Inhale. Inhale. Exhale, exhale, exhale.

[venta]

Help... my views are under attack! It seems that something I arbitrarily claimed on someone else's LJ is very wrong.

My claim was: everyone (in the UK, for approximately accurate values of everyone) had the BCG jab (ie TB vaccine) at secondary school. It seems that this isn't true, though.

What we need is a poll.



[Poll #1789614]


In not-entirely-unrelated news, hjalfi and I concluded last week that the goverment's current welfare and NHS reforms are not an attempt to undermine the system, but a genuine desire to improve the quality of today's literature. The more starving, tubercular people we have in poor housing, the more poetry we get. Fact.

Comments

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

As an infant, my parents enrolled me on a trial of neonatal TB vaccination. Don't think it was anything so clever as an RCT - AIUI (which is sketchily) they just gave a bunch of babies the jab and followed up later to see whether immunity had lasted until standard BCG age. It worked for me - I had the most spectacular reaction to the six-prick test anyone involved in my school had seen, so I was spared the arm-numbing jab.

I think there's some debate - or perhaps lack of evidence - about how long the BCG lasts. And I also think that the UK stopped routine TB immunisation some years ago. The treatment regime for TB was horrible and hard to stick to even back in the days before the emergence of XDR-TB (which sounds a lot cooler than it in fact is).

So I have been cheerfully predicting a full on White Plague scare for at least the last four years. At least, I hope it's only a scare.

It's worth noting that TB also refers to the former Prime Minister. Coincidence? I think not.