http://heidilore.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/avoid-flu-shots-take-vitami... Avoid Flu Shots, Take Vitamin D Instead
{ October 3, 2008 @ 10:57 am } · { Health }
{ Tags: flu shot, flu shots, mercury, vaccine, vitamin, vitamin d,
vitamins }
Another influenza season is beginning in the northern temperate zone, and
our government's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will
strongly urge Americans to get a flu shot. Health officials will say that
every winter 5-20 percent of the population catches the flu, 200,000 people
are hospitalized, and 36,000 people will die from it.
The CDC's 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)
makes recommendations each year on who should be vaccinated. Ten years ago,
for the 1999-2000 season, the committee recommended that people over age 65
and children with medical conditions have a flu shot. Seventy-four million
people were vaccinated. Next season (2000-01) the committee lowered the age
for universal vaccination from 65 to 50 years old, adding 41 million people
to the list. For the 2002-03 season, the ACIP added healthy children 6
months to 23 months old, and for 2004-05, children up to 5 years old. For
the 2008-09 season the committee has advised that healthy children 6 months
to 18 years old have a flu shot each year. Its recommendations for influenza
vaccination now covers 256 million Americans - 84 percent of the U.S.
population. Only healthy people ages 19-49 not involved in some aspect of
health care remain exempt. Pharmaceutical companies have made 146 million
influenza vaccines for the U.S. market this flu season.
Almost all the ACIP members who make these recommendations have financial
ties to the vaccine industry. The CDC therefore must grant each member a
conflict-of-interest waiver.
The CDC mounts a well-orchestrated campaign each season to generate interest
and demand for flu shots. Along with posters for the public, flyers, and
health care provider materials, it encourages doctors to "recommend/urge flu
shots." Medical groups, nonmedical organizations (like the YMCA), and the
media trumpet CDC-released messages on influenza, notably: "Flu kills 36,000
per year," "This could be a bad/serious flu year," and "Flu vaccine is the
best defense against flu." The government promotes National Vaccination
Week, which this year is December 8-14. This year, however, rather than
uniformly following the government's "Seven-Step Recipe" for generating
demand for flu shots, the mainstream media has questioned their benefits.
The New York Times had an article in the September 2, 2008 issue titled
"Doubts Grow Over Flu Vaccine in Elderly," which says, "The influenza
vaccine, which has been strongly recommended for people over 65 for more
than four decades, is losing its reputation as an effective way to ward off
the virus in the elderly. A growing number of immunologists and
epidemiologists say the vaccine probably does not work very well for people
over 70, the group that accounts for three-fourths of all flu deaths." The
article refers to a study done by the Group Health Center for Health Studies
in Seattle on 3,500 people, age 65-94, to determine if flu vaccines are
effective in protecting older people against developing pneumonia (Lancet
2008;372:398-405).
The National Vital Statistics Reports compiled by the CDC show that only
1,138 deaths a year occur due to influenza alone (257 in 2001, 727 in 2002,
1,792 in 2003, 1,100 in 2004, and 1,812 in 2005). Bacterial pneumonia causes
some 60,000 deaths each year, mainly in the winter, when surveillance data
show increased prevalence of the flu virus. Using a mathematical (Poisson)
regression model, officials estimate that the flu virus triggers some of the
winter-time deaths from pneumonia, along with deaths in people with
cardiovascular disease and other chronic illnesses. More than 34,000 of
those "36,000? flu deaths are what officials estimate are
"influenza-associated" pneumonic and cardiovascular deaths.
The Group Health study reported in the New York Times and other newspapers
around the country found that flu shots do not protect elderly people
against developing pneumonia. Pneumonia occurs with equal frequency in
people over age 65 with or without a flu shot. Earlier studies, biased by
the "healthy user effect," over-estimated the vaccine's effect on pneumonia
because they did not adjust for the presence and severity of other diseases
in unvaccinated people. As the Group Health authors point out, "The study
found that people who were healthy and conscientious about staying well were
the most likely to get an annual flu shot. Those who are frail may have
trouble bathing or dressing on their own and are less likely to get to their
doctor's office or a clinic to receive the vaccine. They are also more
likely to be closer to death." Other investigators question that there is a
mortality benefit with influenza vaccination. Vaccination coverage among the
elderly increased from 15% in 1980 to 65% now, but there has been no
decrease in deaths from influenza and pneumonia (Am J Respir Crit Care Med
2008;178:527-33). As one vaccine researcher puts it, "I think the evidence
base [for mortality benefits from flu shots] we have leaned on is not valid"
(Lancet Infect Dis 2007;7:658-66).
There is also a lack of evidence that young children benefit from flu shots.
A systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23
months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a
placebo (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006;1:CD004879).
Randomized controlled trials are the most reliable way to determine the
efficacy - and safety - of a given treatment. No randomized trials show that
flu shots reduce mortality from influenza or flu-related pneumonia. Some do
show that the flu vaccine is somewhat effective in preventing influenza. In
one widely quoted study, 1838 volunteers age 60 and over were randomized to
receive a flu shot or placebo (a shot of saline). The flu shot reduced the
relative risk of contracting (serologically confirmed, clinical) influenza
by a seemingly impressive 50%. The incidence of influenza in the
unvaccinated people in this study was 3%. In the vaccinated group it was 2%
(JAMA 1994;272:1661-5). Flu shots reduced the absolute risk of contracting
influenza by a meager 1% (not 50%, as the "relative risk" portrays it). In
actuality, for every 100 people that have a flu shot only one will benefit
from it - this, in medical parlance, is the "number needed to treat" (NNT)
in order to achieve any benefit from the treatment. A flu shot provides no
benefit for the other 99 people - 2 of them will get influenza anyway - and
all 100 risk being harmed by the vaccine.
Another randomized trial by Zaman and coworkers published recently (NEJM
2008;359: published online September 17, in print October 9) found that the
incidence of influenza in infants whose mothers had a flu shot during their
pregnancy was 4% (6/159). The incidence of flu in infants whose mothers did
not have a flu shot was 10% (16/157). In this study (done in Bangladesh and
funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and
others) flu shots reduced the relative risk of influenza illness in infants
by a seemingly impressive 63%. But only 6 out of 100 infants benefited from
the shot. The other 94 received no benefit - 4 got influenza anyway - and
all are at risk from being harmed by the vaccine, particularly from the
mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde in it.
After officials select the three strains of flu virus that they think are
most likely to be circulating during the next winter season (they picked the
wrong ones last year), vaccine makers grow the viruses in fertilized chicken
eggs, with 500,000 eggs per day (each examined by hand) for up to eight
months. Formaldehyde is used to inactivate the virus. It is a known
cancer-causing agent. Aluminum is added to promote an antibody response. It
is a neurotoxin that may play a role in Alzheimer's disease. Other additives
and adjuvants in the flu vaccine include Triton X-100 (a detergent),
Polysorbate 80, carbolic acid, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), gelatin, and
various antibiotics - neomycin, streptomycin, and gentamicin - that can
cause allergic reactions in some people.
Two-thirds of the vaccines made for the 2008-09 flu season, 100 million of
them, contain full-dose thimerosal, an organomercury compound, which is 49%
mercury by weight. (An unidentified number of the other 50 million vaccines
contain either "no" or "trace" amounts of thimerosal.) It is used to
disinfect the vaccine. Each one of these 100 million flu shots contain 25
micrograms of mercury, a mercury content that is 50,000 part per billion,
250 times more than the Environmental Protection Agency's safety limit.
Mercury is a neurotoxin, which has a toxicity level 1,000 times that of
lead.
There is some evidence that flu shots cause Alzheimer's disease. This most
likely is a result of combining mercury with aluminum and formaldehyde,
which renders them much more toxic together through a synergistic effect
than each would be alone. One investigator has reported that people who
received the flu vaccine each year for 3 to 5 years had a ten-fold greater
chance of developing Alzheimer's disease than people who did not have any
flu shots (Int J Clin Invest 2005;1:1-4). (The brains of people with
Alzheimer's disease display three pathologic hallmarks: neurofibillary
tangles, amyloid plaques, and phosphorylation of tau protein. Brain cells
grown in test tubes develop these changes when exposed to nanomolar doses of
mercury, doses similar to the amount of mercury a person gets from a flu
shot.)
Mercury in vaccines has also been implicated as a cause of autism. Vaccine
makers have now removed thimerosal from all childhood vaccines, except flu
...
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