News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded contracts worth more than $73 million to study the mechanisms by which certain infectious agents, including potential bioterror agents, trigger immune reactions, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – The General Accounting Office (GAO) has urged federal agencies to step up their efforts to determine if the use of certain antibiotics in animals endangers human health by making bacteria resistant to those antibiotics.

(CIDRAP News) – The Institute of Medicine (IOM) says it can find no evidence that thimerosal-containing vaccines or the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism and recommended that the search for the cause of the disorder focus on other possibilities.

(CIDRAP News) – Almost 5 years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the US Public Health Service joined in calling for removal of the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal from vaccines. By 2001, all the vaccines recommended for children under age 7 were available without thimerosal or with only trace amounts.