No More Shots for Kids?

Why Your Future Vaccination Might Not Be A Shot

Vaccines don't always make it into the people who need them
the most. Many require a syringe and a needle to enter the bloodstream and create immunity. And that means a doctor or nurse has to do the job.

But with if a vaccine could be delivered by simply applying a patch? That's Mark Prausnitz's goal: creating a nickel-sized bandage-like device covered with 100 microscopic needles that would puncture the skin, then dissolve to get the vaccine into the body.

Maybe that sounds scary — 100 needles instead of one. But Prausnitz says you can't really feel the needles.

"It wouldn't be like sandpaper or scratching," he says. "You would have a hard time feeling a difference between the needles being there or not being there."

Of course, not all vaccinations are given by needle; polio has been oral for most of my life (I did get the shot first, though), Small Pox was merely a scratch, and many shots can be given with air guns, which may or may not be as painful as the needle.

Some medicines that need to be placed in certain locations to work, cortisone in joints for example, would not be readily amenable to this technology. But given the vaccination schedule for kids these days, this could be a real boon to the mother who has to take a balky child in for a round of vaccinations.