Hepatitis B Vaccine

WASHINGTON -- Getting up to 20 vaccinations by the age of 2 does not increase a child's risk of developing diabetes or various infections, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday. However, there is not enough evidence yet to decide if multiple shots increase the risk of developing asthma, the panel of independent scientists concluded. The report should reassure parents that "there's not a lot of support for those risks" critics often cite, said the panel chairwoman, Dr.

Genentech Inc. shares slid 8.3% on Tuesday, one day after a Los Angeles County jury ordered it to pay $300.2 million in damages for withholding royalties from City of Hope National Medical Center. The bad news about South San Francisco-based Genentech helped drag down biotechnology stocks. The Nasdaq biotechnology index fell 7.1% and the Amex biotechnology index, another closely watched measure, sank 8.1%. The sector also was hurt by disappointing news from Idec Pharmaceuticals.

According to recent medical findings, many parents believe that childhood vaccines are unsafe and seek exemptions from school mandates. Because unvaccinated children put themselves and others at greater risk of highly contagious diseases that can be prevented by vaccines, it is worth exploring the possible origins of these beliefs and whether they are scientifically justified.

A highly touted malaria vaccine that had proved partially effective in earlier clinical trials has failed a new test in Thailand, dashing hopes that health authorities might begin making inroads against a tropical scourge that kills as many as 2.5 million people worldwide each year and disables 100 times that number. Previous studies had suggested that the vaccine, made of synthetic proteins, might reduce the incidence of malaria by about 30%.

The four biggest vaccine makers will announce today at the White House that they are donating millions of doses of their products and stepping up research to cure diseases that plague African countries and other developing nations.

In this intriguing but academic volume, Dr. James Le Fanu reviews the moments in modern medicine that gave us longer, healthier lives, then argues that the engine driving medical innovation is slowing down. The pattern, says this British practitioner, is classic: In every field of human knowledge, there is a Golden Age, "followed by a decline in creativity and new ideas." His Top 10 moments are, indeed, definitive and their stories exciting.

Dr. R. Palmer Beasley, an epidemiologist whose pivotal research on hepatitis B in Taiwan first linked the virus to liver cancer, died Saturday of pancreatic cancer at his home in Houston. He was 76. His death was announced by the University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health in Houston, where he had been dean from 1987 to 2005. Beasley made his mark in the 1970s with a series of studies that proved the cancer link and also discovered how Asian children were infected with hepatitis B during childbirth by their mothers who were carriers.

State health officials estimate that up to 145,000 incoming seventh-graders may lack the required hepatitis B vaccination, prompting concerns that many students could be barred from entering middle school next month if they don't roll up their sleeves for shots soon. A new state law that took effect last month mandates that students cannot enter, advance to or repeat the seventh grade if they have not started the three-dose hepatitis B series, administered over four to six months.

Cases of hepatitis A have dropped dramatically in Southern California and much of the West over the last few years, and experts credit the decrease in large part to the widespread vaccination of children against the most common liver disease. Most of the drop has been among Latino children, who had a rate of hepatitis so high that a UCLA medical school study of the pre-vaccine years of the early 1990s called it an epidemic.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday announced its approval of the first human vaccine produced by genetic engineering, which will be used to protect against Hepatitis B. "This vaccine opens up a whole new era of vaccine production," FDA Commissioner Frank E. Young said at a press conference. "These techniques should be able to be extended to any virus or parasite to produce other vaccines that normally cannot be propagated in the laboratory."