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Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating the body's adaptive immunity, they help prevent sickness from an infectious disease. When a sufficiently large percentage of a population has been vaccinated, herd immunity results. Herd immunity protects those who may be immunocompromised and cannot get a vaccine because even a weakened version would harm them. The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified. Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases; widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the elimination of diseases such as polio and tetanus from much of the world. However, some diseases, such as measles outbreaks in America, have seen rising cases due to relatively low vaccination rates in the 2010s – attributed, in part, to vaccine hesitancy. According to the World Health Organization, vaccination prevents 3.5–5 million deaths per year.
Aluminium hydroxide, Al(OH)3, is found in nature as the mineral gibbsite and its three much rarer polymorphs: bayerite, doyleite, and nordstrandite. Aluminium hydroxide is amphoteric, i.e., it has both basic and acidic properties. Closely related are aluminium oxide hydroxide, AlO(OH), and aluminium oxide or alumina, the latter of which is also amphoteric. These compounds together are the major components of the aluminium ore bauxite. Aluminium hydroxide also forms a gelatinous precipitate in water.
Metallothionein (MT) is a family of cysteine-rich, low molecular weight proteins. They are localized to the membrane of the Golgi apparatus. MTs have the capacity to bind both physiological and xenobiotic heavy metals through the thiol group of its cysteine residues, which represent nearly 30% of its constituent amino acid residues.
In academic publishing, a retraction is a mechanism by which a published paper in an academic journal is flagged for being seriously flawed to the extent that their results and conclusions can no longer be relied upon. Retracted articles are not removed from the published literature but marked as retracted. In some cases it may be necessary to remove an article from publication, such as when the article is clearly defamatory, violates personal privacy, is the subject of a court order, or might pose a serious health risk to the general public.
Diagnoses of autism have become more frequent since the 1980s, which has led to various controversies about both the cause of autism and the nature of the diagnoses themselves. Whether autism has mainly a genetic or developmental cause, and the degree of coincidence between autism and intellectual disability, are all matters of current scientific controversy as well as inquiry. There is also more sociopolitical debate as to whether autism should be considered a disability on its own.
Squalene is an organic compound. It is a triterpene with the formula C30H50. It is a colourless oil, although impure samples appear yellow. It was originally obtained from shark liver oil (hence its name, as Squalus is a genus of sharks). An estimated 12% of bodily squalene in humans is found in sebum. Squalene has a role in topical skin lubrication and protection.
Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal, of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain about their use, or using certain vaccines but not others. Although adverse effects associated with vaccines are occasionally observed, the scientific consensus that vaccines are generally safe and effective is overwhelming. Vaccine hesitancy often results in disease outbreaks and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. Therefore, the World Health Organization characterizes vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten global health threats.
Many causes of autism, including environmental and genetic factors, have been recognized or proposed, but understanding of the theory of causation of autism is incomplete. Attempts have been made to incorporate the known genetic and environmental causes into a comprehensive causative framework. ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder marked by impairments in communicative ability and social interaction, as well as restricted and repetitive behaviors, interests, or activities not suitable for the individual's developmental stage. The severity of symptoms and functional impairment vary between individuals.
Yehuda Shoenfeld is an Israeli physician and autoimmunity researcher.
Brian S. Hooker a biologist and chemist who was Department Chair and Professor Emeritus of Biology at Simpson University. He is known for promoting the false claim that vaccines cause autism.
Inorganic pyrophosphatase is an enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of one ion of pyrophosphate to two phosphate ions. This is a highly exergonic reaction, and therefore can be coupled to unfavorable biochemical transformations in order to drive these transformations to completion. The functionality of this enzyme plays a critical role in lipid metabolism, calcium absorption and bone formation, and DNA synthesis, as well as other biochemical transformations.
In immunology, an adjuvant is a substance that increases or modulates the immune response to a vaccine. The word "adjuvant" comes from the Latin word adiuvare, meaning to help or aid. "An immunologic adjuvant is defined as any substance that acts to accelerate, prolong, or enhance antigen-specific immune responses when used in combination with specific vaccine antigens."
Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a British fraudster, discredited academic, anti-vaccine activist, and former physician.
The opioid excess theory is a theory which postulates that autism is the result of a metabolic disorder in which opioid peptides produced through metabolism of gluten and casein pass through an abnormally permeable intestinal membrane and then proceed to exert an effect on neurotransmission through binding with opioid receptors. It is believed by advocates of this hypothesis that autistic children are unusually sensitive to gluten, which results in small bowel inflammation in these children, which in turn allows these opioid peptides to enter the brain.
Stephanie Seneff is an American computer scientist and anti-vaccine activist. She is a senior research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Working primarily in the Spoken Language Systems group, her research at CSAIL relates to human–computer interaction, and algorithms for language understanding and speech recognition. In 2011, she began publishing controversial papers in low-impact, open access journals on biology and medical topics; the articles have received "heated objections from experts in almost every field she's delved into," according to the food columnist Ari LeVaux.
The Lancet MMR autism fraud centered on the publication in February 1998 of a fraudulent research paper titled "Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children" in The Lancet. The paper, authored by now discredited and deregistered Andrew Wakefield, and twelve coauthors, falsely claimed causative links between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and colitis and between colitis and autism. The fraud involved data selection, data manipulation, and two undisclosed conflicts of interest. It was exposed in a lengthy Sunday Times investigation by reporter Brian Deer, resulting in the paper's retraction in February 2010 and Wakefield being struck off the UK medical register three months later. Wakefield reportedly stood to earn up to US$43 million per year selling diagnostic kits for a non-existent syndrome he claimed to have discovered. He also held a patent to a rival vaccine at the time, and he had been employed by a lawyer representing parents in lawsuits against vaccine producers.
Extensive investigation into vaccines and autism spectrum disorder has shown that there is no relationship between the two, causal or otherwise, and that vaccine ingredients do not cause autism. The American scientist Peter Hotez researched the growth of the false claim and concluded that its spread originated with Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 paper, and that no prior paper supports a link.
The Children's Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI) was a United States based anti-vaccination group which funded a number of pseudoscientific studies, notably by Christopher Shaw of the University of British Columbia, and his collaborator Lucija Tomljenovic, and by Christopher Exley of Keele University, which purport to link aluminium in vaccines to autism. The studies have been rejected by the World Health Organization and some have been retracted. A claimed "vaccinated vs. unvaccinated" cohort study has also been debunked.
Misinformation related to immunization and the use of vaccines circulates in mass media and social media in spite of the fact that there is no serious hesitancy or debate within mainstream medical and scientific circles about the benefits of vaccination. Unsubstantiated safety concerns related to vaccines are often presented on the internet as being scientific information. A large proportion of internet sources on the topic are mostly inaccurate which can lead people searching for information to form misconceptions relating to vaccines.
Noora is a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences in collaboration with Plasma Darman Sarv Sepid Co. in Iran. Introduced in June 2021, it was announced as having "successfully passed the first phase of its clinical trial" two months later.
References
- ↑ Judge, Michael (2000-01-12). "The worst thing since white bread". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2017-08-20.
- ↑ "Christopher Shaw". www.neuraldynamicsubc.ca. Retrieved 2017-08-20.
- ↑ Tomljenovic, Lucija; Shaw, Christopher A. (2011-11-01). "Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?". Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry. Keele Special Issue: Aluminum and Life - Living the in Aluminum Age. 105 (11): 1489–1499. doi:10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2011.08.008. ISSN 0162-0134.
- ↑ Tomljenovic, L.; Shaw, C. A. "Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants: Are they Safe?". Current Medicinal Chemistry. 18 (17): 2630–2637. doi:10.2174/092986711795933740.
- ↑ Bambury, Brent (2015-02-13). "A UBC prof, his anti-vaccine backers and studies slammed by the WHO". CBC Radio. Retrieved 2017-08-20.
- ↑ Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (2012). "Aluminum Adjuvants". Weekly Epidemiological Record. World Health Organization. 87(30): 277–288.
- ↑ Weeks, Carly (2015-03-04). "UBC stands behind vaccine studies discredited by WHO". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2017-08-20.
- 1 2 "'There was a screw-up': UBC researchers pull paper linking vaccine component to autism". CBC News . 2017-10-16. Retrieved 2017-10-21.
- 1 2 Han, Andrew P. (2018-01-30). "For the second time, researchers retract — then republish — a vaccine paper". Retraction Watch. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
- ↑ Quan, Douglas (2017-11-01). "UBC journal retraction raises controversial question: Can an activist be a scientist?". National Post . Retrieved 2020-01-08.
- ↑ "A UBC prof, his anti-vaccine backers and studies slammed by the WHO". CBC. February 14, 2015. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
- ↑ "UBC stands behind vaccine studies discredited by WHO" . Retrieved 2019-02-14.
- ↑ Whitaker, Brian (2022-11-07). "Friends in Strange Places". New Lines Magazine . Archived from the original on 2024-09-11. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
