Shirley Wu has penned a beautiful open letter to Oprah Winfrey explaining why Oprah should not provide a soapbox to Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy is the unofficial spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement, a dishonorable position at best. Given yet another podium, more people will listen and take McCarthy’s bad advice, resulting in more deaths and preventable […]
1976: Prologue In July 27, 1976, the American Legion, a US military veterans association, held a large meeting at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel a hotel in Philadelphia PA, celebrating the USA’s bicentennial year. Within 2 days, guests started falling ill with an atypical pneumonia. By the end of the week, 221 people were ill and […]
We learned in high school and/or undergrad biology that one antibody would bind to one antigen. This is what makes our immune system so effective: antibodies bind with high affinity to foreign proteins or other molecules. Not only that, but those antibodies are specific: they would bind only to a specific site on the foreign […]