My church newsletter today had a story about one of our members, Fred Clark. It turns out that Fred was one of the three inventors/developers of a vaccine for rotavirus, and recently received the Gold Medal of Philadelphia Children's Hospital for his role in this discovery. Rotavirus kills over 600,000 children annually, through diarrhea, and three oral doses of this vaccine by age 2-1/2 will vaccinate children against this killer.

I've known Fred slightly for years, and never knew what his work was, or that his work was so important.

Here's an article about it: Gold Medal

By Dawnk777 on Sunday, December 10, 2006 - 04:08 pm:

Wow, that's so cool. Sarah had rotavirus, when she was about 7 months old. She was so sick, for a few days, but did get better and never had to go into the hospital.

By Dana on Sunday, December 10, 2006 - 05:34 pm:

My DD had it 2 wks before our wedding. She too was terribly sick, but thankfully never needed the hospital. She was sick the entire two weeks and didn't even move.

I don't think that they offered that vaccine to my DS? Is it automatic? I never want to go thru that again.

That is awesome that you know the guy who was so involved in making it. Make sure you tell him "thank you" from me.

By Kate on Sunday, December 10, 2006 - 06:05 pm:

Your son wasn't offered the vaccine, Dana, because when he was the appropriate ages the vaccine they had was pulled and no longer given because it could cause (and in several cases, did cause) the intestines to twist.

I'm curious if this vaccine is a brand new one, or a variation of the original one.

By Ginny~moderator on Sunday, December 10, 2006 - 08:08 pm:

This is a brand new vaccine. It was approved by the FDA in February of this year. According to this (different) article, between 2001 and 2004, it was tested on over 70,000 children around the world. Research history

One of the reasons such a large clinical test was run was because of the earlier vaccine that did cause bowel obstruction in some children. And apparently they still need to run clinical trials in third world countries to be sure children there (whose diets and life styles are so different from ours) will also not have adverse side effects.

Here's an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer that gives more information: Inquirer

By Enchens on Monday, December 11, 2006 - 05:10 pm:

That's really cool. We got notice when the vaccine was approved. We are very proud about it, too, because our son was a participant. We did all the research we could and really worked closely with his ped before agreeing to it.