The anti-vaccination movement might be getting a boost from Twitter bots and Russian trolls, suggests a new study published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health. It found that certain kinds of bot accounts were more likely to send antivax tweets than were accounts belonging to actual people, while alleged…
A deadly viral disease spread by bats is once again infecting humans, but in this case, it isn’t Ebola. As of June 1, an outbreak of the Nipah virus has infected at least 18 people and killed 17 in Kerala, India, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported. The outbreak, which is the first to hit South India, raises…
Ebola has once again resurfaced. On Friday, the World Health Organization reported that there have been at least 34 suspected cases of the viral disease and 18 deaths since early April in the Bikoro District of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But Ebola’s resurgence, hardly unexpected, can’t help but bring…
The debunked idea that vaccines cause autism is one that, judging by my inbox alone, continues to endure. But veterinarians in the UK and elsewhere are now being forced to contend with antivaxxers going to the dogs.
Researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science are trying to create a vaccine for a class of drugs most infamously, if wrongly, accused of turning people into face-eating zombies commonly known as bath salts. And their latest results in rats, presented this week at the annual Experimental Biology…
The Food and Drug Administration has launched a criminal investigation into an offshore herpes research trial that began with secret injections of an unauthorized herpes vaccine in US hotel rooms, according to a report by Kaiser Health News.
If you’ve shirked your societal responsibility by not getting vaccinated against influenza and managed to avoid getting sick, congrats! You’re probably out of the woods now. The latest surveillance report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates this especially severe flu season is finally…
Scientists in the UK are looking to recruit thousands of teens (presumably with attitude) to help them settle a debate over whether vaccines for a certain type of meningitis should be in wider use.
The track record of Trump appointees tasked with safeguarding the country’s public health has been, in the kindest sense, spotty. So it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the latest person tapped to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, is alleged to have engaged in research…
Measles has just visited the Big Apple, and public health officials are warning the city’s small unvaccinated population to be on guard.
Measles is pulling off a disconcerting resurgence across the continent of Europe at the same time the vaccination rate is falling, per recent data from the World Health Organization.
The HPV vaccine is a fantastic drug that prevents everything from cervical cancer in women to dick cancer in men. But a new study from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association has found that vaccination rates for American teenagers is still tragically low.
Even under the best of circumstances, cancer treatment can be an excruciating, costly ordeal that tragically doesn’t even work sometimes. In light of that reality, scientists and doctors have long searched for a way to proactively head off the problem using a vaccine. One potential approach to a cancer vaccine,…
On Friday, Filipino authorities tied at least three deaths to the 2016 deployment of Dengvaxia, the world’s first dengue fever vaccine, Reuters reported.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided the latest updates on how this winter’s flu season is continuing to shape up. And much like anything else these days, it’s a pile of gloom and doom.
Spend time talking to someone who considers themselves an anti-vaxxer—or more generously, a vaccine skeptic—and something becomes apparent pretty soon: The conspiracy well usually runs deep. There’s no shortage of anti-vaxxers who also believe in other iffy things, like “natural” cancer treatments and a…
The dreaded smallpox virus was eradicated more than 40 years ago, but the threat of its return still looms. In an effort to develop a safer vaccine substitute, Canadian researchers have resurrected a close relative—the extinct horsepox virus—from scratch. Critics say the exercise was pointless, and because the results…
The researcher behind an offshore herpes vaccine trial widely viewed as unethical first secretly experimented on patients in US hotel rooms, according to an investigation by Kaiser Health News.
Martha Lillard spends half of every day with her body encapsulated in a half-century old machine that forces her to breathe. Only her head sticks out of the end of the antique iron lung. On the other side, a motorized lever pulls the leather bellows, creating negative pressure that induces her lungs to suck in air.
