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Kansas City Star (www.kcstar.com)
(06/25/02) P. B3; Shepherd, Sara
CDC has announced that a nationwide tetanus
vaccine shortage is over, and health-care providers should resume routine
booster shots. Although the shortage was not expected to end until the end of
this summer at the earliest, CDC's updated recommendation came after last week's
announcement by Aventis Pasteur - the sole remaining U.S. producer of the combined
tetanus and diphtheria booster vaccine for adolescents - that its supplies had been built up enough to
meet the nation's needs. The CDC is now recommending that all teen-agers and
adults whose booster shots were deferred over the past year and a half to work
with their health-care providers and receive the delayed dose. Sue Denny,
spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Public Health, says that news of the
shortage's end was "a little bit of a surprise." She states that it will take
time to fill the supply pipeline so that
Missouri can meet the new
recommendations.
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"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."
-- Albert Einstein, letter to a friend, 1901
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820
"What's the point of vaccination if it doesn't protect you from the unvaccinated?"
-- Sandy Gottstein
"Who gets to decide what the greater good is and how many will be sacrificed to it?"