Going to the movies is a time-honored way of getting away from the vagaries of work and home life and inhabiting a different and exotic place. I don’t know if car mechanics can really enjoy chase movies or cowboys can appreciate Westerns, but as a specialist in Infectious Diseases, I rarely get a chance to see someone plying my trade inside the multiplex. There are spoilers ahead, so read on cautiously if you have not yet seen Contagion and plan to go.
The new Steven Soderbergh movie, Contagion, is a fairly realistic guesstimate of what might happen if a highly contagious, new infectious agent started moving around the world and destroying people willy nilly like a marauding tornado. While there has never been an infection quite like “MEV-1” as depicted in Contagion, the question of how we would respond as a medical community and as a society is a worthy one to address. Whether the answer is right or wrong – well, let’s hope we never find out.
From an Infectious Diseases angle, the infection in Contagion is crafted to be highly transmissible and fatal. This would be like a hybrid of the 1918-1919 pandemic flu, Nipah virus and SARS. The end of the movie shows the mechanism via which MEV-1 began to infect humans, and it is highly reminiscent of Nipah and SARS. Thus has some built-in credibility as it builds on diseases that we already understand. It is also eerily reminiscent of the most recent big flu outbreak (A/California/2009 H1N1) where the virus contained elements that came from birds, pigs and people. The rapidity of spread lends the movie much of its terror, but is not far off the rapidity of spread of influenza. Similarly, the incubation period and time to death is also reminiscent of the 1918-1919 pandemic flu. So the film-makers have done their homework and created a plausible disaster scenario. More
In honor of World Rabies Day, we’d like to draw attention to two rabies vaccines recently found in the collection of the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Museum curator Anna Dhody recently alerted us to a box of vaccines and other medical supplies she found in a little-visited storage area in the museum basement. The box belonged to a collection of medical equipment donated by James G. Kitchen II, MD (d. 1998), who was a Pocono Lake, Pennsylvania, physician and fellow of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Dr. Kitchen stocked the vaccine in his office supplies to address what was probably a fairly uncommon need in his practice: post-exposure rabies prophylaxis in humans. 
The so-called Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 was one of the worst natural disasters in history. Estimates of total death counts vary, but it is commonly stated that the virus infected about one-third of the world’s population and killed about 50 million – possibly as many as 100 million. Researchers have long been interested in learning more about the virus and what made it so deadly, and genetic analysis has been a large part of that effort. In 2005 the full genome sequence of the virus was published, and research has continued from that point.
Today the History of Vaccines staff -- that's two of us -- went out together to get the seasonal influenza vaccine. The drugstore at the corner offers walk-in shots for $27.99, and so we took a pre-lunch field trip. Our health insurance will reimburse us for most of the cost of the immunization. 
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is primarily known for its role in causing cervical cancer. Two strains of the virus – strains 16 and 18 – are estimated to be responsible for 70% of cervical cancer cases, leading to about 500,000 new cases and 270,000 deaths worldwide each year.
Two important vaccine meetings are being held at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The first meeting occurs September 12, and is entitled Research Integrity Challenges in Vaccine Development and Distribution for Public Health Emergencies. Sponsors include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Research Integrity, Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, and The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The second meeting on September 13 is part of the National Vaccine Program Office's effort to gather stakeholder input. Regional stakeholders are invited to attend sessions and share their experiences with immunization, particularly around racial and ethnic disparities, risk communications, and adolescent and adult vaccines. The information gathered at this meeting will help guide the implementation of the National Vaccine Plan as well as inform local and regional vaccine groups on barriers and successes in immunization. 
In October 2010, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) issued a new recommendation for Tdap vaccination -- the booster vaccine that provides protection against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough). While the vaccine had previously been recommended as a one-time booster for adults up to age 64, replacing an individual tetanus booster, the committee voted to expand that recommendation: anyone older than 65 who had not received a prior dose of Tdap should receive one if they expected to have close contact with an infant younger than 12 months old.
Each year, researchers select three influenza strains to include in the seasonal flu vaccine. Because there are so many different strains of the influenza virus, and because it mutates so rapidly, this selection is always a guess—a highly educated one based on global surveillance data, but still a guess.
Just a week after a June 13 summit at which public and private donors committed $4.3 billion to continue funding the GAVI Alliance’s efforts to immunize the world’s poorest children, another vaccines summit played out in Seattle.