The World Health Organization announced in late January that six European countries: the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan had all officially lost their measles elimination status, which means the virus has been circulating continuously in those countries for more than 12 months.
After decades of American children routinely receiving polio vaccines, the virus that had doomed many to paralysis was nearly eliminated in the United States. But vaccine avoidance today may allow the crippling disease to return. CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jonathan LaPook talks with David Oshinsky, author of "Polio: An American Story," and with violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, who contracted polio as a child, about how parents opting out of vaccinations for their children could affect polio rates here.
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DNA variants near a gene called MSRB3 - which is important for hearing in humans - could determine whether a dog's ears are pendulous like a basset hound's or stubby like a rottweiler's. Researchers analysed the genomes of thousands of canines and found that small, single-letter changes to DNA in a region of the genome near MSRB3 could boost the gene's activity. The boost can increase the rate at which ear cells proliferate, resulting in longer ears.
By making sweeping changes to the nation's childhood vaccine schedule, America's top health leaders are recklessly maximizing the threat from previously common diseases and dismissing our collective role in preventing them. The new policy, which cuts the number of recommended vaccinations by more than a third, sends a not-so-subtle message that something was broken in the previous approach to keeping American kids healthy despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
According to new research published today in JAMA, the rate of vitamin K shot refusals has risen nearly 80 percent in the U.S. between 2017 and 2024. The study, which examined medical records from more than five million births during that time period, found that the proportion of newborns who did not receive the injection climbed from 2.92 percent to 5.18 percent.
Influenced by the tenets of TCM and a book he read on the unethical practices of rabies vaccine pioneer Louis Pasteur, Grant became skeptical that the collection of symptoms identified by veterinarians as rabies was an actual, distinct disease that could be targeted by an injectable drug. Though he distrusts pharmaceutical products, potential adverse effects aren't his major objection to the shots. "It's more about not being convinced at all that there's really anything to vaccinate against," he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic was not where the anti-vaccine movement began, but the tumult of those years and the often-heated public debates over vaccines and vaccine mandates seem to have shifted something dramatically in the United States. In this case, that's cause for alarm; as NPR reported last month, the current number of measles cases in the United States this year is the highest it's been in decades.
The already tumultuous landscape of U.S. vaccine policy faces more turmoil in what's anticipated to be a politically charged two-day meeting of a recently overhauled advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is an independent panel of experts that has traditionally met three times a year to make science-based recommendations about who should receive certain vaccines.
"Since the ruling, we are really encouraged. But we haven't heard anything from the NIH about our grants being reinstated, and we don't have a window into what that process looks like."
Acharya's research grant was terminated due to federal policy changes, highlighting concerns over political influence and algorithmic decision-making in scientific funding.
