[New readers: the Freethinker Sermonette is a weekly feature here. If atheism bothers you, you can skip it. But please don't complain it has nothing to do with science. In our view, it has everything to do with science. The rest of you, enjoy.]
PZ over at Pharyngula has the most appropriate post for this week's Freethinker Sermonette (plus it provides a nice link to scibling Nick Anthis's terrific post on the mechanism of a kind of antiviral resistance exhibited by the swine flu virus). I'll just settle for Bill Maher's little diatribe. The swine flu part starts at about 1:45 minutes:
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I really like Bill. Makes me think of people who go through cancer treatment and when they get better, they thank god. Just slap the doctor in the face.
bc, you know a lot of doctors think they're god. Maybe that's why.
Dear Revere(s), when you get a chance, can you comment on the race to develop a new technology for vaccine production. Our local paper just reported on how this is being done http://www.mercurynews.com/swine-flu/ci_12282721 I would have thought that growing it in non-egg culture would result in a safer vaccine. What can go wrong with vaccine production to cause those nasty side effects? Thanks
Carolyn: Big question, but if you look in our past posts you'll get some idea. They all had the "Vaccines" category tag.
Thanks for the shout-out, and keep up the good work!
Totally off topic, but as a break from flu, do you have any comments on the Hydroxycut recall?
The short answer, I think, to Carolyn's question about side-effects is that a small percentage of humans are allergic to egg albumen and so giving them flu vaccine with proteins from egg will do more harm than good.
I think the point of Carolyn's question is that the vaccine she's talking about isn't cultured in eggs.