Half of Americans Will Be Diagnosed With Cancer by 2030
Cancer is an “abnormal growth of cells.” That is perhaps the most succinct description of the disease, which is really more a group of diseases since there are more than 100 types of cancer. Cancer cells are malignant—meaning that they can invade and spread to different parts of the body, forming solid tumors (masses of […]
Asymptomatic Carriers of Diphtheria Identified in Canadian School
Story Highlights A case of diphtheria has been confirmed in an elementary school in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Three other people, who are asymptomatic carriers of the bacterial disease have been identified and are being treated in isolation. The diphtheria vaccine is only available as a combination vaccine (DT, Td, DTaP, Tdap) and its effectiveness wanes over […]
What’s So Effective About a Flu Vaccine That’s Less Than 10 Percent “Effective”?
Sometimes topics for opinion pieces just fall out of the sky. Last week, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the new estimate for the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine during the second half of the 2018-2019 “flu season” was only nine percent. That’s pretty bad even by influenza vaccine […]
Autism Affecting Up to 1 in 36 Children in America
In April 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report estimating the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the United States at 1 in 59 children. The figure was based on a 2014 survey of eight-year-old children across 11 residential communities in the country, so clearly it was out of […]
Polio-like Guillain-Barré Syndrome on the Rise in Peru
The government of Peru declared a 90-day health emergency earlier this month following an outbreak of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) that has killed at least four people in the country. According to the Institute of Neurological Sciences (INCN) in Lima, Peru, the emergency was declared because the cases “have unusual and atypical characteristics that require rapid […]
Anti-Vaxxers are Dangerous and Should Be Arrested?
Opinion | You may have noticed a recent article in The Washington Post by Juliette N. Kayyem entitled “Anti-vaxxers are dangerous. Make them face isolation, fines, arrests.”1 My initial reaction was the article must have been written by a moron. However, my opinion changed when I discovered the author, Ms. Kayyem, who graduated from Harvard […]