Religious Opposition to Polio Vaccination

Religious Opposition to Polio Vaccination

To the Editor: In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was formed, with the aim of reducing infection with poliomyelitis virus. Two decades later in 2008, a total of 1,625 children contracted acute flaccid paralysis caused by poliovirus infection (1). This finding represented a 150% increase over the number of cases in 2007 (1) and resulted in the reemergence of polio as one of the wor...

The religious objections and military opposition to anesthetics, 1846-1848.

Religious exception for vaccination or religious excuses for avoiding vaccination

Vaccination is considered to be one of the greatest public health achievements in the 20th century, which has helped to build a society free of vaccine preventable diseases and save lives of millions children across the globe (1). However, in the 21st century, pediatric practice in the western world witnesses an era of vaccination refusal (2). Pediatricians, infectious disease experts, and publ...

Vaccination against polio should not be stopped

| The striking 50-year-long decline in the incidence of poliomyelitis has stalled in the past 7 years, which has led to calls for an urgent re-assessment of eradication and post-eradication campaign strategies. The current plan of eliminating the circulation of wild poliovirus so that further immunization will be unnecessary does not take into account recent scientific data and political realit...

Applying the Concept of Peptide Uniqueness to Anti-Polio Vaccination

BACKGROUND Although rare, adverse events may associate with anti-poliovirus vaccination thus possibly hampering global polio eradication worldwide. OBJECTIVE To design peptide-based anti-polio vaccines exempt from potential cross-reactivity risks and possibly able to reduce rare potential adverse events such as the postvaccine paralytic poliomyelitis due to the tendency of the poliovirus geno...