October 1st, 2008The Flu and Flu Vaccine
October 1, 2008
NOTE: Numbers in parentheses (1) refer to a footnote and link at the bottom of the article.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the 2008 flu season is ramping up to be one of the worst flu seasons to date, and, “the best way to prevent the flu is by getting a flu vaccination each year.” In fact, they are recommending that the following groups all get vaccinated this year:
• All children 6 months to 18 years old (previous recommendation was 6 months to 5 years old)
• Anyone over age 50
• Pregnant Women
• Anyone with chronic medical conditions
The CDC has a goal to vaccinate an astonishing 261 million people this year!
Why the push? The CDC claims that 36,000 people die each year from the flu, and that getting the vaccine will prevent you from getting the flu, therefore saving your life (1).
How much of this is true? Do you need the vaccine? Is it safe or effective?
Let’s take a look at the numbers first – do 36,000 people die from the flu each year?
According to the Centers for Disease Controls own Vital Statistics (the exact same website that claims that 36,000 people die from the flu each year), 1100 people died from the flu in 2004, 1812 in 2005 and 860 people died in 2006 from the flu. This has actually spiked dramatically – deaths in 2001 were only 257. Of those deaths attributed to the flu, very few are actually determined for sure that they are tied to influenza (2).
So why does the CDC claim that 36,000 people die from the flu each year? Apparently researchers with the British Medical Journal wondered the same thing when they asked, “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” They concluded that the numbers are inflated to scare the public and sell more of the vaccine (3).
Consequently – they come up with the 36,000 based on two things – 1) a flu epidemic in Hong Kong that killed about 34,000 people, and 2) by combining flu deaths with pneumonia deaths (which is completely different from the flu and even if the flu vaccine did provide immunity against the flu it would not provide immunity against pneumonia).
Despite the outright lies about the numbers, if the flu shot is effective then you want to get the shot, right? Let’s take a look at that question: Is the flu shot safe or effective?
If it were effective then certainly health care workers (HCWs), who are exposed to the flu and other diseases every day, would line up to get their vaccine. According to the Journal of Internal Medicine, that isn’t the case. The overall vaccination rate among HCWs is just 38%. The study concluded that “The overall influenza vaccination rate among HCWs in the United States is low. Interventions seeking to improve HCW vaccination rates may need to target these specific subgroups” (4).
Regarding the effectiveness of the shot, it is important to know how the manufacturers determine what strains of flu to put in that year. They travel to Asia early in the year and collect data, then guess as to which three flu strains will work their way across the ocean for the beginning of the flu season.
According to the Think Twice Institute:
“Flu ‘experts’ often guess wrong. For example, in 1994 they predicted that Shangdong, Texas, and Panama strains would be prevalent that year, thus millions of people were vaccinated with a flu shot that contained these viruses. However, when winter arrived, the Johannesburg and Beijing strains of influenza circulated through society. The vaccine was ineffective. This happened again in 1996, and again in 1997. More recently, the vaccine created for the 2003-2004 flu season contained flu strains that did not circulate through society that year. Officials were once again forced to admit that millions of people were vaccinated with an ineffective vaccine (5).”
But what if they guess right for the year and the flu vaccine does contain the correct strains? We’ll answer that with a question: Do you know what is in your flu vaccine? You may not want one even if they do guess right, simply because of the ingredients.
Here are some of the ingredients:
• Chick embryos
• Three flu viruses that were collected in Asia in January or February
• Formaldehyde (that’s right – the stuff they embalm humans with and classified as a known cancer-causing substance by the International Agency for Research on Cancer) (6)
• Thimerosal – a mercury based preservative which can lead to brain injury, autoimmune diseases and autism
• Sodium Phosphate or Sodium Chloride
• Gelatin
Do you want to inject ANY of the above ingredients into your bloodstream??? Even if they guess right, you can count our staff out! We don’t want any of the above things injected in us!
For a humorous look at the ingredients put in the flu shot, go to http://www.herballegacy.com/Flu_Shot.html.
So should you get a flu shot? At Herbal Legacy we do not give medical advice of any kind, but we feel it is your right to know all of the above information and then make an informed decision about getting a flu shot.
Next week we will discuss some simple remedies if you do come down with the flu.
Footnotes:
1. http://www.cdc.gov/Features/FLU/
2. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_16.pdf (2006 data - page 18) http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_10.pdf (2005 date – page 33)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_19.pdf (2004 data - page 40)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_05acc.pdf (2002 data – page 31)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_03.pdf (2001 data – page 39)
3. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/331/7529/1412 (British Medical Journal – Are US Flu Death Figures More PR than Science?)
4. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1484661 (Journal of Internal Medicine – Influenza Vaccine and Health Care Workers in the United States)
5. http://thinktwice.com/flu_lie.htm
6. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/risk/formaldehyde
October 1st, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Great U Tube video about the making the flu shot! Humor is always a good thing and helps boost the immune system too.
Guylene Ferguson MH
October 13th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Your article is highly misleading. Flu vaccine in the elderly is quite effective in reducing mortality from conditions adversely affected by flu, particularly pneumonia. No one claims that flu itself causes large numbers of deaths, but the stress of flu on the body, particularly in the elderly can cause death from other causes.
See http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/14/1373 for a detailed analysis.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Alexander,
The following reply to your comment was provided by Master Herbalist Jared Tropple:
Thank you for writing us about your concerns on our newsletter. We appreciate people that will take the time to let us know how they feel about our topics. The topic of vaccinations can be a very sensitive subject to both sides of this debate. By showing references of studies done we believe that we have been very thorough in stating our case that vaccines are not only ineffective but can be also very dangerous.
As for the flu vaccine and the elderly. A common complication of influenza infection in the elderly is pneumonia, and previous work has shown a 20-30% decreased risk of pneumonia complications in vaccinated individuals. However, these studies were performed in different populations, so observed differences could have been caused by underlying variety between the populations. Additional studies should also incorporate inpatient and outpatient cases of pneumonia, because most of these are not treated in the hospital.
The mortality benefits of giving elderly people the flu vaccine have been vastly overstated, according to a Review published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, October edition. Vaccinating people over 65 against influenza in developed countries is aimed at reducing the flu mortality burden.
Dr Lone Simonsen, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA and team say that vaccinating not-so-frail elderly people more frequently than their frail peers, plus the use of non-specific endpoints, such as all-cause mortality, are the reasons for this exaggeration.
“The remaining evidence base is currently insufficient to indicate the magnitude of the mortality benefit, if any, that elderly people derive from the vaccination program,” say the authors.
Although placebo-controlled randomized trials have demonstrated that the flu vaccine is effective in younger adults, a small number of trials never included the elderly, especially those aged over 70. About 75% of influenza related deaths occur among people aged 70 and over, point out the authors.
These trials suggest that clinical gains and antibody responses in the elderly fall with age after the age of 70.
Even though vaccination coverage rose from 15% in 1980 to 65% today, there has been no confirmation of any influenza-related mortality improvement since 1980, say the authors. “Paradoxically, whereas those studies attribute about 5% of all winter deaths to influenza, many cohort studies report a 50% reduction in the total risk of death in winter - a benefit ten times greater than the estimated influenza mortality burden.”
The authors say that any future trial should use more precise endpoints, for example, vaccine effectiveness against the highly specific outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza virus. Even though such a trial would be more expensive and labor intensive, the vaccine efficacy estimates are more likely to be reliable. Rather than use the current arbitrary 4-month period, any future trial should also identify the epidemic period for each season through utilization of actual virus surveillance data.
The writers caution “While awaiting an improved evidence base for influenza vaccine mortality benefits in elderly people, we suggest that this group should continue to be vaccinated against influenza. Influenza causes many deaths each year, and even a partly effective vaccine would be better than no vaccine at all. But the evidence base concerning influenza vaccine benefits in elderly people does need to be strengthened.”
“If current evidence points to substantial uncertainty, then what next? Simonsen and colleagues suggest that ‘refocusing on the likely complications of immune senescence would require vigorous pursuit of other options’. They also confront the ultimate taboo that drew so much scorn in the evidence overview: doing randomized trials in elderly people to settle the issue conclusively. That suggestion, which seems to fly in the face of current policies, is in our opinion the only ethical and scientific way to have definitive answer to the question of whether or not current influenza vaccines protect elderly people,” Dr Tom Jefferson and Dr Carlo Di Pietrantonj, Cochrane Vaccines Field, Alessandria, Italy.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases
Dr Lone Simonsen, Dr Lisa Jackson
Accompanying Comment
Dr Tom Jefferson, Dr Carlo Di Pietrantonj
Thank you for your concerns. We suggest that everyone educates themselves as much as possible. Sometimes it can be very difficult to sort out what information is presented for the benefit and health of the people and the information that only benefits the pocketbooks and goals of drug companies and health care profession.
May 2nd, 2009 at 8:58 pm
It is Mr. Grimwade’s remark that is misleading. Any vaccine weakens a person’s immune system, and the impact is especially severe in older people. I personally knew a 92 year old woman who was in a pretty good shape before she was fooled into a flu vaccination. She died. Of course, one case doesn’t make a statistics but this is a very weak consolation both for that woman and her loved ones. Believing in what FDA, CDC, pharmaceutical companies, or so-called “experts” serving them say is very foolish indeed.