Here is a question from one of the students in my recent vaccine lecture at Columbia University: "Isn't OPV one of the cheapest and easiest to administer? What exactly are the benefits of stopping? Avoiding an isolated case of the disease caused by the administration of the vaccine? It seems ...

Today I lectured on poliovirus vaccines in the Cellular & Molecular Immunology course taught by an old friend, Mosh, at the Morningside campus. I promised the students a pdf copy of the lecture notes. Click here to download the 2.6 MB file. I very much enjoy teaching virology, but when ...

This is not virology, but it is nonetheless fascinating. Archaeologists have found fossilized human feces in a cave in Oregon. The fossils, called coprolites, are just over 14,000 years old. In addition, DNA analysis indicates that they contain human DNA, and furthermore indicate origins from Siberia and East Asia. This ...

According to ProMED mail, Chikungunya is rapidly spreading in Sri Lanka. Chikungunya virus is a togavirus in the alphavirus genus. The infection is spread by mosquitos, mainly Aedes aegypti. The viral disease has been known for more than 50 years in the tropics and savannahs of developing countries of Asia ...

On 2 March 2008 the New York Times ran an article entitled "More Families are Shunning Inoculations". With states requiring more immunizations, parents are using religious exemptions to refuse the vaccines. And why would these parents wish to risk that their children contract potentially fatal diseases, such as polio, measles, ...