I’d happily beat an antivaxxer to death with an iron lung

I hate them that much

lulamaegolightly reblogged your post: “Mayim Bialik, You Disappoint Me”

Some people are so intelligent in one specific area that they come to believe it extends to all other areas and that they know better than professionals, especially in things that should come “naturally” to them, like child rearing.

But Mayim Bialik is a neuroscientist! And autism is a (partly?) neurological disorder, and the “immunizations cause autism” argument is the major issue that drives the anti-vax arguments. This is LITERALLY THE AREA SHE IS SUPPOSED TO BE SMART ABOUT. I’m willing to buy that argument for a lot of other people, but I just don’t understand her cognitive dissonance.

MIT scientists are developing a needle-less injection that could make getting a flu shot as painless as a mosquito bite.

The device shoots a tiny, high-pressure jet of medicine through the skin as fast as the speed of sound.

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, hospital healthcare workers incur about 385,000 needle-related injuries every year. Meanwhile, fear or discomfort from needles prevents many patients from complying with doctors’ orders.

MIT isn’t the first institution to experiment with needle-less injections that may help solve these longstanding problems. The concept has been around since the 1860s. The U.S. military developed high-speed models in the 1950s for use in mass-vacination programs. And modern pharmacists have offered needle-free flu shots.

The prototype injection system that MIT has created, however, allows for more precision in needle-less injections than has previously been possible. According to MIT News, it allows healthcare workers to adjust a range of doses at various depths.

If giving a shot to a baby, for instance, the shot administrator can use less pressure than he or she would to breech the skin of an adult. Flexibility in dosage and depth also makes jet-powered shots viable for a wider range of treatments.

MIT researchers have experimented with using the device to deliver drugs through the eye or ear, and are working on a version that can inject powdered drugs as if they were liquid drugs — something that could be useful in places where proper refrigeration of liquid drugs is impractical.

_Thumbnail courtesy of iStockphoto, numbeos_

More About: mit, needleless injections, vaccines

MIT scientists are developing a needle-less injection that could make getting a flu shot as painless as a mosquito bite. http://dlvr.it/1cqX4w