Vaccination cards, sometimes called immunization records, are pieces of paper given to patients as a way to track the vaccines they’ve received over time. Keeping this record handy ensures a patient is not given more vaccines than is recommended. Once envisioned as a badge of honor in an effort to
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In the mid-1800s, hospitals were a very dangerous place for a birthing woman. Some may say they still are today. Prior to the recognition of hygiene practices like handwashing and sterilizing medical instruments, women who gave birth in the hospital commonly fell victim to a significant and deadly complication of
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It’s hard to believe, but the very first CDC pediatric vaccine schedule was only introduced in 1995. Before the creation of the standardized CDC vaccine schedule, vaccination schedules varied depending on the individual healthcare provider and region. Some providers used their own schedules, while others followed guidelines put forth by
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Our brain and central nervous system are critical for survival, therefore it makes perfect sense that there would be many layers of finely tailored protection. One of these layers is known as the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is a specialized layer of cells that controls or regulates “traffic” between
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I’m sure you’ve heard all about it. The story goes like this: an unvaccinated 20-year-old young man was hospitalized in June in Rockland County, New York with what was initially diagnosed as acute flaccid myelitis (a differential diagnosis for polio that emerged after the vaccine changed the strictness of criteria
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– Neal Nathanson and Alexander D. Langmuir, The Cutter Incident, 1963. Poliomyelitis may have always been a rare, perhaps accidental, complication of an otherwise undetected fecal-oral enterovirus infection. Most people don’t realize this, but according to the CDC, less than 1% of poliovirus infections result in any form of paralysis,
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From the 1930s to the 1950’s, shoe stores in big cities around the world used the latest technology to properly fit shoes to your feet: the Shoe Fitting Fluoroscope, which utilized x-ray technology. The health risks of radiation would not be fully understood until after the machine was used routinely
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Safe and effective has become a slogan to assuage fears, however, there is ample precedent that drugs once declared “safe and effective” by the regulating agencies can be anything but…safe and effective. Only time reveals these kinds of horrors. It took many decades to reveal the unexpected consequences of antibiotic
READ MOREIn 2016, the Philippine FDA greenlighted a new vaccine against dengue fever for children based on research funded by the vaccine’s manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur. According to the 2014 paper in The Lancet, a study among more than 10,000 children in five Asian countries that showed Dengvaxia worked and had a good
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In 1775, Swedish and German pharmaceutical chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele created a new green pigment which he named Scheele’s Green. The brilliantly vivid green would soon be the allure of the Georgians and Victorians of the era. The dazzling green would be the front of fashion, and come to decorate
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The smallpox vaccine is often credited with eradicating smallpox. This is one of vaccination’s biggest claims to fame. But did it really? Was the vaccine, first invented in 1796, responsible for the eradication of smallpox some 183 years later in 1979? This is one of those movie moments: 183 years
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Guest post by Whyser What Is mRNA? mRNA stands for messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid, a nucleic acid present in all living cells). RNA’s principal role is to act as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA for controlling the synthesis of proteins, although in some viruses RNA rather than DNA carries
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Anaphylaxis is a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction. It can occur within seconds or minutes of exposure to something you’re allergic to, but can also occur hours later. Anaphylaxis causes your immune system to release a flood of chemicals (histamine, basophils, mast cells, and other substances) that can cause you
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To me what is interesting about the story of the first vaccine, is that it was created as a safer alternative to a pre-existing form of inoculation that had severe, sometimes fatal, side effects. Embedded into vaccination’s own conception story are adverse reactions, unethical human experimentation, and as a result
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It took nearly 80 years to figure out that the most deadly pandemic in recent human history, the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic that is estimated to have took the lives of over 100 million people, was actually so deadly because of bacterial pneumonia. Now, with all the mask orders in
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Back in 1976, Mark Waldvogel was a healthy, athletic high school senior in Kailua, Hawaii. He followed the advice of then-President Ford and Federal health officials and took a swine flu vaccination that had just been developed that year. There had been so many Government warnings of a deadly epidemic,
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For centuries now, humans have been at war with microbes–despite having an incomplete understanding of the human body, and how microbes fit into the ecological web of human health. Amidst our fascination with avoiding microbes, there is one medical discovery that magnified our fear of viruses and bacteria in particular,
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So with all this hand washing, sanitizing and mask wearing, it serves as a good reminder to remember that our bodies are home to trillions of microbes, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa and archaea, that live both inside and outside of our body—and serve the very important roles of protecting
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Before we are born we are exposed to a constellation of chemicals in our mother’s body. I’m not talking about essential building blocks for life: I’m talking about synthetic man-made chemical compounds that have no biological necessity, skirted around safety testing, and have exploded in our environment to our own
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With all the debate surrounding whether or not to mask up–what can we glean from lessons of the past? Did masks prevent the spread of the 1918 Spanish Influenza? Experts examined the evidence and concluded masks failed to control infection. Given that we know from autopsies that: “The majority of
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