Vaccines & Viruses: AMA opposes vaccine exemptions

American medical lobbyists. The nation’s largest medical association on Monday adopted a policy opposing religious and personal belief exemptions for childhood vaccines. The organization will now lobby policymakers to remove such exemptions from state laws. In approving the policy, delegates at the American Medical Association’s annual meeting in Chicago this week rejected a report from the organization’s ethics and public health committees that would have allowed leeway for such exemptions. One doctor supporting the ethics report, Ryan Hall, told his colleagues, “We as an organization should not be trying to trample the rights of others. People sometimes have the right to be foolish." But others said a soft position from the AMA would discourage the passage of bills like the one California legislators are debating, which would end personal belief exemptions in the state. “The AMA does not need to leave a loophole in its policy for the likes of Jenny McCarthy, Bob Sears, etc.,” said David T. Tayloe, a member of the AMA’s Council on Legislation. “Our vaccines are extremely safe, and children need to be immunized at 90 percent or more to achieve herd immunity, and we can't do this with choice.” Another delegate said: "The science has to trump some of the ethical personal freedoms.” Separately, AMA delegates also adopted a policy in favor of allowing transgender persons to serve in the military. The AMA endorsed Obamacare in 2009 and was the fifth largest lobbyist group in Washington, D.C., in 2014.

Bird plague. With 47,000 chickens and turkeys in the U.S. Midwest sickened by bird flu or culled to prevent its spread, a resulting egg shortage has raised the average price of a dozen eggs to a record$2.62. Regulators have approved the import of eggs from the Netherlands, the first time the United States has bought eggs from a European nation in more than a decade. Meanwhile, farmers’ opinions are divided over the possibility of a mass bird vaccination campaign that could protect some birds but scare off some foreign poultry customers. The United States has already lost about $600 million in foreign poultry and egg sales because of concerns about the virus. The U.S. Department of Agriculture last week decided against approving one bird flu vaccine because of doubts about its effectiveness.

MERS outbreak. South Korea is grappling with the largest outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outside of Saudi Arabia, where the virus was first detected in 2012. As of today, South Korea has logged 95 cases, confirmed seven deaths, quarantined 2,800 people, and closed more than 2,000 schools. The contagious virus has no cure and no vaccine, and seems to mostly affect adults. It may have originated in camels.

Merck and mumps. Two former scientists with from drugmaker Merck accuse the company of stonewalling requests to provide data about the effectiveness of its mumps vaccine, amid an ongoing lawsuit.