It's been a rough week, especially over at PedTalk. The autism/vaccines "debate" has poisoned the waters of discussion pretty badly and I have a feeling that some of the anti-vaccine crowd is trying to cause some technical difficulty for us. They've done it before, so we'll see what Yahoo and others tell me (sorry for being cryptic).
To add to that, most of the news I had to share was negative. I had Dr. Stoller in the WSJ talking about how much UHC stinks (not really news to those of us in the business, but hey). Then there were the articles about primary care doctor shortages (which were linked to MA's new insurance requirement law, but I've asked my clients there about it and they don't report much). And so on.
I decided to share something helpful, positive to get my out of my doldrums and negative focus, so I have two things.
First, to prove that not all movie stars are anti-vaccine, here's a nice link from Salma Hayek (just putting her name here will attract all kinds of the wrong attention). Yes, I am cynical when I see that one has to buy Pampers to get the tetanus shot donated, but at least someone is aiming at the right target. I thank Salma for lending her name to this campaign (presuming she didn't get a bucket of cash). Perhaps she'll read this blog in get in touch. No? You don't think so?
The other thing I was working on was an all-in-one Immunization/Vaccine/CPT/ICD9/Manufacturer table. I have had this information in different places at different times and always make it hard to find. I suppose I could combine it with the CDC price list, perhaps I will. Please let me know if any additions, changes, corrections I can add to it! It provides a list of vaccines, with associated ICD9, CPT codes, descriptions, manufacturer, and product name. Handy dandy. Click below. My extreme thanks to Q, who helped me put this together (ok, she did most of the work).

2008blogvaccines.pdf