Canada has 281 cases of Mexican swine flu

The Mexican flu is slowly but surely spreading in Canada. One woman in her 30s has died in Alberta and the flu contributed to her death.

• 56 in Nova Scotia (had 3 of the original 4 cases)
• 3 in Prince Edward Island
• 2 in New Brunswick
• 16 in Quebec
• 76 in Ontario (has 15% of the population)
• 1 in Manitoba
• 2 in Saskatchewan
• 41 in Alberta (had 1 of the original 4 cases)
• 76 in British Columbia

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Vaccines and “immune system overload”

In 2002, Dr. Paul Offit and several others published a peer-reviewed paper:  “Addressing Parents’ Concerns: Do Multiple Vaccines Overwhelm or Weaken the Infant’s Immune System?”

One interesting point was the number of antigens that children are exposed to. I’ll just mention a couple of the conclusions:

• First, a baby’s  immune system can handle at least 10,000 antigens at one time.
• Second, children’s vaccinations expose them to far fewer foreign proteins now than in 1980–about 4% of the number.

Antigen exposure has dropped 96% since 1980

You can get a full-sized copy of this graph on flickr. feel free to spread it around.

Children are Exposed to Fewer Antigens in Vaccines Today Than in the Past

Parents who are worried about the increasing number of recommended vaccines may take comfort in knowing that children are exposed to fewer antigens (proteins and polysaccharides) in vaccines today than in the past.

Table 2 summarizes the number of proteins and polysaccharides contained in routinely recommended vaccines administered over the past 100 years. Although we now give children more vaccines, the actual number of antigens they receive has declined. Whereas previously 1 vaccine, smallpox, contained about 200 proteins, now the 11 routinely recommended vaccines contain fewer than 130 proteins in total.

Two factors account for this decline: first, the worldwide eradication of smallpox obviated the need for that vaccine, and second, advances in protein chemistry have resulted in vaccines containing fewer antigens (e.g., replacement of whole-cell with acellular pertussis vaccine).

The paper covers several other interesting points.

Abstract: Recent surveys found that an increasing number of parents are concerned that infants receive too many vaccines. Implicit in this concern is that the infant’s immune system is inadequately developed to handle vaccines safely or that multiple vaccines may overwhelm the immune system. In this review, we will examine the following:

1) the ontogeny of the active immune response and the ability of neonates and young infants to respond to vaccines;

2) the theoretic capacity of an infant’s immune system;

3) data that demonstrate that mild or moderate illness does not interfere with an infant’s ability to generate protective immune responses to vaccines;

4) how infants respond to vaccines given in combination compared with the same vaccines given separately;

5) data showing that vaccinated children are not more likely to develop infections with other pathogens than unvaccinated children; and

6) the fact that infants actually encounter fewer antigens in vaccines today than they did 40 or 100 years ago.

Pandemic Influenza information from Aetiology

Tara C. Smith at Aetiology has written a series of posts about aspects of flu pandemics.

She also has a more general collection of blog posts about influenza.

Vaccines and formaldehyde

Here’s a delightful irony: if I read this correctly, the amount of formaldehyde in vaccines is so small that vaccines dilute the naturally occuring formaldehyde in our bodies.

Thinking is real: “Vaccines have toxic formaldehyde”!!!!!

Last week’s Sunday Night show about the whooping cough death of an Australian baby has made it clear that silence isn’t a very good option….

People trying to push an “alternative” health or lifestyle barrow love to list things they demonise as “CHEMICALS”, apparently not realising EVERYTHING is made from CHEMICALS… Even homeopathic “remedies” are made from CHEMICALS, namely water – and sometimes sugar or even alcohol….

Formaldehyde – a simple organic chemical made of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon — is a widespread and natural constituent of all living systems, from bacteria and fish to rodents and humans.

Due to its importance in various metabolic processes, formaldehyde is naturally present in the human body with concentrations of approximately one to two parts per million (ppm) in blood.

the evolutionary process had to include a way to ensure that formaldehyde’s inherent toxicity could be controlled. Certain enzymes… convert formaldehyde that is formed continuously in various biological processes to formate, which is less reactive and, therefore, less toxic… to keep formaldehyde from reaching concentrations that are toxic to cells.

…clearly, the notion that the smallest fraction of formaldehyde, less than is already present in the baby’s bloodstream, is a toxin that no baby could possibly endure is a nonsense.

So there you have it.

The event that inspired the writer to research formaldehyde and anti-vaccine sentiment was the death of a small baby in Australia from whooping cough (pertussis). She was too young to be vaccinated but if the people around her were vaccinated she’d be unlikely to catch the disease.

On Sunday evening, Australia’s Channel 7 Sunday Night programme aired a positive, well researched and scientifically based story on the dangers of not vaccinating.

The report centred around the death of four week old Dana McCaffery from whooping cough. The tragedy was Dana was too young to be vaccinated, but lived in an area of low herd immunity, resulting in her contracting the deadly pertussis bacteria. There is no cure for whooping cough.

Dana’s parents, Toni and David made the brave decision to speak out to reporter Rebecca Maddern of “Sunday Night”. What resulted was a wake-up call for parents who don’t vaccinate as we viewed footage of tiny babies with pertussis and heard of the heart break from the parents. Dana’s paediatrician, Dr Chris Ingall, who was unable to save Dana, implored parents to vaccinate, not only to protect the lives of their own children but others as well.

The last time I looked, whooping cough had a small but not negligible mortality, somewhere between 1 and 8 percent.

Mexican swine flu jumps to Alberta pigs

A farm worker came back from a visit to Mexico April 12 and went to on a farm two days later. This seems slightly odd to me, as every time I cross the border I’m asked if I have visited any farms in the last week. That should raise some caution about travelling between foreign countries and farms.

The swine on an Alberta farm have become ill with the Mexican swine flu (H1N1 subtype). That gives it another place to recombine and another pool to live in. We could have alternating epizootics and epidemics. Great.

Recombinomics blog adds:

Co-circulation of human and swine H1N1 provide significant opportunities for adaptation to the human host via recombination.  Two polymorphisms are already fixed in seasonal flu, H274Y for Tamiflu resistance, and E627K in PB2 which allows the virus to more efficiently replicate at lower temperatures.

These changes can lead to adaptation in humans, as well antiviral resistance.  Therefore, the evolution of the H1N1 over the summer will be closely monitored.  The current H1N1 has already acquired tandem human H1N1 polymorphism in HA, which may have led to the species jump from swine to human.

Thus, the efficient transmission from swine to human and vice verse, raises concerns that further adaptation to humans can lead to a fall pandemic similar to 1918.  The species jump indicates the virus can adapt to a new host, and additional acquisitions over the summer continue to be a cause for concern.