Artificial Intelligence Takes Over Vaccine Development
Story Highlights A computer with artificial intelligence (AI) has designed a new “turbocharged” flu vaccine without human help. A research team from Flinders University in Australia created the AI program, which they named SAM (Search Algorithm for Ligands). The AI vaccine research work is being funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Scientists in […]
“Vaccine-Derived” Polio on the Rise
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) last week reported that there have been a total of 22 confirmed cases of vaccine-derived polio paralysis, thus far, in 2019. The latest two cases involve a person from Sichuan province in China and a person in Angola. Other evidence of circulating vaccine strain poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) has […]
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 […]
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 […]
Half of America’s Kids Suffer from Chronic Illness and It’s Getting Worse
It is hard to imagine a country where half of the children born will be diagnosed with autism. Yet, that is the scenario that senior research scientist Stephanie Seneff, PhD of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) thinks the United States may face in 2025. I wrote about this in my last article in The […]