U.K. Health Officials Call for Banning Schoolchildren Without Proof of MMR Vaccination
Health officials in London, England are calling for children who have not received MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) shots to be banned from attending schools in the United Kingdom as measles cases continue to rise. Emma Best, chairwoman of the London Assembly Health Committee, said students who can’t show proof they have gotten the MMR vaccine […]
Guinea-Bissau Hepatitis B Vaccine Trial in Newborns Sparks Ethics Debate
The World Health Organization (WHO) and some members of the U.S. Congress have raised ethical concerns about a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded clinical trial examining the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns in Guinea-Bissau.1 The study would support a randomized controlled trial led by researchers at the University of Southern Denmark […]
Novartis Settles With Estate of Henrietta Lacks Over Stolen Cervical Cancer Cells
Novartis has reached a settlement with the estate of Henrietta Lacks over the use of the HeLa cell line, a line of human cells derived from tissue removed from Lacks during medical treatment for cervical cancer without her knowledge or consent. Terms of the settlement were not publicly disclosed.1 The settlement resolves claims that pharmaceutical […]
Texas Attorney General Investigates Doctors Receiving Money Incentives to Vaccinate Children
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently announced that his office has opened an investigation into financial incentives connected to doctors administering vaccines to children. Paxton said the probe will examine pediatricians, insurers, vaccine manufacturers, and other entities that may have engaged in deceptive or unlawful conduct by failing to disclose financial incentives tied to the […]
Nursing Home Residents Routinely Given Vaccines Rarely Represented in Clinical Trials
According to researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, people living in older care homes have been largely excluded from vaccine trials, despite being among the groups most likely to receive vaccines, especially during public health emergencies. Researchers say this mismatch has limited the evidence available on how vaccines perform in care nursing home […]
Denmark Publicly Apologizes for Involuntary Birth Control in Greenland
From 1966 to 1991, thousands of Greenlandic women and girls as young as 13 years old were fitted with intrauterine birth control devices without their knowledge or consent under the direction of Danish authorities. Records of 4,500 women—about half of the 9,000 women of fertile age living in the country at the time—who were victims […]