Why Don’t We Have an HIV Vaccine?

by Gertrud U. Rey This post was written in honor of Virus Appreciation Day, which occurs annually on October 3. Public awareness of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) began in the early 1980s when separate clusters of infected individuals were identified in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. These individuals all shared a group of …

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Sloth Fever

by Gertrud U. Rey Recent news headlines have featured a mysterious and presumably new illness termed “sloth fever.” More aptly named Oropouche fever, the disease is caused by Oropouche virus (OROV), an arthropod-borne virus that is transmitted primarily through the biting midge Culicoides paraensis. OROV typically circulates in sloths, non-human primates, and birds, but it …

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Why Does Stress Reactivate Herpes Simplex?

by Gertrud U. Rey It is well known that stress and exposure to UV radiation can reactivate replication of latent herpes simplex virus type 1 and/or type 2 (HSV-1 and/or HSV-2), and the painful lesions associated with these infections. But why is that? During a primary infection, HSV-1 and HSV-2 replicate within the epithelial cells …

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Active vs. Passive Immunity

by Gertrud U. Rey During the first few months of life, residual maternal antibodies that crossed the placenta during gestation and antibodies from breast milk protect infants from infection with various microbes. This type of immune protection is known as “passive immunity,” and differs from “active immunity,” which develops in an individual following vaccination or …

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You Cannot Get Bird Flu From Pasteurized Milk

by Gertrud U. Rey Multiple recent outbreaks of “bird flu” in U.S. dairies are raising concerns about whether milk from infected cows is safe to drink. H5N1, the strain of influenza virus causing the outbreaks, is typically transmitted among birds but occasionally spreads to non-avian animals, including mammals. Prior to distribution, commercially sold milk is …

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Does Herpes Simplex Virus Cause Alzheimer’s Disease?

by Gertrud U. Rey Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder and the most common form of dementia. Although its exact cause is unclear, an increasing body of evidence suggests that an infection with herpes simplex virus (HSV) may contribute to onset of AD later in life. Both types of HSV (HSV-1 and HSV-2) infect …

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Trial By Error: Guardian Columnist George Monbiot on the “Bizarre Cult” at the London-Based Science Media Centre

By David Tuller, DrPH October is a crowdfunding month at University of California, Berkeley. If you’d like to support my work, you can make a donation to the university (tax-deductible for US taxpayers) here. Last week, Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote another scathing piece about the failure of the UK health care system to address the …

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Trial By Error: PACE Authors Respond to Monbiot Column with Tired Arguments

By David Tuller, DrPH October is a crowdfunding month at University of California, Berkeley. If you’d like to support my work, you can make a donation to the university (tax-deductible for US taxpayers) here. Last week, Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote another scathing column about the failure of the UK health care system to address the …

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Trial By Error: Professor Chris Ponting Discusses His Recent Article in The Conversation about the Plight of ME/CFS patients

By David Tuller, DrPH October is a crowdfunding month at University of California, Berkeley. If you’d like to support my work, you can make a donation to the university (tax-deductible for US taxpayers) here. In the last few years, geneticist Chris Ponting, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, has become a leading researcher in the …

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Trial By Error: Actress Jennie Jacques Interviews Guardian Columnist George Monbiot and Me about the CBT/GET Ideological Brigades, and More

By David Tuller, DrPH October is a crowdfunding month at University of California, Berkeley. If you’d like to support my work, you can make a donation to the university (tax-deductible for US taxpayers) here. English actress Jennie Jacques is known for her roles in the BBC’s Desperate Romantics, a 2009 series about the Pre-Raphaelites, a police procedural …

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Calls for Retraction of Absurd “Effort Preference” Claims from NIH Study

By David Tuller, DrPH October is a crowdfunding month at University of California, Berkeley. If you’d like to support my work, you can make a donation to the university (tax-deductible for US taxpayers) here. In February, the journal Nature Communications published the US National Institutes of Health’s long-awaited paper, “Deep phenotyping of post-infectious myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue …

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Trial By Error: Extensive News Coverage of Exeter Coroner’s “Report to Prevent Future Deaths”

By David Tuller, DrPH October is a crowdfunding month at University of California, Berkeley. If you’d like to support my work, you can make a donation to the university (tax-deductible for US taxpayers) here. The case of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died in 2021 of malnutrition from severe ME after three hospitalizations failed to halt her …

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