Birth Control Pills Soon to be Abortion

That's right folks, the Bush administration continues its war on science and its practitioners by redefining the term "abortion". This move attempts to try and cover more people under pre-existing laws concerning medical procedures and provider's abilities to refuse them.

Under the new definition of "assist in the performance" people such as the instrument sterilizers can now refuse to participate if they feel abortion or any other procedure goes against their personal beliefs. No word yet on whether the custodians who clean the operating floors will come under this protection (though I severely doubt it considering the intent of this move).

The definition of abortion though is the one that people should be scared of. Traditionally an abortion has involved terminating pregnancy after the embryo has successfully implanted in the uterus. The new definition, one which more closely resembles the religious beliefs of the administration at the expense of the science and medical tradition, is much, much, much broader:

Therefore, for the purpose of these proposed regulations, and implementing and enforcing the Church Amendment, Public Health Service Act AS245, and the Weldon Amendment, the Department proposes to define abortion as "any of the various procedures--including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action--that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation."

This is a major, major change in the definition which brings every form of contraception under its umbrella. Birth control pills, plan B, even IUD's.

Women should be appalled at this, as well as the myriad reproductive rights and care the administration has taken away from them. Please contact your representatives and tell them where you stand on this. Things start off on a slow roll, such as allowing Viagra to be covered under insurance but not birth control, and eventually take a mind of their own (now we'll just adjust the definition of abortion to bring those techniques under scrutiny).

More After the Fold...

Summary only...

Vaccination and Asthma Shown to be Unlinked

Recently in the news there has been rumblings about a link between childhood immunization and asthma, which causes many parents to be concerned. Epi Wonk has written a post detailing a meta-analysis study published in the journal Pediatrics in November 2007 which found no statistical significant association between childhood vaccination and asthma.

I fully bow to Epi Wonk's writing on the subject (he is a now retired medical school professor and senior epidemiologist at the CDC) and thought I'd pass along some of his more pertinent information on the subject. Some of this information is very important, as the authors of the Pediatrics paper put it:

“It is important that researchers clarify this issue, because… the
perception that immunization causes asthma may become a significant
determinant of parents’ attitudes toward routine vaccination of their
children.”

A few important points I took away from Epi Wonk's discussion of the study. 1) The literature was scoured for randomized controlled and relevant birth-cohort studies from 1966 to March 2006. 2) To be included, each study had to meet three criteria: Directly compared vaccinated and unvaccinated children; Validated vaccination status by medical charts; Used preset criteria to define asthma.

This front-end criteria are very important for any review or meta-analysis because it will define the significance of the results received. Epi Wonk's last statement sums this up nicely. After pouring over the data and confirming the results it is important to qualify the significance of the results based on the input criteria, here's Epi:

A recent systematic literature review of high-quality studies that directly compared vaccinated and unvaccinated children, validated vaccination status by medical charts, and used preset criteria to define asthma found no association between childhood vaccination and asthma.

This is a good time to relate how the science works to the larger public community. I have been stressing the front end criteria of this study for a reason, by using these criteria the subject of the study is narrowed significantly, meaning this is not an overriding, large-scale study that was seeking to define the complete link between vaccination and asthma. This study was simply to define correlations within birth-cohort studies.

Birth-cohorts themselves are subject to a great deal of bias (something the author of the study acknowledges) and are extremely intensive in the front-end planning stages. A mini symposium on birth cohort studies published in 2002 in the journal Pediatric Respiratory Reviews examined the experience of a large, 10-year birth-cohort study conducted in Germany (Nickel R, Niggeman B, Gruber C, Kulig M, Wahn U, Lau S. Paediatric Respiratory Reviews. Sep 2002; Vol 3; Issue 3: 169-176) . The report detailed some difficulties encountered including changing nursing staff over the years which led to different bookkeeping and even patient evaluation scores. Racial differences need to be accounted for by including as many different genotypic backgrounds. The births need to be carefully selected to be evenly distributed over a 12 month period in order to account for seasonal affects. One of the largest problems is lost subjects, those who tend to not be affected by a disease will more regularly drop out of the study, pushing a bias towards those who are affected and are more likely to continue making their appointments. Interestingly enough it was found that as the personnel at the study centers changed the loss of subjects jumped significantly.

Recall bias is also an interesting phenomenon within studies where those affected by a disease under study, or who have had family members with the disease, can more frequently recall symptoms or are more observant of their child.

Epi Wonk himself shows how these studies need to be taken in the context in which the plan is laid out. He details a study conducted in Canada which shows that the timing of vaccination affects the risk of developing childhood asthma. This should show an obvious deficiency about the study, a variable that the study was not concerned about and cannot speak about. It doesn't mean that the study was not significant or not performed correctly, in fact in means the exact opposite; that the authors correctly narrowed down the significance of the results to mirror the criteria that was established before the study took place. The authors themselves even say "the multitude of biases in studies that have used a birth-cohort design stress the need for additional adequately controlled, large scale studies."

And there you have it, being able to identify the significance of data based on the parameters in which the data is being examined.

More After the Fold...

Summary only...

Saving Money by Increasing The Doctor Bill

Interesting article in the NYTimes today about a very large insurance experiment designed to cut costs by paying doctors more. The plan centers around cutting expensive visits to specialists by better paying family physicians, internists and pediatricians to devote more time and attention to their patients. This should prevent later costly procedures and emergency visits.

Currently there are just over 250,000 practicing family physicians, general, practitioners, and internists in this country, and nearly 472,000 specialists. The salary of those primary care physicians is far less than the specialists who are compensated at a far higher rate for each patient visit. The plan comes on the heels of a report in North Carolina that says a program like this saved $162 million in 2005.

I think this is an innovative idea and fair to those physicians that don't necessarily perform surgeries or procedures, but spend hours pondering over multiple blood tests, x-rays, and other common tests. The job of primary care is usually much more complicated than that of many specialists. Specialists usually have the advantage of knowing what is wrong with their patient and what they're going to do about it before they even see them, family doctors have to study histories over and over to understand the patterns that may arrive or an unusual result by a patient that hasn't presented with any symptoms for 20 years.

Trying to Save by Increasing Doctors’ Fees - NYTimes.com

More After the Fold...

Summary only...

The Coolidge Effect, Sexual Dysfunction

I'm sure Calvin Coolidge never thought he would be associated with a fundamental tenet of sexual behavior, but a story occurring during the 30th U.S. President's term (1923-1929) on a Midwest farm put him in the sexual behavior textbooks forever.

As the story goes President Coolidge was a visiting a farm with his wife. While the President was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that "could copulate with hens all day long, day after day." Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr. Coolidge, which he did.

The President thought for a moment and then inquired, "With the same hen?"

"No, sir," replied the farmer.

"Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge," retorted the President.

So what exactly is the Coolidge effect? An experiment using a furry male rat and a harem of willing females has been used as the classic model.

When you drop a male rat into a cage with a receptive female rat, you see an initial frenzy of copulation. Then, progressively, the male rat tires of that particular female. Even without an apparent change in her receptivity he reaches a point where he has little libido-and simply ignores her. However, if you replace the original female rat with a fresh one, the male immediately revives and begins copulating again. You can repeat this process with fresh females until the rat nearly dies of exhaustion.

Dopamine, a neurochemical which floods the reward center of the primitive brain, reinvigorates the rat when a new female is presented. The reward center is located deep within the limbic system, the center of emotions, drives, impulses, and subconcious decision-making. When dopamine rushes into the reward center the urge to take actions that further our survival or pass on our genes is activated. Eating, sex, bonding with offspring, and taking risks are all actions associated with this response.

In reality we are all addicted to dopamine. It's not that you crave the ice cream, the winning lotto ticket, or a romp in the sack. You crave the dopamine, that short rewarding blast. All addictive substances and activities increase dopamine. It's the whole reason things are addictive (and orgasms are highly addictive, being compared to shooting heroin in brain scans). But like all addictive substances, dopamine doesn't give a lasting pleasure. As soon as dopamine successfully motivates a behavior, it drops off, awaiting the next opportunity to push you around.

This drop in dopamine is a trigger of the Coolidge effect (along with novelty itself). Following orgasm, instead of wallowing in bliss and feeding off of the thrilling anticipation as when your dopamine was high, you now feel flat, even needy. The orgasms themselves trigger this drop in dopamine. While dopamine is low you are very susceptible to anything at all that will raise it again, calorie-rich food, gambling, alcohol, shopping sprees, cocaine, internet porn, or sex.

One of the most effective ways to immediately regain this blast of feel-good neurochemicals is to find a new potential sex partner. Over time this new partner too will lose the shine and novelty is the only way to regain this blast (whips, chains, and handcuffs anyone?).

The Coolidge effect has been observed in all mammals tested and even is observed in females, who will flirt and present themselves more around a potential new male partner.

Evolutionarily, the effect makes good sense. A novel female provides a new set of genes to tap into, and by mixing genes with multiple members of the available gene pool, the male generates more biological diversity in his offspring increasing the overall likelihood of survival of any one group of his kids. Of course the motivation behind evolution is to continue to pass your genes on to the next generation, to survive, but today we don't live in an evolutionarily driven world. Our species has constructed a detailed and highly schematic representation of satisfying life, one that revolves around the pursuits of the individual as well as social acuity.

This leads to an interesting conundrum where our own biology drives and motivates us to perform acts that may cause us social harm, even instability. This sexual driven mechanism does not regard the value of a committed relationship entirely in the interest of propelling your genes onward. Love and intimacy have shown to be a powerful determinant of health, leading to speedy recoveries, longevity, reduced internal stress, and social satiety.  The drive away from love deprives the self of the social satisfaction of love.

The Coolidge effect is strictly a temporary fix that will ultimately leave you feeling depleted, with your new partner not able to satisfy you any more than your previous one. Love, on the other hand, is a long term social bond that should reciprocate satisfaction much more regularly than the chase for another mate. So the biological drive is subverting the social responsibility of monogamy, one that has to be reconciled within the individual. Young adults know this process very well, as they like to call it "settling down." The time when you start feeling the need to find a long-term mate and commit to the emotional rewards of a close partner, while leaving behind the old life of being promiscuous.

I think this is a really interesting feature of society that we have constructed upon ourselves. As we have bred the natural and wild instincts out of our domesticated animals (or muted them to satisfaction) we ourselves are domesticating our own biological mechanisms to fit the rules our society has deemed acceptable. The brain has to deal with this disconnect between pleasing the biological self (by having multiple partners) or pleasing the social self (by having a long-term partner).

More After the Fold...

Summary only...

Texas GOP passes Theocratic Platform

The Texas Republican Party Convention has just ended and their platform has been set for this election cycle. The Texas Freedom Network has delved into the document and highlighted some key points, but really this is the same document the party has used for the last three election cycles. The platform calls for religious zealotry and the destruction of separation of church and state. The party's assault on religious freedom for all people, regardless of beliefs, has been renewed once more. The far-right extremists once again pushed a platform that calls on government to promote their own religious views above all others, here are some highlights.

• The Texas GOP declares that "America is a nation under God founded on Judeo-Christian principles" and that the party is pledged "toward dispelling the myth of separation of church and state." [pp 18]
• "We support school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded and which form the basis of America's legal, political and economic systems." [pp 17]
• "We oppose any governmental action to restrict, prohibit, or remove public display of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) or other religious symbols." [pp 11]

The platform also reaffirmed support for policies that undermine public schools, sound science and medical research.

• The GOP would challenge the teaching of evolution in science classes by promoting "intelligent design"/creationism and the so-called "weaknesses" of theories such as evolution. [pp 17] The platform does not recognize that evolution is the foundation of all biological sciences.
• Texas Republicans "oppose any sex education other than abstinence until heterosexual marriage." This position prohibits teaching students age-appropriate, medically accurate information about birth control and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. [pp 17]
• The party not only rejects medical research involving embryonic stem cells, it calls for imposing criminal penalties on medical professionals and scientists who engage in such research. [pp 14]
• The state GOP supports shuttling millions of dollars from public schools to pay for private and religious school tuition through tax-funded vouchers. It opposes requiring that private and religious schools, even those receiving tax-funded vouchers, meet any state standards and other regulations set for public schools. [pp 16] The platform also calls for the abolition of property taxes, which provide nearly all local funding for public schools in Texas. [pp 21]
• The party supports granting the heavily politicized State Board of Education sole authority over content in and the adoption of public school textbooks. [pp 16] In 1995, due to hundreds of changes in textbooks to meet personal, political and religious objections by the state board, the Legislature limited the state board's authority.
• Texas Republicans call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and government-sponsored programs that deal with early childhood development. [pp 16, 17]

Page 19 of the platform declares that Texas Republicans "deplore all discrimination." Yet the platform also calls for widespread and systematic discrimination against those who are not heterosexual.

• The platform calls to support "sodomy" laws in order to fine and/or imprison adults who engage in private, consensual sexual intimacy with someone of the same gender. [pp12]
  
• The party would push for a federal constitutional amendment banning any state from permitting same-sex marriages or any other legal recognition of or benefits for same-sex relationships. Issuing marriage licenses or performing civil ceremonies for same-sex couples would constitute a felony charge. [pp 12]
• The party supports the repeal of the state's hate crime statute. [pp 19]

And to top it all off we have the platform trying to trash what good the Texas government has done or is trying to do.

• The Texas GOP opposes any taxes or regulations designed to deal with the serious threat of climate change. [pp 21]
• The platform calls on the state Legislature to transfer the powers and funding needed to investigate and prosecute charges of government corruption (such as former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land) from the Travis County Public Integrity Unit to another body. [pp 11]
• The party opposes mandatory vaccination programs for infectious diseases that endanger children in public schools and the general public outside them. [pp 16]
• The state party reaffirmed its hostility toward the international community by calling for the U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations as well as the World Trade Organization. It also opposes measures, such as the Endangered Species Act, that protect the environment. [pp 9]
• The party supports the repeal of the minimum wage laws. [pp 22]

There are many more topics including opposing women's reproductive rights, threatening judicial independence, and weakening civil/equal rights that are included in the document and if you have a few hours and are ready to get your mind blown I suggest you try and read the full document. Then maybe you'll have a better understanding why the school system in Texas is about to get blown to shit, because it is run by neocons who are in bed with the religious right and the GOP to steer education toward their spiritual beliefs.

In all honesty this isn't a new document, but you would think that eventually the party would come to terms with the fallacy of Judeo-Christian superiority.

More After the Fold...

Summary only...

Oh My, You Took Pictures of My What?

Here it is in all of its life-giving glory. The actual act of ovulation caught on camera in humans for the first time.
Here's the article from the BBC describing how Gynaecologist (Brits spell funny) Dr. Jacques Donnez spotted and filmed the act of ovulation for the first time during a routine hysterectomy. Pretty incredible stuff.

More After the Fold...

Summary only...

Can We Really Eliminate a Virus? The Polio Puzzle

On Wednesday a milestone was established in the fight for the eradication of polio. It has been one year since the last reported case of the childhood disease in Myanmar (data usually takes a month or two to collect so this may change). That makes two countries this year, the other being Somalia, who have surpassed a year without an outbreak in 2008. Currently polio is endemic in four countries: Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. The organizations who fight the disease encounter a two-fold challenge in each of these countries; immunize all children under 5 with enough doses to be effective, and contain the disease within the country until it can be eliminated. These challenges are further complicated by war, political insecurity, famine and distrust of medicine. To overcome these roadblocks and eliminate the disease will require supreme diligence and innovative ideas from those on the ground in these last few strongholds which continue to spawn cases of polio.

The press to eradicate polio across the globe started in 1988. The World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, UNICEF, and most developed countries (with the US far and ahead with greater than $1,000 million US donated so far) set out to conquer the disease that was endemic to over 125 countries. 20 years later only 4 countries suffer through a constant battle to interrupt transmission. 10 other countries reported infections in 2007 and all but 2 have had cases this year (the total cases to-date in 2008 is 453 globally).

One major factor standing in the way of success in many of these countries is political instability and war. Afghanistan and Somalia, as well as parts of Pakistan and Ethiopia, suffer from armed conflicts that make "vaccination logistically difficult and unpredictable at best." But the will of the people on the ground, doctors and volunteers who want to make a difference in their home countries, finds ways to operate around such dangerous situations. Negotiations for 'days of tranquility' (the suspension of hostilities in order to allow for vaccination) have been successful in Sudan and previously in Somalia and Ethiopia. These individuals show great courage and determination in the face of a major roadblock. Many times simply receiving and delivering vaccinations with the workers is a strain on the patience with multiple searches and questions. Soldiers don't take to kindly to strangers, especially those who create large crowds of citizens. But there are success stories from countries with far worse conditions than any face today. Bangladesh, Vietnam, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe all offered serious problems. Polio was eradicated from Angola in the midst of a civil war. In 2002 an outbreak in Kandahar was stopped by a WHO-led mop up crew despite the Afghan war. Currently Afghanistan faces challenges with a power struggle happening in the country. Basic supplies are in short order, many parts are barren or hard to reach by vehicle, and regional conflict has made most villages wary of any outsiders. This final roadblock presents a whole new challenge for the eradication efforts.

Once the organizations have been allowed to organize a vaccination effort the ground campaign must begin to recruit trained medical personnel and volunteers to monitor and administer the vaccine. A huge part of this effort is to inform citizens of the intentions and purpose of the operation. Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon from the United States, traveled to his family's native India after his residency to volunteer in the fight against polio. In his book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Gawande writes,

One difficulty came up repeatedly--from local doctors, from villagers, from workers trudging house to house. The question was: Why? Why this huge polio campaign when what we need is--fill in the blank here--clean water (diarrheal illness kills 500,000 Indian children per year), better nutrition (half of children under three have stunted growth), working septic systems (which would help prevent polio as well as other diseases), irrigation (so a single rainless season would not impoverish farming families)? We saw neighborhoods that had had outbreaks of malaria, tuberculosis, cholera. But no one important had come to visit in years. Now one case of polio occurs and the infantry marches in?

There are no simple answers to this question because truly the access to clean water, or good nutrition would save a larger number of children than polio eradication ever will. I know I would have trouble answering questions like that, I know I would explain I was there to do what I could, and polio eradication has been decided as what I can do. An old saying explains a better reason maybe; if you're starving, becoming paralyzed certainly isn't going to help. While it is harsh it is true, the doctors on the ground are just following what they can do to help. These guys are truly what makes the eradication goal a feasible one, the ability to organize and convince the population of the importance in the face of true struggle is a skill that a large organization cannot achieve, only in small step swill individuals gain the trust of an entire population.

Perhaps the goal of global eradication of polio is an absurd ambition, India alone creates a new pool of potential polio victims the size of Venezuela's entire population. Staying caught up means organizing a mammoth campaign to immunize every child under 5, and the cost has been overwhelming. So far about $3 billion has been spent worldwide, more than six hundred dollars a case. To put that in perspective the total health care budget for India's government in 2003 amounted to four dollars per person. The truth is, no cost-benefit analysis calculus can assure us just now that the money is well spent. But this remains a task that as a civilization we can do that would benefit mankind forever. The eradication of smallpox was a gift from the previous generation to all who are to come, and now, perhaps, the eradication of polio can, too. But it will be achieved on the backs of those on the ground who represent a monument to the perfection of performance, showing what can be achieved through diligent detail coupled with great ambition.

More After the Fold...

Summary only...

Uber Fail by the Anti-Vaccinationists

I was searching around for some flu information at work dealing with an NIH project I have and my google search turned up some pretty freakin scary results. One of the first hits, "Building a Child's Immunity the Natural Way" is so fundamentally wrong about all matters medical that it took a while for me to read through it. It starts off really bad.

New Jersey's Public Health Council gave its citizens a Christmas present that will not please the health-conscious, as it became the first state in the nation to require flu shots for preschoolers.

So being "health-conscious" now means your are anti-mandatory vaccinations. What the fu...

Vaccines are dangerous for the health of any individual, but when administered to small children in their important developmental years, they are especially damaging. Medical "experts" have not even determined the correct dosages for small children, who in this regard are not just small adults. When we talk about daycare, we are talking about babies as young as a few months of age. Additionally, not only do vaccines usually contain mercury, but many lack effectiveness and can cause problems with the development of the child's natural immune system (emphasis mine).

Look, I'm not going to address all of the anti-vaccination canards present in this piece, other than refer you to other excellent sources. Two things really get me though: lies, and this "immunity" thing.

Even if the evidence of a relationship between vaccine use and autism is disregarded, there are more debilitating results of vaccine administration to children. Due to the availability of new health information, a growing number of scientists and doctors have realized the problems revealed by recent immunology research and have begun to challenge the foundational tenets of vaccination. Because it seems that vaccines have eradicated many diseases in the last 100 years, many doctors have been reticent to question them. Such claims have mainly been based on epidemic studies rather than on clinical evidence.

For example, Europe never used the polio vaccines, yet it experienced the same rise and fall of polio cases as did the U.S.

That, my dear reader, is a lie. OK, if you are being generous, it is just ignorance, but I find it hard to be generous, given a 3 second stop at google will take you over to the World Health Organization and explain its polio eradication campaign in Europe. After a lie like that, it's hard to believe anything that follows.

Also, many diseases that were believed to be wiped out have re-appeared under different names. As an example, spinal meningitis and polio have almost the same exact symptoms. There have never been any studies that proved the vaccines actually did cause the eradication of any disease; it has only been assumed by the fact that that the epidemics seemed to have ceased. The CDC uses the concept that a relationship does not prove causality to downplay the autism-thimerosal link, yet ironically, they don't apply the same standard to the relationship between vaccination usage and the end of an epidemic.

That isn't just "moving the goalposts"; that's digging them up, burning them, and scattering the ashes. We all know epidemiologic studies have their limitations, but it's pretty clear to the scientific community, beyond a reasonable doubt, that vaccines successfully prevent disease. (By the way, "spinal meningitis" and polio are completely unalike, and, believe it or not, we actually have tests to tell us what organism is causing an infection. Welcome to the early 20th century!)

All vaccines depress our immune functions. The chemicals in the vaccines depress our immune system; the virus present depresses immune function; and the foreign DNA/RNA from animal tissues depresses immunity. Studies have found that some metabolic functions were significantly reduced after vaccinations were given and did not return to normal for months. Other indicators of immune system depression included reduced lymphocyte viability, neutrophil hyper-segmentation, and a reduced white cell count. So we are trading a small immune depression for immunity to one disease, our only defense against all known disease for a temporary immunity against one disease, usually an innocuous childhood disease. Vaccines have been linked to AIDS and other immunodeficient disorders as well. The trade-off is not at all fair and not worth the risk.

Wow. This is so damned stupid. And dangerous. First, what does this phrase "immune depression" mean? I don't know. They do give a hint futher down, throwing around big words like "neutrophil hypersegmentation" but that's pretty meaningless as an observation, and without references is completely useless. Then the nice scare tactic of vaccines and AIDS. Nice. Really nice. OK, time to explain how vaccines actually work.
Vaccines and the Immune System

This is really cool...much cooler than the cultists would like you to believe. It is teh uber-kool. And please forgive the over-simplification.

We need an example: let's take polio vaccine---you know, the one they never used in Europe when the WHO wiped out polio in Europe. We have two choices, but the one we use the most in N.A. and Europe is the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). Both of the polio vaccines have advantages and disadvantages, but hey, I only have so much time.

To make IPV, polio viruses are grown in the lab, then "inactivated" with a chemical. This renders them non-infectious. Then they are injected under the skin, which is where the fun starts...

When the inactivated viruses enter the tissues, immune cells patrolling the area detect foreign chemicals, usually proteins. (Viruses are not living organisms, but basically little bits of RNA or DNA and protein.) These cells engulf the invading viruses, process the parts, and actually display them on their surface, like a sign. Other cells (T-cells) come by, and if any of them happens to be able to read this sign, they get very excited. These cells, by various mechanisms, pass the news of the specific invader on to B-cells, which then mature and start making antibodies that are specific to the polio virus. This takes a few weeks. After this initial introduction of polio to the immune system, the antibody reaction dies down, and a few of these now-polio-specific B-cells go into hibernation in the spleen, lymph nodes, gut, and other nooks and crannies.

Let's fast forward a few years. You are about to go on your dream vacation to Uganda. You've been warned about sporatic cases of polio in the area. You have every intention of avoiding unpurified water and uncooked foods, but nobody's perfect. One night at dinner you accidentally eat the salad. They guy who made the salad just returned from the outhouse, which doesn't have a sink. Eww. In his stool were some polioviruses. These were deposited on his hands, then into your salad, and ultimately into your gut. I hope it was a good salad.

When the virus reaches the gut, it latches onto the intestine. Some of your immune cells recognize it, and start the same process that happened when you were vaccinated. Except you have those clever little "memory B-cells" left over from your vaccination, so instead of the immune reaction taking weeks to ramp up, it takes hours. Your B-cells start dividing and producing antibodies and secreting various important chemicals. The antibodies mark cells infected with polio with a big sign that says "kill me", and the soldiers of the immune system march in and do just that.

If it weren't for your vaccine, the antibody response would have taken too long, and you would have become infected. Chances are you would get lucky and suffer nothing worse than a "stomach flu". Or you could end up paralyzed.

So, when I read idiotic trash like the above article, I get really, really mad. All these years of science, medicine, and public health pumped into the sewer in favor of cult medicine bullshit. They should be ashamed. But of course, they have no shame.

More After the Fold...

Summary only...