Fears have been voiced that the new swine flu vaccine may cause Guillan-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis or even death. However, as New Scientist reports, flu itself can induce it too, and with a somewhat higher probability (though we’re talking tiny numbers here). Any mass-vaccination programme is bound to bring rare side effects to light: one-in-100,000 reactions will produce dozens of cases when millions take it. Remember, this is not a totally new vaccine; it’s just a modified form of the seasonal flu jab.
There has been years of talk of an HIV vaccine, but only now do we have a first hint of success. Thus far the claims are very modest. In a recent trial, 16,000 volunteers in Thailand were given a combination of two candidate vaccines developed by drug companies Sanofi Pasteur and Genentech. The rate of HIV infection was lowered by around 31 per cent. Side effects were of the mild sort common to most vaccines. No one is claiming a major breakthrough, but even early sceptics are now persuaded that there’s something here.
Alas poor Ida: such early promise, but look at her now. This 47m-year-old fossil (proper name Darwinius masillae) was announced in a blitz of publicity last May to be a “missing link” between humans and other higher primates. But now, after looking at a closely related fossil, a paper in Nature claims that she was just a kind of ancestral form of lemur. Next time we are foisted with a candidate for the “missing link,” remember the Nature palaeontology editor’s advice: “I do not advocate violence, but should you find yourself gripped by an uncontrollable urge to deck the next person you meet who utters this phrase, I certainly wouldn’t stand in your way.”
There has been years of talk of an HIV vaccine, but only now do we have a first hint of success. Thus far the claims are very modest. In a recent trial, 16,000 volunteers in Thailand were given a combination of two candidate vaccines developed by drug companies Sanofi Pasteur and Genentech. The rate of HIV infection was lowered by around 31 per cent. Side effects were of the mild sort common to most vaccines. No one is claiming a major breakthrough, but even early sceptics are now persuaded that there’s something here.
Alas poor Ida: such early promise, but look at her now. This 47m-year-old fossil (proper name Darwinius masillae) was announced in a blitz of publicity last May to be a “missing link” between humans and other higher primates. But now, after looking at a closely related fossil, a paper in Nature claims that she was just a kind of ancestral form of lemur. Next time we are foisted with a candidate for the “missing link,” remember the Nature palaeontology editor’s advice: “I do not advocate violence, but should you find yourself gripped by an uncontrollable urge to deck the next person you meet who utters this phrase, I certainly wouldn’t stand in your way.”
