Engineering and Science Review Magazine

Combining Science and Fiction

Soil Remediation

Bluetooth: Life in the Connected World

Engineers Week 2001

39 Years Later: Reflections on Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

Eat Your Vaccinations, Honey

Book Review: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Eat Your Vaccinations, Honey
By Beth Yakes

Nobody particularly enjoys getting shots. I'm sure that pediatricians around the world hate bringing out the dreaded needle, guaranteed to make small children scream, kick, and bite. And most adults don't seem to do much better when a sharp, shiny object is about to be plunged into their upper arm. Along with a sizable portion of the CWRU population, I dutifully reported to Thwing to get a flu shot last semester. I think that the last time that I saw so many petrified faces was about ten minutes into the Physics 121 final my freshman year. The fear that they strike into the hearts of people is not the only problem with needles. If they are not properly sterilized, needles can transmit blood borne diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis B and C. Another disadvantage is that trained personnel are required to administer shots. These two issues are of particular concern in developing countries, where vaccinations are most desperately needed.

ORAL VACCINES: A MIXED BLESSING
Early on, the medical community realized that an oral vaccination would eliminate many of the problems associated with the needle delivery route. In addition to being easy to administer, oral vaccines have another distinct advantage over traditional injected vaccines. Oral vaccines stimulate both systemic and mucosal immune responses, while injected vaccines only lead to serum antibody production. Stimulating an immune response at the mucosal sites (such as the nose and mouth) is very desirable, because many pathogens enter the body at these sites. If an immune response occurs at the mucosal sites, pathogens can be prevented from even entering the body. The Sabin polio vaccine, which has been instrumental in achieving the World Health Organization's polio eradication goal, is one of the most well known oral vaccines. Other oral vaccines that are currently licensed in the United States are the Ty21atyphoid vaccine, which is administered to travelers, and the relatively new rotavirus vaccine. These vaccines are composed of live attenuated organisms; the pathogens used to make them can replicate in the body to the extent required to stimulate an immune response, but they cannot cause the symptoms of the disease.

While these vaccines elicit an excellent immune response, the use of live attenuated organisms to make them has become a point of contention. In very young children or in older individuals who have compromised immune systems, the attenuated pathogens may be strong enough to actually cause the disease that the vaccine is meant to prevent. In fact, the last case of polio in the United States that was caused by wild poliovirus occurred in 1979. All six cases of polio that have been reported in the United States since 1997 resulted from the oral polio vaccine. For this reason, the Center for Disease Control's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices now recommends that only the inactivated polio vaccine (the injected vaccine) be used to immunize children in the United States. They decided that risks associated with the oral polio vaccine outweighed the benefits gained from the use of the oral vaccine. This committee still agrees, however, that the oral vaccine should be used in countries where polio is still endemic because of its ability to induce mucosal immunity.

All information presented here is copyright 2004 Engineering and Science Review.