Troika

[c9]

Knowing that many of my friends have different interests, I present several different items for comment:

1. This morning, when there's normally mindless pap, a local radio station accidentally allowed actual conversational debate to leak through: one DJ was defending his decision to never vaccinate his children, and the others were talking about how diseases used to wipe out thousands or millions every few decades, but vaccination has curbed this. His take was that "humans are the only species that does not allow nature to take its course," i.e. Darwinism. Thoughts?

2. The Pope has had a feeding tube inserted to help his caloric intake. a) would the reports have placed feeding tube in the headlines if Terry Schiavo hadn't taught us all the lingo? b) He is *so* not long for this world. Watch for the white smoke at the Vatican, kids.

3. Yesterday, school buses throughout large sections of Ontario north of London were delayed for two full hours. By fog. WTF?

Comments

[gueny.livejournal.com]

1. Modern day vaccinations definitely run the risk of creating "super-strains" of diseases (as do antibiotics). But for the most part, vaccinations have been successful at warding off major epidemics. I guess it's one of those risk/benefit things in which, for the most part, I think the benefit has far outstretched the risk.

2a. Not sure. I lean toward thinking it may have been placed in the headlines that way regardless (or irregardless, just for becuzimpretty). I'm sure this will add fuel to the crazy-nut-bar-conservative-religious-Republican pop story of the month. But we can take comfort that they will soon be getting tired of this, and will return to their discussions of the need to kill people as revenge for crimes.

3. If that were in Nova Scotia, they would have canceled school as soon as they heard that fog was in the forecast. In fact, I bet they did cancel it here because of the fog in Ontario. You never know. It could come here, so it's best to just take the week off.

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

Misuse of antibiotics definitely run the risk of creating super-strains of bacteria because if some of the bacteria survive, they can learn to deal with the particular antibiotic the person was using and mutate into a resistant form.

Vaccines are different though. I'm not sure how they would help create a super-strain of virus so can you explain it? Antibiotics work by killing off bacteria in your body and the bacteria can become resistant to that specific antibiotic. Vaccines work by inducing a primary response in your immune system which might take weeks for your body to figure out how to fight and generate the proper anti-bodies. If your body sees the same or similar virus in the future, it can skip the primary response and go directly to the secondary response since it knows how to deal with the problem. This can get rid of the virus within days instead of weeks and you probably wouldn't even notice that you were infected. So your body isn't really doing anything different than it would without the vaccine except that it already has the antibodies produced so it can jump to the second stage. I don't know how that would change a virus into a super-strain.

When you do get a vaccine your body will produce antibodies to fight off what they inject you with. It is possible that the antibodies that get produced might differ just enough from a new strain of virus that your body thinks it is fighting it effectively when in fact its not. So a virus that would normally be taken care of by your body without a vaccine would not work properly. But that would be for a specific individual and not everybody, so the "super-strain" would only affect the people who mis-created the antibodies.

[gueny.livejournal.com]

Hmm, your third paragraph makes sense as one explanation.

Nothing "changes" anything into a super-strain. Super-strains are a result of an upset in the microbial ecological balance. As such, members that ordinarily would have been out-competed (generally a genetic mutant), will instead, end up prospering. This is the basic principle behind super-strains that result as a product of antibiotic treatments. At the very least, this therapy is suspected of speeding up the process of bacterial succession for more virulent strains. These processes are a bit easier to measure, and in fact can be done through a simple lab experiement with a couple of agar plates over a period of a day or two.

From an ecological perspective: Generally, when you do something to mitigate the impact of one population or species, you risk giving an advantage to another population or species.

So there are few things that may come into play:

1. Introducing a vaccination into an organism may indirectly and unknowingly to us, target other unknown organisms, thus allowing them to uncharacteristically persist in the environment - not only in the 'closed' system of the individual, but also in the external environment. Of course, we do not become aware of negative impacts until a new pathogen is identified. And even then, we are unlikely to accurately and reliably trace its roots to be the consequence of vaccination.

Regardless, the end result is still a disease that will require some intervention in order for the organism to persist in it's environment. So I suppose, the argument is really moot one, when considering that the results will always be the same.

2. My database crashed for a project I'm working on before I got to point #2, so I was interrupted and now forget :(. I assure you that it was really smart though.

I think the arguments make theoretical sense, although in the end if there is a vaccination available for something I perceive to be a threat, I'm-a-gettin-it.

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

Yes, or disadvantage to another population or species.

Like you said, if there is a flu pandemic then it would be smart to get the vaccine.