Teleidoscope

Thu, Jul 24, 2008

Vaccines

Posted at 4:16 pm MDT to Technology

I went to the doctor replacing my previous internist to get my thyroid levels checked yesterday. She seems OK, so I may stay with her instead of looking for a new doctor.

While I was there I mentioned that I thought I was due for a tetanus shot, and she suggested I get the DTP (diptheria, tetanus, pertussis) shot they give to little kids. It seems the ones people my age got as children are wearing off, and there are outbreaks of whooping cough (pertussis) these days because idiots are not getting their children immunized, so the diseases are able to spread. The DTP shot sounded fine to me: I don't need more crud in my lungs after the winter I had.

There have been recent outbreaks of measles, too, so they are going to test some of my blood they took for antibodies. The vaccine was after my time, but I never had the measles even though they were prevalent in the grammar schools I attended.

I should probably get tested for mumps antibodies next time, if they have a test for mumps antibodies: I missed them too. The only one of the 'standard' childhood diseases I actually experienced was chicken pox.

My Mom made sure I got immunized for German Measles when I was in junior high, since I had never had them, because they would cause birth defects if I caught the later in life while pregnant. And I think my youngest brother might have gotten the full set of measles immunizations: Chris is 7 years younger than me, and measles immunization was commoner by the time he reached school age.

I really don't understand people who don't get their kids immunized. But then, I'm old enough to remember when mumps and measles were things you hoped would come through your neighborhood without any of the nastier effects for you or your classmates.

Polio vaccines (both Salk and Sabin) were new and wonderful lifesaving treatments that stopped parents' nightmares and opened the public swimming pools in the summer time in my lifetime. I don't remember the pools being closed, but I remember my parents talking about the change. I was very sick with something when I was one year old, in the summer of 1955, and polio was one of the things they worried about. That was the year the Salk vaccine first became widely available, so I had not been immunized before I was sick. I'm sure I was immunized not long after, and I remember being re-immunized with the oral vaccine later.

And I've read about the European 'childhood diseases' wiping out the Mississippi valley civilizations. We really don't want to have an unexposed, un-immunized population.

I received the actual original 'vaccination' -- against smallpox -- twice that I know of. Once as a small child and once in high-school or junior-high.

Googling, it looks like there is a West Nile vaccine for horses, though it needs to be renewed every year. And West Nile vaccines for humans are in clinical trials in Hawaii and elsewhere. That's one I'd definitely be interested in getting when it becomes available.

And if tropical diseases move north as the climate shifts, we will eventually need to be immunized for some of them on a regular basis, not just when we travel.

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Choices

Posted at 2:34 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Cool.

Found via a link on matociquala's LiveJournal. An article from Scientific American about how the decision-making part of the brain can get worn out.

No wonder programming and writing stories are both tiring: they both involve a constant choosing of details.

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