, or where hands have touched, which may transmit the virus. Questions that the authorities should be making every attempt to answer include the following.   a)  What % of infections are transmitted via fomites?  (In other…

January 31, 2020 I keep being asked about the coronavirus, and have been noncommittal about it, because there was not a lot of information to go on. But now there is more information, so I will say a little. 1.  Anthony Fauci, head of the NIH’s infectious disease branch, said the death rate is 1-2%…

CDC says flu vaccines prevent flu, on average 40% of the time, but even if you do get flu, the vaccine makes it less severe.  But when these two claims were tested in Australia, neither was found to be true.  The Australian study found  that (in 17 hospitals over 7 recent flu seasons) there was no reduction…

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/13/against-compulsory-mmr-vaccination-and-for-looking-after-new-mothers Letter The recent drop in childhood vaccination uptake is a cause of concern for all of us, as your article rightly points out (No MMR should mean no school place, say GPs, 9 September), with only 87.2% of children in England receiving two doses of the MMR vaccine by age five. However, the factors…

My name is Dr. Meryl Nass.  I am an internal medicine physician in Ellsworth, Maine. I graduated from MIT and the University of Mississippi School of Medicine. I have testified to 6 Congressional committees, primarily on anthrax vaccine and Gulf War Syndrome, and the permanent injuries suffered by service-members who received military vaccines of poor…

Thoughts on treatment of Gulf War Syndrome patients: provided to the Veterans Affairs Research Advisory Committee (RAC) on GWS, February 2003; updated September 2003 Meryl Nass, MD The basic idea of this treatment model is to identify all the patient’s problems (since this is a multi-symptom and multi-organ syndrome) and address each one.  Improving nutrition, healing…

… I am a veteran of the vaccine war in the US, and today I feel compelled to speak about what I saw in that war.  Legislators were forced to change their votes to revoke vaccine exemptions and rescind the historic right to consent to medical procedures. The vaccine war is a dirty war, in…

It is truly amazing to witness the hypocrisy of the largest physician guild in the US.  Doctors have a Code of Medical Ethics that recommends vaccination in dire circumstances, but allows themselves to use philosophical or religious exemptions–and only “absent” an exemption must doctors be vaccinated.  Yet the AMA House of Delegates passed a measure…

“We’re putting patients first.” https://www.cms.gov/ “We pledge to put patients first in all of our programs – Medicaid, Medicare, and the Health Insurance Exchanges. To do this, we must empower patients to work with their doctors and make health care decisions that are best for them.  [Except when it comes to vaccines, apparently–Nass] This means giving…

AMA Code of Medical Ethics Opinion 2.2.1 https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/ethics/pediatric-decision-making As the persons best positioned to understand their child’s unique needs and interests, parents (or guardians) are asked to fill the dual responsibility of protecting their children and, at the same time, empowering them and promoting development of children’s capacity to become independent decision makers. In giving…

Skip navigation https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000445.htm While the legislature has gone mad, fueled by fake news and Pharma largesse, forgotten are our minimum, legal standards that guarantee informed consent and prevent US patients from being forced to comply with vaccinations and other medical procedures.   Interestingly, the NIH has not forgotten we have this right. U.S. National Library of…

I am a board-certified internal medicine doctor.  I graduated with a degree in biology from MIT, attended NJ Medical School and the University of Mississippi Medical School. I have practiced in Maine since 1997.   I am passionate about improving the lives of my patients.  I try to find the least toxic methods of treatment for each…

Four incorrect (but widely repeated) claims were made by Maine representatives to justify getting rid of religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions.  Here I list them and provide documentation to show why they are wrong. 1.  “Only 6 states have higher opt-out rates.”  “We have one of the worst vaccination rates in the country.”  The CDC published vaccination…

Who are the anti-vaxxers, really? If I asked you whether you were for or against pharmaceutical drugs, you would think my question absurd.  Obviously, each drug is different and should be judged on its own merits; furthermore, the usefulness of a drug depends on the specific needs of the person to whom it is given. …

Re: US county bars unvaccinated children from public spaces amid measles emergency Cite this as: BMJ 2019;364:l1481 New York state is one of 47 states that allow parents to claim a religious exemption from their children’s vaccines. One to two percent of parents take advantage of this legal avenue to avoid vaccinating their children. The US has…

https://bangordailynews.com/2019/03/28/opinion/contributors/why-americans-dont-trust-vaccine-makers/ Why Americans don’t trust vaccine makers George Danby | BDN By Meryl Nass, Special to the BDN • March 28, 2019 8:39 amUpdated: March 28, 2019 8:53 am Trust in the pharmaceutical business hit a low in 2018. Only 38 percent of those Americans polled by the Edelman Trust Barometer said they trusted the industry. Some of the reasons for…

Sunday, July 5, 2015 Public Health Gone Awry: Birth Dose of Hepatitis B Vaccine (IOM chimes in on lack of good vaccine data) Hepatitis B is a serious disease.  It is highly prevalent in many countries in Asia (nearly 10% of Chinese carried the illness in 1992), but fortunately is of low prevalence in the…

Hepatitis B vaccine (HBV), administered according to the CDC’s schedule on the day a baby is born, is the thread that unravels the claim that “science” underpins the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule.  Hepatitis B vaccine is unnecessary for 99% of newborns:  those whose parents and siblings do not have contagious Hepatitis B.  Hepatitis B is…

A premier science journal, Science Translational Medicine, pointed out that extraneous substances in medications can and do make people sick–in an article written by scientists at MIT and published March 13, 2019.  Why would anyone assume the same is not true of vaccines? “Inactive” ingredients in oral medications 1.     Daniel Reker1,2,3,*,  2.     Steven M. Blum1,4,5,*, …

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr March 19, 2019 I flew to Hartford, Connecticut last night at the invitation of the Sen. Josh Elliott and the Connecticut State House’s Democratic leadership who are proposing to abolish Religious exemptions for vaccines. (Connecticut has among the highest vaccination rates; 97% With no threat to herd immunity, Pharma profits and…

My name is Dr. Meryl Nass. I am here today to oppose LD798 and support LD987. ·       I am a physician in Ellsworth, Maine. ·       I graduated from MIT and the University of Mississippi School of Medicine. ·       In 2010, I was the chair of a commission established by…

Table. Adjusted vaccine effectiveness estimates for influenza seasons from 2004-2018 Influenza Season† Reference Study Site(s) No. of Patients‡ Adjusted Overall VE (%) 95% CI 2004-05 Belongia 2009 WI 762 10 -36, 40 2005-06 Belongia 2009 WI 346 21 -52, 59 2006-07 Belongia 2009 WI 871 52 22 ,70 2007-08 Belongia 2011 WI 1914 37 22,…

2016 Reportable Infectious Diseases Summary, Maine Scroll down to the Annual Reports to get to those for years 2003-2017 at the following URL: https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/infectious-disease/epi/publications/#annualreports (Wish I could find a URL directly for the most recent, 2017 report, but so far have been unable to do so.) 2017-2018 Maine School Immunization Assessment Reports Table 1: 2017-18…

1.  National Notifiable Infectious Diseases and Conditions, 2017.  CDC (Note: these numbers do not always agree with other official government counts of disease.) 2.  FIGURE. Estimated percentage of kindergartners with documented up-to-date vaccination for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR)*; exempt from one or more vaccines†,§; and not up to date with MMR and not exempt¶ — selected states…

TABLE 1. Estimated vaccination coverage* for MMR, DTaP, and varicella vaccines among children enrolled in kindergarten, by vaccine and immunization program — United States and territories, 2017–18 school year Immunization program Kindergarten population† No. (%) surveyed Type of survey conducted§ Local data available online¶ MMR** DTaP†† Varicella 2 doses (%) 4 or 5 doses (%)…

* Statistics obtained from the Maine CDC and federal CDC publications, collated by Meryl Nass, MD.   I contacted the Maine CDC and was directed to online documents that had the data I was seeking. (I could not find them in searches:  the URL was dictated to me.)  Let me know if you want more detail…

Wednesday, January 2, 2013 (reposted) Michael Osterholm on flu shots: “It’s all a sales job; it’s all public relations” / NY Times I missed this November article on flu shots from the NY Times blog.  Yes, it repeats material I have covered before.  But as healthcare workers continue to be fired from their jobs for refusing flu…

Meryl Nass, M.D. March 10, 2019 Pertussis is a common bacterial infection that is uncommonly diagnosed, with probably over a million cases yearly in the US.  Worldwide there were an estimated 24 million cases, per CDC.[1] “The confirmation of Bordetella pertussis infection is still one of the most difficult diagnostic challenges facing the clinician, particularly…

While the deaths of 129 children due to the new dengue vaccine Dengvaxia are being investigated, and charges are being filed against Ministry of Health and Sanofi officials in the Philippines, the European Medicines Agency approved Dengvaxia in December 2018, and the US FDA gave Dengvaxia an abbreviated review (as a priority) last October, with a…

While the supposed justification for imposing vaccine mandates throughout the United States is to protect the immunocompromised, the actual justification is to protect Pharma profits and then to increase the number of government-recommended vaccines, for which pharmaceutical companies face no liability for injuries.  Pharma’s plan is to greatly expand vaccine sales, from $38 Billion in 2018…

It is not a question whether vaccines are safe, the real question is how safe?  8 weeks ago a famous cancer specialist died hours after receiving a yellow fever vaccine.  For him, they were clearly not safe enough.  From CNN: “(CNN)  “A leading cancer expert, who was described as a “pioneer” in his field by…

–Meryl Nass, MD All have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes.  Most of these tragedies occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987. With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most…

The following blog post is about something so unbelievable and so terrible it kept me awake most of last night.  Here it is: “All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis.”  A highly respected group of Danish researchers say this…

Hat tip to Dr. Mercola for this tidbit. Is this the dirty secret of measles outbreaks in the USA today?  That many cases are actually due to vaccines? In 2016 the following paper was published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, authored jointly by staff from the Canadian Public Health Agency and the US CDC. …

Will anthrax vaccine eventually become part of the childhood vaccine schedule?  When we are now vaccinating children for many diseases that they have less than a million in one chance of catching, why not add anthrax vaccine? Those diseases American children aren’t being exposed to are diphtheria, rubella, and polio.  There were only 8 meningitis…

Meryl Nass, MD March 3, 2019 Sixteen different vaccines are recommended for all American children by the CDC.  The schedule for delivering multiple doses of each can be found here. Three of these are used for diseases have been wiped out, and there is less than a one in 50 million chance that a child in…

My 2019 published letter to the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal):  BMJ 2019;364:l312 Measles: two US outbreaks are blamed on low vaccination rates. Another perspective Please allow me to make a few corrections and add context to Ms. Tanne’s article. Endemic measles has been eradicated from the US and the whole of the western hemisphere, per…

     Disease            Number of New Cases, 2017              Deaths 1.  Gonorrhea                     500,000                                       ? 2.  Syphilis                          100,000                                       ? 3.  HIV                                  33,000   …

Meryl Nass, MD First written in May 2015, updated in February 2019 In April-May 2015 there were multiple news articles, and testimonies in the Maine and Vermont legislatures, about the need to impose vaccine mandates to protect immunocompromised children.[1] [2]  I attended the vaccine bills’ hearing in Augusta, Maine on May 11, which lasted into the…

Babies get much higher doses of Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis toxins in vaccines than adults! Tdap DTaP Adults, Pregnant Women, 12 year olds 2, 4, 6 months 18 months 5 years Boostrix Adacel Infanrix Daptacel Tetanus Toxoid 5 Lf * 5 Lf 10 Lf 5 Lf Diptheria Toxoid 2.5 Lf 2 Lf 25 Lf 15…

The CDC website posts information for each of the last 14 flu seasons on the effectiveness of each year’s flu vaccine.  Averaged out, the effectiveness of flu vaccines is 40.5%. Figure. Effectiveness of Seasonal Flu Vaccines from the 2004-2018 Flu Seasons While that may not sound too bad, it means that 60% or 3 out of every…

State medical boards license doctors.  They also enforce standards of practice.  For example, medical boards took away the licenses of over 50 doctors who treated chronic Lyme disease, and investigated many more.  Frustrated Lyme patients, unable to find doctors to treat them, went to their state legislatures to fight back.  As a result, every state…

It is only one study.  But it was carefully done, used interesting methods, and it tried to explore issues that have rarely been studied.  Researchers from the University of Maryland studied students who had new symptoms of influenza to see if infectious flu virus spread during coughs, sneezing, or regular breathing.  They looked at nasal…

Probably the best data on the severity of yearly influenza epidemics comes from deaths in children, because there is mandatory reporting of each death as related to influenza.  Flu-related deaths in adults are reported as due to flu (very few), pneumonia (more) or underlying chronic medical illnesses that contributed to death during or after a…

On January 3, 2018 the Maine Legislature’s joint committee on health discussed adding the Meningococcal ACWY vaccine to the list required to attend school.  France just added 8 vaccines to its required list last week.  Around the world, a push to get more and more vaccines into schoolchildren, using the threat to withhold schooling, has…

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/ No need to run and get that flu shot, the one that is reported to be only 10% effective this year. Yes, the same flu shot that will get me 10% off my grocery bill, if I get vaccinated at the supermarket. When you consider that a shot this year would likely make shots…

Here is a short article, by a doctor I don’t know, which explains how the medical ‘system’, which changed during the Obama administration with a bucketload of new demands, has ruined the profession of medicine for doctors, and brought it to its knees for patients.–Meryl I’ll never leave, but the joy is gone, says Jordan…

TwitterFaceboReddiAn ex-spy chief who spoke out publicly against Trump while inspiring other career intelligence figures to follow suit has admitted his leading role in the intelligence community waging political war against the president, describing his actions as something he didn’t “fully think through”. In a surprisingly frank interview, the CIA’s Michael Morell – who was longtime Deputy Director…

from today’s BMJ (British Medical Journal) Tom Jefferson: The UK turns to Witty, Vallance, and Van Tam for leadership: revolving doors? http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/12/06/tom-jefferson-the-uk-turns-to-witty-vallance-and-van-tam-for-leadership-revolving-doors/ December 6, 20173Revolving doors are used to facilitate entry or exit into a building. The trick with using these doors is always to get your timing right. Too fast or too slow and…

In a report just issued (November 2017) by the United Nations Office on Drug Control, we learn that Afghanistan had a huge, bumper crop of opium in 2017.  Its biggest ever.  And if you read the details of the methods used to estimate the amount of opium produced, you will see that there is a…

Ebola Virus RNA detection in Semen More than Two Years after Resolution of Acute Ebola Virus Infection  Abstract  Among 149 men who survived Ebola virus disease (EVD) and donated semen 260–1016 days after EVD onset, Ebola virus (EBOV) ribonucleic acid (RNA) was detected in 13 (9%). Of 137 men who donated semen 2 years after…

Drug companies spent the most money to promote the most useless drugs, according to the following study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal: The relation between promotional spending on drugs and their therapeutic gain: a cohort analysis Joel Lexchin MSc MD Abstract Background: Whether drug promotion helps or hinders appropriate prescribing by physicians is debated. This study…

Chilling report from STATon how Big Pharma is suing governments and overturning patent laws around the world to raise the price of its meds: By BROOK K. BAKER and KATRINA GEDDES AUGUST 21, 2017 Seven months after President Trump accused the pharmaceutical industry of “getting away with murder,” he is busy lining the pockets of large pharmaceutical companies worldwide by…

from  What the demise of the CIA’s anti-Assad program means Washington Post Opinion by David Ignatius July 20, 2017 “What did the CIA’s covert assistance program for Syrian rebels accomplish? Bizarrely, the biggest consequence may be that it helped trigger the Russian military intervention in 2015 that rescued President Bashar al-Assad — achieving the opposite…

Here is a very good start at diagnosing inherent problems in the medical research enterprise, and suggestions for correcting them.–Meryl BMJ 2017; 357 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2973 (Published 20 June 2017) Carl Heneghan, director1, Kamal R Mahtani, deputy director1, Ben Goldacre, director EBM DataLab1, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief2, Helen Macdonald, head of education2, Duncan Jarvies, multimedia editor2 A response to…

A paper has been published here and, while in draft form, discussed at length here, which reanalyzes the features of Zimbabwe’s anthrax epizootic, which began in 1978 and slowly tailed off after 1980. The authors include an MD and geography specialists from the University of Nevada, Reno.  The first author, James M. Wilson, MD, has…

http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/05/12/boston-electronic-medical-records?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170512 By Drs. John Levinson, Bruce H. Price and Vikas Saini It happens every day, in exam rooms across the country, something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago: Doctors and nurses turn away from their patients and focus their attention elsewhere — on their computer screens. By the time the doctor can finally turn…

One big contributor to ridiculously high administrative costs of medicine in the US is the federal government. Constantly changing federal rules seem to aim for complexity.  Compliance is nearly impossible for small medical practices, because Medicare changes its rules every few months. Doctors have to play by its rules, but it is very difficult to…