The thought of birth defects caused by rubella, rows of iron lungs housing children crippled by polio, or the horrific sound of a baby struggling with whooping cough can still evoke dread among people who have seen firsthand the damage inflicted by these and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Fortunately, those scourges are virtually unknown to modern generations that have had access to vaccines all their lives.For more than 200 years vaccines have proved to be one of the most successful, lifesaving and economical methods of preventing infectious disease, second only to the sanitization of water. Vaccines have spared millions of people from early death or crippling illnesses and made the global eradication of smallpox in 1979 possible. Health experts now pledge to eliminate polio, measles and perhaps one day even malaria--although, as we shall see, a malaria vaccine will require novel approaches to immunization to be successful. [More]

As health care workers in the U.S. gear up for the flu season, they facea paradox: on the one hand, they will have too little vaccine against the novel influenza A (H1N1) strain to protect the entire population; on the other, some people will resist the shots that are offered to them. Sadly, both problems can be traced, at least in part, to the last time “swine flu” loomed. The 1976 national vaccination campaign against a pandemic that never materialized left the public with lingering doubts about whether the inoculations harmed some recipients and spawned lawsuits that cost the federal government nearly $100 million.Since that episode, both public mistrust of vaccines and vaccine makers’ mistrust of a litigious public have only grown--hampering the nation’s ability to respond to the current, very real, pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expect the virus to sicken up to a third of the population this fall. But the nation will have barely en

Research at the university of Liverpool involving more than 500 prostate cancer patients has revealed two thirds of cases did not require urgent treatment, due to the absence of a protein that indicates progressive disease.

The first Swiss satellite in history -- extremely small and 100 percent student designed and built -- has been successfully launched from the Sriharikota space station in India. Constructed by the EPFL -- with many institutional partners -- the SwissCube has gone into orbit today. An educational project -- those who worked on it adhered to extremely precise requirements for space travel.

[ The following is an exact transcript of this podcast. ]We all know that drinking can cloud judgment. That’s why you should never email an ex after you’ve had a few. But for teenagers, doing dumb things now because of alcohol may be just the start. Because research with animals suggests that drinking during adolescence can set you up for a whole lifetime of bad decisions. The study is in the Proceedings of the national academy of Sciences . [More]

Immune therapies have been explored as a way to treat cancer after it develops. But a new study from the university of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center suggests that genetic risk of prostate cancer can be reduced by rescuing critical immune system cells.

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers are part of an international team that has discovered a genetic variation that could identify those people infected with hepatitis C who are most likely to benefit from current treatments.

When it comes to apologizing, talk is cheap, according to economists.

For years, studies have shown that young people from low-income households across North America are less likely to apply to college or university than peers from higher-income families. Now, a groundbreaking new study shows the solution may be as simple as helping students with the financial aid process.

An international team of conservationists has developed a technique to identify cheetahs by their paw prints.