Media/Policy Watch
This section is intended to alert readers to substantive news, analysis and opinion from the general media on vaccines, immunization, global; public health and related themes. Media Watch is not intended to be exhaustive, but indicative of themes and issues CVEP is actively tracking. This section will grow from an initial base of newspapers, magazines and blog sources, and is segregated from Journal Watch above which scans the peer-reviewed journal ecology.

We acknowledge the Western/Northern bias in this initial selection of titles and invite suggestions for expanded coverage. We are conservative in our outlook in adding news sources which largely report on primary content we are already covering above. Many electronic media sources have tiered, fee-based subscription models for access. We will provide full-text where content is published without restriction, but most publications require registration and some subscription level.

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The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/
Accessed 25 June 2016
A Surprising Link Between Zika and Dengue
23 June 2016
New research finds some dengue fever antibodies can help neutralize Zika—but they can also make Zika infections worse.

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Accessed 25 June 2016
Dr. Jonas Salk and the Continuing Battle Against Polio
22 June 2016
Scientists racing to develop a vaccine against Zika virus disease this summer may be hoping for results like those of Dr. Jonas Salk, creator of the first successful vaccine against poliomyelitis. Dr. Salk died on this day in 1995 at the age of 80, decades after the polio vaccine he developed helped vanquish the deadly, paralyzing disease throughout much of the world. News that the polio vaccine worked in a field trial involving 440,000 American children, announced at a University of Michigan news conference on April 12, 1955, “caused a public sensation probably unequaled by any health development in modern times,” Harold M. Schmeck Jr. wrote in his New York Times obituary of Dr. Salk.

Abortion Pill Orders Rise in 7 Latin American Nations on Zika Alert
22 June 2016
Orders for abortion pills by women in seven Latin American countries with Zika outbreaks increased after health officials in those countries warned that the virus might cause severe birth defects, according to a women’s organization supplying such pills. Orders from women in Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela roughly doubled, while those from Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras went up by from 36 percent to 76 percent, researchers said in a study published Wednesday by The New England Journal of Medicine. The authors of the study included a leader of the group based in Amsterdam that is supplying the pills, Women on Web, a nonprofit staffed by doctors helping women from countries where abortion is illegal or restricted to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Accessed 25 June 2016
Editorial
The critical public-health benefits of the HPV vaccine
By Editorial Board June 22
A DECADE ago, the world of medical research celebrated the introduction of the first vaccine proven to protect people from an identified cancer-causing agent. Studies over subsequent years affirmed the effectiveness and safety of the HPV vaccine and its potential to spare tens of thousands of people from having to suffer horrible cancers. Yet, inexcusably, pediatricians and family doctors remain reluctant to recommend the vaccine. A new campaign targeting these doctors aims to boost use of this lifesaving vaccine.

Concern about the limited use of the HPV vaccine in the United States is not new; only 40 percent of teenage girls and 22 percent of teenage boys have been fully inoculated, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From the start, there was controversy about the vaccine, much of it ill-informed. Not surprisingly, much of the misinformation had to do with sex. Because the vaccine prevents the most common sexually transmitted infections linked to the human papillomavirus, which in turn can cause cancer later in life, there was talk that use of the vaccine might encourage teenage promiscuity. There’s no evidence to support that illogical proposition.

A group of the nation’s leading oncologists is hoping to reframe the debate, reports The Post’s Laurie McGinley. They want to put the focus on cancer prevention, and they are directing their efforts at pediatricians and family doctors, identified by researchers as the main obstacle to wider inoculation. The vaccine is recommended for preteens and is important for both girls and boys. Most cervical cancer in women is caused by HPV infections, and the infections can also result in anal, penile and throat cancers.
According to Lois Ramondetta of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, doctors who are not recommending the vaccine are not doing their job. “It’s the equivalent,” she said, “of having patients in their 50s and not recommending a colonoscopy — and then having them come back with cancer.”

Doctors need to heed that sound advice, and further efforts must be made throughout society to tear down misconceptions about the HPV vaccine and to encourage its use. In particular, states that were scared off early on from including the vaccine in the portfolio of shots required (with parental opt-out) for school attendance should revisit this critical public-health issue.