The Great Flu Debate

It may be the most talked about health issue year after year.  Flu season is moving in…this year it will be more deadly than…there is a shortage of the flu vaccine.  It seems that Hollywood is doing the marketing and promotion of the flu vaccine each year. 

In any decision that I make, whether that is regarding my health, my time, my life, I apply a bit of basic left brain logic to come up with a decision.  I think it may be hard for some to have an unbiased right brain “feel” for what to do, given all the hype and fear surrounding this particular issue. 

How about this simple logic…is it (flu vaccine) safe?  And if so, does it work? 

Is it safe?  There are certainly the concerns of using mercury to sterilize the vaccine.  I couldn’t find actual data on the National Library of Medicine archives indicating this is an actual finding, but Dr. Hugh Fudenberg, a researcher and biologist, with over 850 published articles, is quoted to have estimated that your risk of Alzheimers disease increases 10 fold following 5 consecutive inoculations with the flu vaccine.
If that is the actual effect, to current seniors who grew up on only one inoculation, (smallpox), what will be the cumulative effect to us and our kids, who are now given around 35 inoculations before age 5, not including the flu vaccine? 

There is also the current debate over autism and inoculations.  Many doctors find a clear correlation between the increase in vaccinations and the rapid rise in autism.  Other doctors don’t.  However, the Federal government has paid 1.18 Billion dollars to parents of vaccine injured children since 1988, when the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was founded.   
 

By the way, to disprove the Alzheimer's/flu shots connection, some Toronto physicians went to nursing homes and asked people with Alzheimer's if they remember getting a flu shot.  Most said they didn't remember getting one. Not surprising since Alzheimer's victims may not remember the name of their spouse.  Anyway, based on this "research" they concluded the flu shots were safe but the disclaimer at the bottom of the abstract negated its value: "Because of the self-reported nature of the risk factor questionnaire we cannot exclude the possibility of recall bias."  National media reported this as "proof" the flu shot was safe. They didn't mention the disclaimer. 

Well, maybe there is a chance that it is so effective, that the risk is worth the benefit.  Let’s explore some national headlines, then some actual data.

Headline from CDC website: “Preliminary Assessment of the Effectiveness of the 2003-04 Inactivated Influenza Vaccine: Colorado, December 2003…Adjusted vaccine effectiveness for both estimates were not statistically significantly different from zero.”  With my knowledge of statistics, I can interpret that means it had no benefit. 

 (CNN) -- This year's flu vaccine had little or no effectiveness against influenza-like illnesses, according to a preliminary study released Thursday (Friday, January 16, 2004 Posted: 9:16 AM EST) The study, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, looked at workers at Children's Hospital in Denver, Colorado. 

Of the 1,000 people who got the vaccine before November, 149 went on to develop influenza-like illness (14.9 percent). Of the 402 people who did not get the vaccine, 68 got an influenza-like illness (16.9 percent), the study said.

A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine this year after crunching all the numbers from years past…

“Early predictions were that flu vaccines would save the lives of about half of those vaccinated. Based on U.S. mortality rates from 1968 to 2001, the study by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found no correlation between increasing vaccination rates and declining death rates in any age group." The Archives of Internal Medicine (Arch Intern Med 2005;165:265-272) reports that influenza vaccination coverage among elderly persons (> or =65 years) in the United States increased from between 15% and 20% before 1980 to 65% in 2001. Unexpectedly, estimates of influenza-related mortality in this age group also increased during this period.”  Yes, the number of flu related deaths has increased as vaccination rates have increased.

Maybe it works for the children…

January 10, 2004: NY Times, Lawrence Altman, the dean of American medical writers, reported that 93 children have died from the flu this season in the US.  Alltman states:  “Thirty-three of the victims had not been vaccinated.” So…sixty of the deaths were in vaccinated kids, right?

Follow my left brain math on this…lets say there were a million kids.  We know that less than a quarter of them are vaccinated (22% according to the CDC), so lets say there are 750,000 non vaccinated kids and 250,000 vaccinated kids, or 3 non vaccinated kids to every vaccinated kid in the US population.  Lets even out the death toll to 100…according to the above statistics, 35 non vaccinated kids and 65 vaccinated kids died from the flu.  Since there are 3 times more non-vaccinated kids, and yet more vaccinated kids died, the relative risk of death is 5 ½ times greater if you are vaccinated versus a non vaccinated kid. 

Would you prefer more official stats?  The CDC states that 135 children died during the 2003-2004 flu season. 59 of these children had received their flu shots.  So, that is a different ratio, 43% of the fatalities were in vaccinated kids, 57% in non vaccinated kids.  Sounds a bit better for the use of vaccines, but remember there are 3 times more non vaccinated kids, so there are many, many more “unprotected” children.  So the actual statistics indicate that you have over double the risk of death if you are vaccinated as a kid (2.25 times more deaths per population in this group, if you are vaccinated). 

I’m starting to feel ill…I hope its not the flu.

Everybody loves a conspiracy theory, right?  Again, just looking at data and statistics, so that emotions don’t get involved…JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) reported the results of a survey in the Feb 2002 issue.  What they found, was that the doctors who set the national guidelines for medical care for various diseases, including recommendations for the flu, are on the payroll of the pharmaceutical companies.  Only 50% of the guideline authors responded to the survey, and 87% of them acknowledged that they received compensation of some sort from one or more pharmaceutical companies.  What about the other half of guideline authors…this article suggests that the reality may be that more than 90% of the doctors who set guidelines for care in this country, actually work for the pharmaceutical industry. 

So, if there is no guarantee of safety, including the possibility of the vaccine being a causative factor in degenerative brain diseases, autism, and increased death rates; and there appears to be no effectiveness of actually doing what is intended, which is to prevent the flu, and that the seniors and children being vaccinated for prevention actually have a greater risk of flu related death, based on raw data…why does this continue?

 I believe that the physicians promoting the vaccine are hoping for better results, hoping that the numbers will improve with better vaccines.  I believe that people are good, and that they really want vaccines to be safe and work well (as do I, because I got the flu this year, and it wasn’t fun).  I believe that money does play a factor, that some of the desire for it to work is because it is so profitable.  And if it did work, it would be worthy of a large profit.  But the data derived fact is: it doesn’t work, it is potentially dangerous, and based on that data, I hope you can make a more logical and sensible decision for yourself, your kids, and your aging parents and grandparents.