One Flu Over The Top
The flu season is back along with annual vaccination campaigns. But controversy builds
as the British Medical Journal (BMJ) questions if flu vaccines are effective and whether patients are given enough information to make an informed choice. In the light of past history Susan McFie asks who can we trust?
It’s that time of year. Waiting at the doctor’s surgery you will doubtless be bombarded with cautionary tales of failing to get an annual flu jab. There’s no escaping the message: local pharmacies, primary schools and supermarkets are in on the act. You may even be offered a complimentary balloon. People are falling over themselves to inject us, squirt us with nasal vaccines or prescribe anti-viral drugs. Is this necessary? Is it effective? Is it safe?
ASK YOUR DOCTOR
You might assume that medical professionals would be first to get the shots; not so. 45% of NHS staff in England and 60% in Scotland remain unvaccinated. Yet GP practices receive payments of around £10.00 per shot administered. Could the push to vaccinate be associated with these target payments? A BMJ report last October revealed that some GPs were effectively threatening patients! One surgery even withheld repeat prescriptions from people declining vaccines. But in some cases payments are vital, compensating for lacking funds.
If doctors had fewer financial concerns and more time to research, what might they discover? In last month’s BMJ, editor Peter Doshi described how governments internationally have taken unsafe shortcuts getting flu vaccines marketed. He details how in Europe licenses were granted for products based on studies of entirely different vaccines containing different viruses. Other countries including the UK and the USA gave manufacturers indemnity from liability for vaccine injuries.
Doshi says the 2009 swine flu vaccines were ‘even more controversial than normal’. Senior German physicians expressed concern over GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix vaccine, which contained a controversial ‘adjuvant’, a substance added in order to ‘turbo-charge’ immune response. Then it was discovered that top politicians and government employees were to receive a different vaccine, one without the suspect adjuvant! The European Medicines Agency stressed the ‘Unpredictability of adjuvant effects in humans’.
SLEEPING SICKNESS
Doctors’ fears appeared justified as health authorities from China, Sweden, France and Japan reported serious injury and death following the experimental Pandemrix vaccine. The most serious adverse effects were narcolepsy and cataplexy following injection. In narcolepsy the brain switches off, often without warning, while in cataplexy there is sudden loss of muscle function. Many also developed sleep apnea, paralysis, night terrors and hallucinations. By 2010 new cases were being diagnosed daily across Europe. Some doctors spoke of an epidemic. As a result the vaccine was withdrawn.
History reveals the swine flu vaccination campaign of 1976 was cut short when hundreds of people developed paralysing Guillain-Barré syndrome. Then in 2005 the UN and the World Health Organization warned that bird flu was imminent and would kill up to 150 million people. Images of the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic were used to reinforce the message. This resulted in global stockpiling of a new anti-viral drug called Tamiflu. The UK spent £473m on it; the US purchased 20 million doses at $100 dollars each.
BIRD FLU OFF, PIG FLU BACK IN
The panic diminished, the world breathed a collective sigh. Tamiflu began to slip from blockbuster status. But in 2009, just when we thought it was safe to visit the farmyard, the World Health Organisation warned that the world was once more in the midst of a swine flu pandemic. Just four months later the vaccines appeared. The US National Institutes of Health advised that the shots were safe. In the UK a joint statement from the Department of Health, British Medical Association, and Royal Colleges of General Practitioners announced full support for the vaccine program saying it had been ‘thoroughly tested.’ The problem was that it hadn’t, and many people now live with the results.
RISK VERSUS BENEFIT
From a public health perspective vaccination is about risk versus benefit – the risk of catching a disease versus the risk of adverse events from the vaccine. Against this we need to know if the drug actually works. Pandemrix was given to 6 million people in the UK and 30 million people across Europe. Numbers of serious side-effects are difficult to ascertain: the Irish Times had to resort to the Freedom of Information Act to discover that swine flu vaccines in Ireland had resulted in almost 1,000 injury reports in 2009 alone, more than any other drug or vaccine over the previous five years.
Over 1,300 cases of narcolepsy were reported in UK and Europe following Pandemrix. Researchers in Finland found a 12 fold increase in narcolepsy in adults and British research identified ‘at least’ 14-fold increase in the condition in UK children given the vaccine. EU regulators were already investigating 12 conditions ‘of special interest’ associated with flu vaccines including anaphylaxis, Bell’s palsy, auto-immune hepatitis, convulsions, Gullain-Barré Syndrome and sudden death.
NO BETTER THAN PARACETOMOL
But do the drugs even work? In 2012 Labour MP Paul Flynn described the 2009 flu vaccine campaign as ‘one of the most expensive confidence tricks in history’. The campaign, he said, ‘made billions for Big Pharma, frightened the world witless and wrecked the priorities of health services worldwide. All for a mild illness that was less dangerous than seasonal flu.’
Flynn detailed how when 60% of Sweden’s population was vaccinated (that’s 5.4 million shots) just 6 lives were saved, and the flu death rate sat at 0.31 per 100,000. Poland, which hardly vaccinated anyone, had a flu death rate only marginally higher at 0.47 per 100,000. In the same period the UK had double Poland’s rate of flu fatalities despite mass vaccination costing £1.2 billion.
Flu treatments also have major problems. In 2014 the global Cochrane Collaboration concluded that the anti-viral drug Tamiflu was no better than paracetamol and didn’t stop the disease spreading or prevent dangerous complications, concluding ‘there is no credible way these drugs could prevent a pandemic.’And Tamiflu has side effects. Oxford Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine Carl Heneghan, speaking to the BBC, said for every 10 million doses of Tamiflu, about 10,000 people report serious psychiatric events. Suicidal behaviour, hallucinations, seizures and delirium have been reported in young people in the UK and USA.
Hastings Independent Press spoke to Dr C. Benton, a US physician and formerly keen proponent of vaccination. In a meeting with a medical director at the Centre for Disease Control, Benton was told that there would never be a good flu vaccine because there are over 200 viruses causing flu and flu-like symptoms. Manufacturers have to guess a year ahead which ones might be circulating.
• Only around half of all NHS staff take flu vaccines. Two NHS Trusts reported a take-up of only around one fifth of staff. In Yorkshire just 18.4% of frontline ambulance crew chose to be vaccinated last year.
• Flu vaccines were not recommended for healthy children until 2000 but Flu Mist, a nasal spray, is now being administered in UK schools.
The US Centre for Disease Control stopped recommending Flu Mist following a reported 97% failure rate in 2015/16.
• 43% of people studied by the journal Vaccine believed the flu shot could give you the flu. Manufacturers say it’s a ‘killed virus’ and cannot cause flu. However many people develop so called flu-like symptoms.
• Flu Mist spray is live containing 4 genetically modified flu viruses including Swine flu. Experts say it causes a mild flu infection and may infect others for up to 3 weeks.
• The projected Bird flu and Swine flu pandemics never arrived. Neither virus passes easily to humans. But thousands experienced serious effects from vaccines and anti-viral drugs. Fortune magazine described Avian flu as ‘very good news’ for investors.
• Research suggests that vitamin D is more effective at preventing flu than vaccines, particularly in cases of deficiency.
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An excellent summary. Its hard not to share the tone of this piece when you look at the last image of the poster shown in GP surgeries. Look at the publishers of the poster and you will see the company name of Seqiris. Have a guess which industry Sequris represents and which product specifically? And then look at the full reference for the claim that around 10,000 deaths are related to the flu. How far do you think this was stretched? A case for Trading Standards I suggest…
What an excellent article, thoroughly researched and unbiased. I do hope people read this, so many people are damaged by the flu vaccine and aren’t given the facts.
Well done Hastings Independent Press!
An excellent article! Well done! I really do think that more people need to be made aware that receiving the Flumist vaccine makes their children carriers of flu. Highly dangerous to anyone in family or friends who is immunocompromised. Parents should also be made aware of the risk associated with these vaccines. Just because they are being administered in the nose not injected, doesn’t make them any safer. Children have been left permanently disabled and died after this vaccine was administered. Also, it would be really interesting if another independent scientist would do a broader study regarding the link between the flu jab and dementia. I remember reading a fascinating small study on cadavers of those who had died following dementia and there were alarmingly high levels of aluminium inside their brains! Would be very interesting to confirm if the vaccines they received in life, contained the same quantities of metals as the vaccines. Would be a real breakthrough for prevention of dementia I suspect.
This is one of the best articles I’ve read on the flu vaccine, my hope is that main stream media follows suit and tells the truth about vaccines. Or at least show the other side of this very controversial issue. I don’t understand why it IS so controversial, people should be able to speak freely about vaccines without being shouted down and the pressure upon parents and indeed elderly to vaccinate should not be there. It’s unethical.
I’m sharing this brilliant piece with all my friends.
Brilliant article. You have brought up many important issues that need a national and global spotlight focused on them
The fact that there is, readily available, scientific evidence to prove that aluminium, contained in the flu vaccine, has adverse effects on the brain, should be enough to place a nationwide halt on the administering of the vaccine, yet it continues! We know that our government and health service are turning a blind eye to the adverse side effects and yet we helplessly shrug our shoulders and those responsible, continue to get away with it.
An article like this needs to go viral for it to create a wave. I’ll send it on. Thank you HIP!
Excellent article, well written and very informative. It’s a shame that we aren’t given more information like this freely as parents so that informed decisions can be made.
A good article. As a working NHS professional I and many friends and colleques are pressured to take the flu vaccine…sometimes with the guilt trip of putting clients at risk and sometimes the blatant pimping of ‘this hospital has to have a certain take up percentage or we loose funding’. Some jobs may even lost due to refusal.Zero on the moral compass. A friend in London has been told by her GP she could not stay on their books if she refuses the flu jab.There is so much information and studies available from reputeable professionals about the toxicity of the flu jab that the so called pro vax folk dont seem to read. Recent study in the stastes reported those taking flu jabs are 5% more likely to suffer from chest/ breathing issues and be more prone to infection by other viruses. Squaline was a particulalrly damaging ingredient. Also studies about deaths through flu actually being piggy backed on to deaths due to pneumonia. It becomes more and more obvious that the massive push to get vaccinated is nothing about patient care but everything about handouts. And yes…cleaner vaccines being available for the few. It really is a twisted arena.
Any people reading this excellent article must now have severe concerns about the safety of the flu vaccine. What they may not know is that the vaccine is totally unnecessary, as explained by Dr Thomas Levy MD, the American cardiologist and medical lawyer:
QUOTE:
Yes, many viral infectious diseases have been cured and can continue to be cured by the proper administration of vitamin C. Yes, the vaccinations for these treatable infectious diseases are completely unnecessary when one has the access to proper treatment with vitamin C. And, yes, all of the side effects of vaccinations, whether you consider them to be many or few, are also completely unnecessary since the vaccinations do not have to be given in the first place with the availability of properly dosed vitamin C.
:END OF QUOTE
http://www.vitaminc.co.nz/pdf/INTRO-CURING-THE%20INCURABLE.pdf
Not only will Vitamin C in multi-gram dosages protect against flu, and treat it more effectively than any drug, it will also protect against and treat ALL strains of the virus. The annual guessing game, trying to determine which one will attack, is thus rendered completely superfluous.
https://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2006/10/dr-levy-on-vitamin-c.html
An extremely good and very important article. Thank you very much HIP for publishing this informative piece! It is imperative that the public is informed on this subject and decide for themselves whether vaccines offer any benefits. I used to believe in vaccination until I started to research it 27 years ago. There is much data going back to the early 1800s indicating many concerns surrounding efficacy and safety ….. I urge everyone to research this, more and more vaccines are being promoted and added into the schedule for all age groups. And yet we are seeing more and more chronic conditions and mental health disorders on the increase. Vaccines have the potential to cause a long list of problems, including auto-immune conditions. The vaccine industry is enormous and many of those who are making decisions regarding our health have conflicts of interest and their priority is keeping the shareholders happy rather than improving our health.
great real journalism at last surrounding the safety and effectiveness of flu vaccines , if only the national pres were as thorough
Thank you for your research on this topic. The more one investigates, the uglier this industry gets. We are being massively deceived by the medical industry. You know the priorities of the medical industry when they measure vaccine uptake rather than health. I’ve learned to treat the medical profession like used car salesmen. Don’t believe anything they say. Do your own research. This article is a great start.
Great article shows how Big Pharma have hoodwinked (or worse) the government and continue to try to hoodwink us (they always see to fall for panic stories – in 1987 we were warned that 50% of even heterosexuals were going to die from AIDS). The risks seldom appear to be assessed correctly. I often see the comparison of risks described (as here) as between being damaged by the vaccine, and getting flu, as though getting the flu is the worst that can happen. What is important is the % of people getting the flu AND dying or suffering long-term effects. This is surely a low %. Flu IS very nasty, but most of us get through it undamaged. And then what characterises those who do die from the flu? Let’s face it, if I were 80+ I think I would prefer to die with the flu than suffer dementia for the next 10 years – we do all have to die some time – whereas I suspect the vaccine damage is mainly to young people, including those so young that they cannot make the decision about vaccination themselves. We should be VERY sure of the benefit before taking this decision for them, yet the evidence, when fairly presented, shows the reverse. And then there is the cost, of course. AND Vitamin C is SO MUCH CHEAPER !
I am amazed that the Hastings Independent Press has published such an article. Well done. Well researched and not afraid to tell it how it is. The nationals could do with some of your pluck. I am so impressed I have just sent a donation. Keep Hastings Press independent! It can go towards the Editor’s leaving present after he has been forced to resign by the local public health censors.