Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Andrew Wakefield, if you haven’t heard of him, is the guy who pretty much singlehandedly scared thousands of parents away from the MMR vaccine with a study he published in the Lancet linking the vaccine with autism. The study has since been retracted, something journals almost never do, after it was discovered that data in it was falsified. Not only that, Wakefield lost his medical license.
But is he backing down? No way. On the contrary: he is suing the British Medical Journal (from Texas) for defamation. And he is still defending his findings. Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Claire McCarthy, MD
Avoiding the chickenpox vaccine has been in the news recently, with the story of a company offering lollipops licked by kids with chickenpox as a way to give your child the illness. Some parents, apparently, would rather use those lollipops, or take their child to a chickenpox party to play with infected kids, than give their child the vaccine.
It got me thinking about my mother and her quest to give me chickenpox when I was a child. She would have drawn the line at the lollipops (which is a ludicrous idea—not only is it incredibly unlikely to work, but who knows what other germs were in that kid’s mouth), but she would have taken me to the parties in a heartbeat. She did her own version: she took me to play with neighborhood kids when they got chickenpox. Full story »
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has approved recommendations for routine vaccination of males ages 11 and 12 against the Human papillomavirus (HPV.)
The HPV vaccine provide males with protection against certain HPV-related conditions and may also provide indirect protection of women by reducing transmission of HPV. Our own Dr. Claire was recently interviewed by New England Cable News to discuss the CDC’s new recommendation.
What is HPV?
HPV stands for Human papillomavirus. There are more than 100 types of HPV, of which more than 30 are transmitted sexually—those are the ones most people are referencing when talking about HPV—and they can be separated into two types: low risk and high risk. Both can result in some form of genital disease, with the low risk-types typically leading to genital warts and minor abnormalities in the cells of the cervix. The high-risk types can lead to several forms of genital cancer, including cervical cancer. Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
The MMR vaccine is the most efficient protection against measles
For years, measles has been rare in the United States, thanks to immunization. But recently, that has changed. This year we’ve seen lots of outbreaks, mostly started by unimmunized people going to or coming from countries that have lots of measles—and then giving the infection to unimmunized people here. In Massachusetts we have had 24 cases of measles this year—19 since May!
What is measles?
Measles, also called rubeola, is a very contagious respiratory illness.
What causes it?
Measles is caused by a virus. It is spread through the air when people with the illness cough, sneeze, or simply breathe near someone else. It lives in the mucus of infected people, so if an infected person has mucus on their hands (from touching their mouth or nose) and touches something (like a doorknob), they can leave the virus behind for others to catch.
What are the symptoms?
The symptoms of measles include fever, runny nose, sore throat, rash, red eyes, cough, and body aches. Sometimes people with measles get white spots in their mouth called Koplik spots. The spots in the mouth and rash usually start a few days after the illness has begun, so at the beginning it can be hard to tell measles from the common cold or flu. Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
It’s flu shot time again.
Most of the time—and this makes me happy—parents are glad, even relieved, when I tell them that we have the flu shot and I’d like to give it to their child. But every year, there are some that aren’t so glad.
They get a particular look I’ve learned to recognize. It’s a skeptical, hesitant look. They pause for a moment, take a breath, and tell me they don’t want their child to have it.
I pause for a moment myself, take a breath, and ask them why. Full story »
Did you watch the presidential debate on Monday? Michele Bachmann, in an attack on her opponent Rick Perry, criticized the Texas governor for mandating that young girls in his state get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
In her statement Bachmann said she objected to forcing people to receive the vaccine, in part because she feels it’s a “potentially very dangerous drug.”
Her comments have raised eyebrows on both sides of the political fence, and raised questions in the minds of parents. To address these concerns Thriving spoke with Lydia Shrier, MD, MPH, of Children’s Hospital Boston’s Division of Adolescent Medicine to get the facts on HPV and its vaccination.
What is HPV?
HPV stands for Human papillomavirus. There are more than 100 types of HPV, of which more than 30 are transmitted sexually—those are the ones most people are referencing when talking about HPV—and they can be separated into two types: low risk and high risk. Both can result in some form of genital disease, with the low risk-types typically leading to genital warts and minor abnormalities in the cells of the cervix. The high-risk types can lead to several forms of genital cancer, including cervical cancer. Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
The news that Dr. Andrew Wakefield appears to have invented some of the information in his famous 1998 study linking the MMR vaccine and autism is shocking. But it’s old news that the study was not a good study. A year ago, The Lancet retracted it. And even before that, nobody had been able to replicate it, and many studies contradicted it.
Yet some people still want to believe the study. This is really frustrating to me.
I’m not frustrated because people want to believe Dr. Wakefield’s idea. We don’t know what causes autism. Hopefully we will soon, but until then any idea is open for discussion and investigation. What frustrates me is that even before these revelations, it was clear that the study was flawed. The study isn’t good science; it doesn’t show anything, let alone prove anything. Nevertheless, people have made decisions about immunizing their children based on it. That is really frustrating, especially when there is so much good science to show that vaccines don’t cause autism—and do save lives. Full story »
Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Along with her blogs here on Thriving, you can find her at the Huffington Post and Boston.com. Follow her on Twitter @drClaire.
Come on, folks, roll up your sleeves—and your kids’ sleeves, too. Summer’s officially over and it’s time for the flu shot.
Every year, I’m caught off guard by how many people don’t want to get a flu shot. There are lots of people who are happy to get them—anxious, even—but I’m always surprised by how much I end up being a flu shot salesman. Full story »
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Recently I watched a clip of Andrew Wakefield being interviewed on Good Morning America, and it gave me the chills.
