vaccines

Does chocolate hold the key to cure HPV?

Source: Yahoo News Indulgent chocolate treats may be the best-known and most widely appreciated product of the cacao tree, but new scientific research from New York Based Cacao Biotechnologies is uncovering potential new applications for the antioxidant-rich beans which could spur an innovative approach to treating human papillomavirus (HPV), a precursor to cervical cancer. The human papillomavirus is the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the United States, with an estimated 24 million active cases and 5.5 million new cases each year, according to the National Cancer Institute. HPV is the leading cause of cervical cancer in woman with more than 12,000 cases reported in the U.S. each year. HPV vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration are available, but they are not a cure and they can’t effectively prevent all strains of HPV infection in those who are sexually active. Existing vaccines are only proven effective against a small number of high-risk, cancer-causing HPV strains and are not free of serious side effects including convulsions and paralysis. While condoms can reduce the risk of HPV infection, the virus can still be transmitted simply through skin contact of areas not covered by the condom. Vaccination will not cure someone who is already infected with the virus, so even with massive public health education campaigns, HPV will not soon be eradicated because it is so widely spread in the adult population. According to Penny Hitchcock, Chief of the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Branch of the U.S. government’s National Division of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-02-04T12:16:39-07:00February, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Scientific frauds are not nearly rare enough

Source: www.torontosun.com Author: Joanne Richard Seems there’s a whole lot of misconduct going on in the world of science. The latest scandal showed that research linking measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines with autism is a sham, and it’s not alone. An investigation reports that one in seven scientists know colleagues who fake scientific findings, according the University of Edinburgh, while nearly half know of colleagues who engage in questionable practices. Only 2% of researchers polled own up to unethical misconduct – that number is probably higher, investigators report in the journal PLoS One. An Acadia Institute survey states 50% of faculty and 43% of graduate students have “direct knowledge” of scientific wrongdoing, including fraud, falsification and plagiarism, in their labs. Falsifying findings have put Dr. Andrew Wakefield into the hall of shame. His criticism of the vaccine to fight measles, mumps and rubella literally caused a global health crisis when his studies were reported in the Lancet medical journal in 1998. The journal fully retracted the published claims. A U.K. panel found Wakefield, of London’s Royal Free Hospital, to be “dishonest,” “unethical,” “irresponsible” and “callous.” Investigation by British journalist Brian Deer unearthed the damning evidence of financial and scientific misconduct. Rule breakers rule – everything from data fabrication to falsification, plagiarism to fraud to embezzlement is on the roster of rotten scientific behavior. It’s a high-stakes game where pressure is frenzied to publish positive results. Check out other famous faked scientific results that have left careers in ruins and [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-01-23T17:56:30-07:00January, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Why parents fear the needle

Source: nytimes.com Author: Michael Willrich Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, roughly one in five Americans believes that vaccines cause autism — a disturbing fact that will probably hold true even after the publication this month, in a British medical journal, of a report thoroughly debunking the 1998 paper that began the vaccine-autism scare. That’s because the public’s underlying fear of vaccines goes much deeper than a single paper. Until officials realize that, and learn how to counter such deep-seated concerns, the paranoia — and the public-health risk it poses — will remain. The evidence against the original article and its author, a British medical researcher named Andrew Wakefield, is damning. Among other things, he is said to have received payment for his research from a lawyer involved in a suit against a vaccine manufacturer; in response, Britain’s General Medical Council struck him from the medical register last May. As the journal’s editor put it, the assertion that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism “was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud.” But public fear of vaccines did not originate with Dr. Wakefield’s paper. Rather, his claims tapped into a reservoir of doubt and resentment toward this life-saving, but never risk-free, technology. Vaccines have had to fight against public skepticism from the beginning. In 1802, after Edward Jenner published his first results claiming that scratching cowpox pus into the arms of healthy children could protect them against smallpox, a political cartoon appeared showing newly vaccinated people with hooves [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-01-22T19:10:20-07:00January, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Thimerosol-Autism link was a legal theory in search of science

Source: blogs.forbes.com Author: Daniel Fisher What has been obvious to skeptics for years has finally become obvious to all: The supposed link between vaccines and autism is a sham perpetrated in the name of litigation. In a scathing series of articles and editorial in the British Medical Journal, researcher Andrew Wakefield, who wrote an influential Lancet article in 1998 suggesting vaccines cause autism, has been exposed as a fraud. What’s worse, he was paid by lawyers to perpetrate his fraud, more than $675,000 over two years. Wakefield’s theories and the shoddy research performed by a British lab helped fuel a similar wave of litigation in the U.S. With total disregard for the risk of needless injury and death they were helping to cause, trial lawyers and cheerleaders like Robert Kennedy peddled the story that the preservative thimerosol, containing minute traces of mercury, was the cause of an explosion in autism diagnoses. What they never said was this was a theory tailor-made for litigation. Science designed to serve the courtroom. The lawyers had a problem, you see. Congress, recognizing that vaccines will injure and kill a predictable number of people each year while saving many more, passed a law in 1986 taking away the right to sue vaccine manufacturers in standard courts. The cases were funneled to a special vaccine court where damages would be paid out according to a schedule. Lawyers didn’t like that, preferring the potentially much larger verdicts they could get from a jury. So they began looking [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-01-07T08:18:45-07:00January, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Time for a national immunization strategy, health officials say

Source: The Globe and Mail As Ottawa and the provinces embark on negotiations to renew the Health Accord in 2014, they should take the opportunity to invest in a truly national vaccination strategy, public health leaders say. “Right now, we have a patchwork of approaches across the country,” Debra Lynkowski, CEO of the Canadian Public Health Association, said in an interview. “It’s time for a harmonized and national approach.” She was speaking on behalf of a coalition of public health officials, government and industry representatives who are calling for a strategy that includes several elements, including: - A national immunization registry where there is a central record of all vaccines individuals have received – currently some provinces have registries but they are not linked; - Creating a single childhood immunization schedule so children get the same vaccines at the same time across Canada – there are now wide variations between jurisdictions and some children miss key vaccines as a result; - Harmonizing vaccine delivery and access to ensure the same vaccines are funded in every province and territory at the same time. Ian Gemmill, past chair of the Canadian Coalition for Immunization Awareness and Promotion, said such a strategy exists on paper but not in practice. “It needs a kick start. Our governments need to make a sustained investment in the health of our children,” he said. The coalition has not put a dollar figure on the initiative but, based on past efforts, at least $100-million a year would be [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-12-07T12:22:45-07:00December, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Pertussis reaches epidemic proportions in California; New links identified between vaccine-preventable infections and cancer.

Source: Disabled World New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that adults remain largely unvaccinated against preventable infectious illnesses. At a news conference convened today by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID), experts in public health, infectious disease, oncology and other medical specialties discussed the data and the health consequences for adults who skip vaccines. They collectively called on all adults and health care providers to improve vaccination rates. "For more than six decades, vaccines have protected us from infectious illnesses that have a wide range of consequences, from lost work days and inability to meet our daily obligations, to pain, discomfort, hospitalization, long-term disability and death," said Susan J. Rehm, M.D., NFID medical director. According to Dr. Rehm, by foregoing needed vaccines, adults not only leave themselves vulnerable to sickness, but they expose those around them to unnecessary risks, too. This problem is evident right now, as pertussis (whooping cough) continues to claim the lives of infants in California, while adults, who are frequently responsible for transmitting the disease to infants, fail to get the one-time pertussis booster vaccine. The impact of other vaccine-preventable infections may not be as immediately apparent, but they are no less important. Other vaccines for adults protect against viruses that cause several types of cancer, reactivation of the chickenpox virus that causes shingles later in life, and infection with bacteria that are the leading cause of community-acquired pneumonia. New survey results from NFID suggest that doctor/patient communication challenges may [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-11-23T10:17:29-07:00November, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer vaccines get coveted “Orphan” go-ahead

Source: www.zampbioworld.org/bionews Author: staff Two experimental vaccines from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) recently received a federal orphan drug designation for advanced head and neck cancer, according to a company official. The vaccine candidates were licensed by Gliknik, Inc., located at the University of Maryland BioPark. Orphan status for the vaccines means that the startup firm will receive tax credits and marketing incentives from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which may hasten its development of the treatments. The vaccines were eligible because they are personalized for a limited number of patients. “Advanced head and neck cancer is a challenging disease with limited treatment options. Even with chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, people with advanced head and neck cancer may have a limited life expectancy of six to eight months,” says David Block, MD, MBA, co-founder, president, and CEO of Gliknik. The vaccines were designed in a precise manner to boost the immune system. They were invented by Scott Strome, MD, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “The survival of head and neck cancer patients has not really improved in 30 years,” says Strome, who included in the two vaccines certain compounds that act as biological recognition points for specific substances associated with some head and neck cancerous tumors. Head and neck cancer is different from brain cancers and may include cancers of the tongue, tonsils, nasal cavity, sinuses, lips, mouth, salivary glands, throat, and larynx. Any proposed treatment for the total number of all head [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-04-10T12:49:39-07:00April, 2009|Oral Cancer News|