A Texas Church School Ranked Last in State Measles Vaccination Rates. Its Pastor Rejoiced
The power of a vaccine lies in the strength of the community that embraces it as a life-saving medicine — a message that in recent weeks has been challenged by the Trump administration and community leaders around the country.
“We don’t necessarily just do (vaccines) for ourselves,” says sociologist Jennifer Reich of the University of Colorado Denver and author of “Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines.” “We do them for the people around us. We do them for our grandparents; we do them for pregnant women at the grocery store for whom rubella can be devastating. It’s not necessarily my personal benefit from the vaccine, but the way that I’m part of a community.”
That feeling isn’t shared by everyone. Researchers including Reich say recent viral headlines, such as a North Texas pastor publicly boasting on Instagram that his church school ranked lowest in Texas for measles vaccination rates, are disheartening and show the nation heading down a dangerous path.
Weldon’s History of Vaccine Skepticism Helped Tank His CDC Nomination
A key Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee shared concerns about Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director nominee Dave Weldon’s vaccine views with the White House before his nomination was pulled Thursday morning.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters on Capitol Hill that she was so troubled about Weldon’s vaccines stance that she shared her concerns with the White House, and she was not surprised that his nomination had been pulled.
Weldon, a Florida representative from 1995 until 2009, has been critical of the federal government’s oversight of vaccine safety. While in the House, he sponsored a bill that would have taken vaccine safety oversight from the CDC and created a separate “Agency for Vaccine Safety Evaluation” under HHS, and as recently as 2019 repeated the disproved claim that “some children can get an autism spectrum disorder from a vaccine” in an interview.
The Measles Vaccine Came From His Body. He Went Anti-Vax. Not Anymore.
The most sickening part of the measles outbreak that has struck more than 200 people in 12 states this year is how absurdly unnecessary it is. Inevitable, too, in a country where, as recently as 2001, 94% of Americans believed it was very or extremely important for parents to get their children vaccinated, but now, according to the Gallup Poll, only 69% say so.
If anyone in the country should be expected to sing the praises of the measles vaccine, it would be David Edmonston, 82, a retired home contractor in Bowling Green, Virginia.
The vaccine literally is named for him.
The other day, after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the medical arsonist who has called the measles vaccine “largely unnecessary” and risky — announced that “the decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” I spoke with Edmonston about his unlikely journey from playing a vital role in the vaccine’s birth 70-some years ago to deciding not to vaccinate his own son and now back to firm support for the shot.
Study Finds Yearly 18% Rise in ADHD Prescriptions in England Since COVID-19 Pandemic
Prescriptions for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in England have risen 18% year on year since the pandemic. This is higher than previously reported, and masks wide regional variations in prescribing rates, finds research published in the journal BMJ Mental Health.
The trends likely reflect growing public and professional awareness of the condition, driven in part by social media, as well as the potential impact of COVID-19, suggest the researchers. But the regional variations point to inequalities in access to care, they add.
ADHD is common in children, with a global prevalence of around 7%, note the researchers, while its prevalence in symptomatic adults is also on the rise, with a reported rate of nearly 7%.
Covid Vaccines Have Paved the Way for Cancer Vaccines
A U.K. National Health Service oncologist and medical director at the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford, calls himself just a “simple doctor,” but he’s anything but. During the pandemic, he led clinical efforts that showed it was still safe to give cancer patients chemotherapy, disproving fears that the coronavirus made this too risky, helping to maintain cancer treatment worldwide.
He also delivered U.K. research that showed lateral flow testing was effective in identifying the most infectious COVID-19 patients. His most important project, however, is the one he’s currently leading as the national government advisor for mRNA cancer vaccines.
This new type of vaccine, which is based on the same technology as the COVID-19 vaccines first developed by BioNTech and Moderna, is seen by many as a potential breakthrough in the fight against cancer. Ahead of speaking at WIRED Health in London next week, Lee tells WIRED why he hopes these vaccines will prove to be the “silver lining of the pandemic.”
Breakthrough in Next-Generation Polio Vaccines
A more affordable, lower-risk polio vaccine is on the horizon, research led by the University of Leeds has found. Researchers have taken a major step towards producing a more affordable and lower-risk polio vaccine using virus-like particles (VLPs). These particles mimic the outer protein shell of poliovirus, but are empty inside. This means there is no risk of infection, but the VLP still causes the immune system to respond.
Now, a research project led by Professor David Rowlands, Emeritus Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of Leeds, has tested the effectiveness of using different yeast, insect, mammalian and plant cells as expression systems to generate VLPs.
In a paper published in Nature Communications, the findings show that VLPs produced in both yeast and insect cells can perform equally or better than the current inactivated polio vaccine, which creates an immune system response by using a killed version of the poliovirus.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel Scored Pay Bump in 2024 Despite Revenue Decline and Missed Sales Target
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel received an annual compensation package worth $19.87 million last year, the largest he’s ever received at the company. The 16.4% increase — at grant value — came despite the company’s revenue falling sharply thanks to poor sales from its two marketed vaccines.
Despite adding another therapy to its now two-product portfolio with respiratory syncytial virus vaccine mRESVIA, swiftly declining COVID-19 vaccine sales and tame mRESVIA contributions sank Moderna’s 2024 net sales down 53% from 2023.
The company collected $3.2 billion in total revenue during the year, a far cry from the highs of the pandemic era and from the prior year’s $6.8 billion.
What a Wrongful Death Lawsuit Reveals About America’s Largest Oxygen Provider
Lincare, a giant respiratory-device supplier with a long history of fraud settlements and complaints about dismal service, is facing its latest legal challenge: a lawsuit that claims its failures caused the death of a 27-year-old man with Down syndrome.
The case, set to go to trial in state court in St. Louis on March 17, centers on the 2020 death of LeQuon Marquis Vernor, who suffered from severe obstructive sleep apnea and relied on a Lincare-supplied BiPAP machine to help him breathe while sleeping.
The lawsuit, filed by his mother, accuses Lincare of negligence after the company took seven days to respond to her report that the device had stopped working.
Lincare, the largest oxygen-device supplier in the U.S., with $2.4 billion in annual revenue, has long faced an array of legal issues, but it’s rare for a claim of wrongful death linked to its service and equipment to go to trial.
The litigation over what happened to Vernor offers an unusual window into the company’s interaction with a vulnerable patient. This account is based on extensive court filings, including medical records, deposition excerpts and Lincare’s internal “customer account notes.”
