-
Year-round consumption of leafy greens increases disease risk
Desiring healthier food, more Americans and European now eat leafy greens year round; trouble is, the need to supply these vegetables year-round has required new methods to clean, package, and deliver these fragile food items across large distances, creating more opportunities for contamination and infection
-
-
DHS increases funding for GenVec's FMD vaccine program
The U.S. Department of Agrictultre and DHS are both worried about foot-and-mouth disease, and a Maryland company has its contract increase to develop unique molecular-based FMD vaccine for cattle
-
-
FDA approves smallpox vaccine from Acambis
FDA approves new smallpox vaccine from U.K.-based company — and a good thing, too, as current vaccine maker, New Jersey-based Wyeth, has stopped making its version of the vaccine
-
-
Efforts to monitor quality of imported food increase
Nearly nine million total food shipments come into the United States annually; FDA officials are only able physically to examine about 1 percent in a laboratory; government, private sectior say this is not enough
-
-
Imported food testing a growing business
The growing wave of imports, and the realization that other countries have different product health and safety standards and different ways to enforce such standards, give boost to U.S. food- and product-inspection industry
-
-
Federal agency says proposed BU biolab no threat
Many in Boston are uneasy about BU’s plan to build a biolab in the city’s South End neighborhood; a federal agency’s study says lab will pose no risk
-
-
National biolab may remain on Plum Island
The national biolab on Plum Island, New York, was built in 1954, and it showing its age; DHS has been looking for a new location for a new $450 million biolab, and five locations made the finalist list; now DHS says the lab may well remain on Plum Island
-
-
Next generation bio aerosol systems receives boost
Specialist in bio-aerosol sensor capable of detecting anthrax, tularemia, and smallpox receives funding from DHS for second phase development
-
-
Bird-flu infection results in Germany's biggest bird cull ever
More than 160,000 geese culled in Germany after the deadly H5N1 bird-flu virus is found in a poultry farm near the city of Erlangen
-
-
Poisonous puffer fish sold as salmon kill 15 in Thailand
California-based company imports puffer fish from China, mislabel them as “monkfish,” and sell them to Illinois restaurants; several people beome ill
-
-
EU lifts ban on British meat, dairy exports
EU imposed ban three weeks ago after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in three U.K. farms; ban cost U.K. farmers about £10 million a week in lost sales
-
-
WHO, China to discuss Chinese food safety practices
Faced with an embarassing wave of product and food-stuff recalls owing to inadequate safety regulations, and a growing number of contract cancellations by major U.S. and European importers, China arranges to discuss issue with UN health agency
-
-
ImmuneRegen offers Homspera as anthrax vaccine
The administration erred in entrusting anthrax vaccine development to VaxGen; Arizona-based ImmuneRegen BioSciences believes it has a better solution
-
-
World Health Organization diseases spread faster around world
U.N. health agency says one or more new diseases have been identified every year since the 1970s —a rate it says is “unprecedented”
-
-
Video game offers clues to human behavior during pandemics
In 2005 the creators of World of Warcraft video game introduced a virulent, contagious disease into the game as a challenge to players; subsequent players’ behavior tells us much about human behavior during real pandemics
-
The long view
Vaccine Myths That Won't Die and How to Counter Them—Part 1
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has spent decades promoting vaccine skepticism. He has replaced scientists at different HHS such as CDC and NIH with vaccine skeptics and anti-vaccine activists. They have polluted the information environment with, and base their policy changes on, myths about the supposed risks of vaccines. Each of these myths has been studied extensively. Each has been refuted. And yet each persists, because misinformation travels faster than correction and because these myths tap into fears that are genuinely human.
Vaccine Myths That Won’t Die and How to Counter Them—Part 2
This article and its Part 1 catalogue the debunked myths driving the vaccine skeptics who now run HHS. These myths share four fundamental errors: First, the conflation of temporal association with causation. Second, the confusion of regulatory paperwork with the totality of scientific evidence. Third, the demand for impossible standards. Fourth, the selective citation of evidence. The current political moment has given unprecedented platforms to vaccine skepticism. But politics cannot change biology.