Vaccine

No parent wants to make his or her own child sick. So when Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study indicated that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) could cause children to develop autism, an entire industry developed to prevent the vaccine from being given. Along with scares that Thimerosal — a mercury preservative previously used in childhood vaccines — was a culprit in autism rates, anti-vaccine fury spread throughout the country. Media coverage was widespread.

Maryland is moving into flu season, but unlike last year, when the H1N1 flu pandemic triggered a scramble for vaccine, public health officials say there is plenty to go around. And that's important because for the first time the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone 6 months and older get a flu vaccination — not just vulnerable groups. A CDC advisory committee made the universal call after last-year's late-breaking H1N1 pandemic disproportionately hit young people who were not in a high-risk category.

Raccoons digging in your trash might seem a relatively minor nuisance, but close interaction with the critters — the No. 1 carriers of rabies in the United States — could prove dangerous to you and your pets. To combat the potential risk, the Anne Arundel County Health Department began Wednesday its annual rabies vaccination project, with the goal of immunizing more than 70,000 raccoons. Thirty-three teams consisting of workers from the county and state health departments, county animal control and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services plan to distribute the oral vaccine, a brick-shaped object made of fishmeal and polymers, over the next four weeks in wooded areas around the county.

This time last year, health officials were scrambling to protect kids going back to school against what was feared to be an exceptionally deadly flu outbreak. And while that scare has passed, they don't want parents to lower their guard as another academic year approaches. The H1N1 flu pandemic was far milder than anticipated and was officially declared over this week by the World Health Organization. But it disproportionately affected young people, and the message is still about vaccination.

This week, Baltimore is privileged to host an international conference sponsored by the preeminent global immunization advocacy organization, the GAVI Alliance. Launched in 2000 at the star-studded gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the GAVI Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) was founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the vaccine industry, among others. Pneumococcal disease and rotavirus, a virulent form of diarrhea, are the top two killers of children in the 70 or so most impoverished countries in the world — those where the average income is less than $3 per day. It has traditionally taken 10 to 15 years for vaccines we in America take for granted to reach people in these most impoverished places, with a particularly huge death toll in children under 5 — more than 2 million each year.

Faced with about a half-million soon-to-expire doses of swine flu vaccine, Maryland health officials announced Thursday a new vaccination campaign next week with 150 free clinics statewide. Maryland and federal officials are confronted with a predicament: Try to convince a skeptical public it's not too late to get vaccinated against the H1N1 virus, or throw away millions of doses if they aren't used before they expire. Of the state's 2.3 million doses, about 1.8 million have been given, said officials with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The nearly year-old H1N1 influenza pandemic that disproportionately affected children and mobilized millions to line up for vaccination seems to have finally abated, and officials estimate that it has killed fewer people than die even in a typical flu season. Public health officials remain cautious and say another wave of this novel and unpredictable virus could surface before the season's typical end in May, or even after. They are still recommending vaccine for people who haven't received inoculations against the virus.

As a current female student at a local university where almost 30 percent of the students smoke, Thomas H. Maugh's article "Study: Smoking adds risk for HPV-linked head, neck tumors" (Feb. 16) caught my attention by attributing the human papillomavirus (HPV) to a number of tumors in the heads and necks of patients, as well as linking these tumors to patients who were current or former tobacco users. HPV is a common virus that is passed on through genital contact, most often during sex. There is a vaccine that prevents about 70 percent of the 40 types of HPV that cause most cases of cervical cancer.

A prestigious British medical journal has retracted a controversial 12-year-old article that first linked autism to childhood vaccines and set off global fears about immunization and the causes of the developmental disorder that persist today. Medical experts and some advocates for people with autism said the move was long overdue, but few expected the retraction to change the minds of vaccine skeptics. In the years since the Lancet published Dr. Andrew Wakefield's study, numerous review articles have rebutted his claims that the combination measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism.