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- Progress in Bioethics
- The Top Science Progress Features of 2009
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A Good Week for Vaccine News
Good news this week from the Centers for Disease Control: the vast majority of children in the United States have received nearly all the recommended vaccines. CDC’s new report indicates that immunization rates are “at or near record levels.” Ninety percent of children were covered for all but one shot; 77 percent of children were fully vaccinated.
The survey data landed just after a new study reinforcing the fact that the measles vaccine has no connection to autism. The research appeared in PLoS One, and as the Associated Press explained: “There is no evidence that MMR plays any role, the international team—which included researchers who first raised the issue—reported Wednesday.
AP
The AP and The Washington Post both referenced the discredited 1998 research that first suggested a link between the MMR shot and autism. Wariness over vaccine safety spurred by the faulty study first lead to measles outbreaks in Britain. Just last month, CDC released numbers indicating that vaccination exemptions drove measles cases in the United States this year to the highest level in a decade.
CDC quoted Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases in its press release:
Because our nation has been so successful in reducing and eliminating vaccine preventable diseases, it is easy to take the benefits of immunizations for granted…However, recent cases and outbreaks of measles in our country have been a sobering reminder that we must not let our guard down.
In an interview earlier this year on vaccine safety with Science Progress, Dr. Saad Omer, associate director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health discussed research indicating that some of the risks associated with rubella complications (one of the diseases the MMR vaccine prevents) are very similar to the autism vaccine-opposing parents fear.
Comprehensive vaccination not only protects children, it keeps individuals and communities healthy and saves billions in medical expenses. From CDC: “For each group of vaccinated children born during a given year, an estimated 14.3 million cases of vaccine-preventable diseases and 33,500 premature deaths are prevented over the course of a lifetime. In addition, vaccination results in a total savings of $43.3, billion, including $9.9 billion in direct medical costs.”
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