Updates to "OAS"

Version "1.0" of the OAS literature review is live.

The second page has been added to my OAS literature review, bringing the record up to date as of 2014:

OAS Lit Review / Timeline Pt. 2

Important additions to the table and the text of the review:

Table:

• A 1981 vaccine trial by Masurel, which is actually the best “classic OAS” demonstration in humans that I have ever seen. It’s strange that this study is rarely cited.

• Studies for 1994 - 2014, plus a takedown of Gostic, et al.

Text:

• A discussion of the results for the Masurel, et al. study, and the famous “Hoskins paradox” study. In this, I venture to clear up the myths surrounding the Hoskins et al. study, and offer a final critique of the problem with the “OAS approach” to biology (reprising my “Groundhog” essay¹):

  Biologists, at last, must leverage common sense to overcome a simple category error. Just because initial vaccination can replicate the immune response of infection, it does not follow that vaccination and infection or even asymptomatic viral encounter are actually the same. Thus, limitations with repeat vaccination are actual limitations with vaccination, not within the immune system.

• A report on a modern reanimation of Francis’s quest, by a researcher and his associates at Emory University. This leads to a series of five papers between 2009 and 2014 (all included in the Yewdell and Santos OAS review) built on an edifice of 10-day post-infection blood draws which finally collapse into a heap.

  The logic of Wrammert’s theory might seem sound: If the receptor binding domain is radically remodeled by antigenic shift, wouldn’t the immune system “wise up” and target the most conserved regions of the spike protein? Well, no - not unless it has given up on novel immune responses completely.

I have seven studies left to review before finishing Yewdell and Santos’s list; though as of page 2 I feel that the point has been made.²

OAS is a myth.

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1. See “Original Antigroundhogic Sin.”

2. Bonus content for this update notice. Among the newly-added studies is this clunkily-titled gem:

O’Donnell, CD. et al. (2014.) “Humans and Ferrets with Prior H1N1 Influenza Virus Infections Do Not Exhibit Evidence of Original Antigenic Sin after Infection or Vaccination with the 2009 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza Virus.” Vaccine Immunol. 2014 May;21(5):737-46.

Here, for once, is a modern study designed to actually test whether “childhood antibodies higher” is observable in human populations or not. What will they think of next? The authors, after administering a vaccine for the overhyped 2009 swine flu (“CA/09”), find no support for “childhood antibodies higher” in any of three separate age groups (unfortunately they do not report the raw titers, but the fold change from before and after the vaccine; this still demonstrates a lack of back-boost).

Roll that beautiful prevention of blood glomming relative fold increase footage:

O’Donnell, CD. et al. (2014.) Fig. 2. (annotated)

OAS is not real.