I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Jackson county is reporting that as it has seen a decrease in the number of children being vaccinated for whooping cough, it has seen an increase in cases of the contagious disease.
The Jackson Citizen Patriot reports that five percent of students in the county have been opted out of required vaccinations for school. Michigan is one of several states which allow parents to opt their children out of vaccinations for religious or medical reasons. Officials say the increase in opt outs for required vaccination — up from three percent in 2009 — is the result of a flawed study that connected vaccinations to autism.
Jackson is merely representative of a wave of whooping cough cases sweeping across Michigan, according to the Michigan Department of Community Health. Between 2004 and 2007 the entire state had 340 cases of the bacterial disease. In 2008, there were 315 cases statewide, and in 2009 there were 902 cases. In 2010 there were 1,519 cases statewide.
Whooping cough, technically known as pertussis, is caused by a bacteria. It has a high distribution rate — up to 90 percent — in populations without immunity. It tends to hit children, seniors and those with compromised immune systems the hardest. The infections causes chronic coughing, vomiting and headaches. If left untreated it can lead to pneumonia or the bacteria can infect the blood stream. It is treated with antibiotics.
Pertussis is called whooping cough for the sounds it causes those infected to make when coughing.
Parents around the world started backing off of giving their children vaccinations when the British medical journal Lancet published a controversial paper linking vaccines with autism, reports Time. That paper was published in 1998, but earlier this month, another medical journal in England — The British Medical Journal — published an opinion piece in which it called that 1998 study “an elaborate fraud.”
Nearly a year ago, after more information shed doubt on the paper — including the fact the author had received payments from a personal injury attorney and 10 of the 13 original study authors withdrew their names from the study — Lancet retracted the study in February of 2010.
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