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The Story Behind the Flu Vaccine

A good number of you have been unclear about the necessity to take the flu shot. The outcome of taking the shots for the 2014-2015 season was alarmingly surprising. It was dubbed a major “flop” because its effectiveness rate was a mere 18%. Despite that, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tom Frieden said in a news conference, “Get vaccinated … That’s the best way to protect yourself, your family and your community against flu. He boldly urged the public take the 2015-2016 vaccine.

It remains to be seen how effective this year’s flu vaccine will be, but in the meantime, research raises questions about the potential negative effects of frequent vaccination on human health. In fact, getting flu shots regularly may make you more susceptible to the flu.

Keep in mind that the presumed intent of a vaccination is to build host immunity through exposing the immune system to small, attenuated doses of the organisms (or their antigens) that have the potential to cause illness and disease. “This preemptive strategy in the “war against germs” often causes such a high burden of collateral damage that world governments

are forced to underwrite the risk of vaccines (private insurers would quickly go bankrupt from paying out rightful claims, if the truth be told!), essentially colluding with vaccine manufacturers, and the conventional medical establishment that administers them, in the ongoing cover-up of the extensive harm they do,” said Dr. Joseph Mercola.


Previous Flu Shots Raised Risks for Pandemic Flu

During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, scientists in the Netherlands asked a big question: Do annual flu shots preventing natural influenza A infections in infants and young people increase their risk of illness and death when a highly pathogenic pandemic influenza strain develops and circulates?

The answer to that big question was “Yes” when, in 2010, Canadian health officials confirmed that school-aged children and healthy young adults, who had gotten a flu shot the previous season, were at twice the risk of coming down with pandemic A swine flu in 2009 that was severe enough to require a trip to the doctor’s office.

Then, between 2011 and 2014, researchers in Europe published a number of studies providing evidence that immune responses to natural influenza infections and vaccinations are quite different, and very much affect the quality and length of immunity.

According to National Vaccine Information Center April 26, 2016, CDC Admits Flu Shots Fail Half the Time

In January 2016, U.S. government officials finally publicly admitted that flu vaccines are only 50 to 60 percent effective at preventing lab-confirmed influenza requiring medical care in most years. In fact, a CDC analysis of flu vaccine effectiveness for the past decade – from 2005 to 2015 – demonstrated that more than half the time, seasonal flu shots are less than 50 percent effective!

In 2004-2005, the flu shot failed 90 percent of the time, and last year failed 77 percent of the time. Estimates for flu shot effectiveness this year is a not very impressive 59 percent.

Public Health Doctors Push Ineffective, Reactive Flu Vaccine

The sad part is that public health doctors have known since the first influenza vaccine was licensed in 1945, that influenza vaccines don’t work very well. But that did not stop them from recommending in 2010 that every child and adult should get an annual flu shot starting at six months old and through the last year of life. And by 2013, health care workers declining an annual flu shot were being fired from their jobs.

Consider the Controversial Hepatitis B Vaccine

One of the newer vaccines, the shot to protect against Hepatitis B, is coming under heavy criticism arising from parent groups, some scientists and lawyers who claim little-bitty newborn babies may have dangerous reactions to the shot.

They argue those most at risk from the disease are in older populations and people at risk through the exchange of infected blood, especially needle-using drug addicts, the sexually promiscuous, people who need repeated drug transfusions, health care workers exposed to infected blood and prison staffers.

So far, 38 states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring the childhood inoculation – often mandatory for entrance into day care or kindergarten. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that all infants be injected with the first dose of HepB at birth before going home from the hospital.

The critics of federal policy contend the infants at high risk for contracting the disease are those born to infected mothers. So why, they ask, subject babies to a possibly reactive vaccine when they technology already exists to screen HepB in pregnant women?

At Particular Issue is Whether the Shot Should Be Given to Babies.

State and federal public health officials are pushing for mandatory childhood vaccinations with the increasingly controversial HepB shots.

It is often the very first vaccination American newborns receive. They get two more shots, at an average $40 apiece, in their first year. Critics claim this is too young, that the baby’s fragile immune system is still developing, is often harmed by the HepB shot – in very rare instances resulting in death.

Only 15 states, in contrast to the 38 mandating childhood shots, require expecting mothers to be screened for the disease.

The controversy has started to draw in governments.

So, what’s taking place in the general medical community?

There seem to be transitional yet confusing trends.

  • Doctors and health care professionals in increasing numbers are beginning to challenge the assumptions of our current vaccine programs.

  • They are questioning the sanity and safety of rushing to mass-vaccinate against such a mild virus as H1N1 with untested and unproven vaccines.

  • Data collected from Canada and Hong Kong during 2009-2010 showed that people who received the seasonal flu vaccine in 2008 had twice the risk of getting the H1N1

Flu Shots Urged for Pregnant Women Despite Unknown Effects

The flu vaccine is widely recommended for pregnant women, despite a lack of adequate safety testing. It was around this time in 2014 that a study came out in the New England Journal of Medicine stating the flu vaccine provided partial protection against confirmed influenza in pregnant women and their infants.

The media began touting headlines like “flu vaccine safe for pregnant women,” and one news outlet, News 4 Jax, even quoted maternal-fetal medicine Dr. Erin Burnett as saying, “All pregnant women should get the vaccine because it’s 100 percent safe in pregnancy.” This is quite a statement, since even the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lists influenza (and Tdap) vaccines as either Pregnancy Category B or C biologicals, which means that adequate testing has not been done in humans to demonstrate safety for pregnant women, and it is not known whether the vaccines can cause fetal harm or affect reproduction capacity.

There are ingredients in flu vaccines, including mercury-containing (Thimerosal) preservatives, and many more bioactive and potentially toxic ingredients that have not been fully evaluated for potential genotoxic or other adverse effects on the human fetus developing in the womb that may negatively affect health after birth.

The rush to vaccinate pregnant women to try to passively vaccinate the developing fetus is a clear case of policy preceding science, as NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher pointed out in her public comment at a recent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory committee meeting where public health officials made preparations to fast track vaccines targeting pregnant women to licensure. She said,

“Maternal vaccination policy has preceded vaccine safety science. Now there are proposals on the table here in this Committee and in the 21st Century Cures Act backed by FDA and industry to lower FDA licensing standards to ensure that vaccine policy can continue to precede vaccine safety science in the future.”

It is clear that in the future many pregnant women are not only going to be urged to get the current government recommended influenza, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccines during every pregnancy but also be urged to get more vaccines that may not have been thoroughly tested. While women are evaluating their options for staying well during pregnancy, it is always wise to optimize vitamin D levels, which has the potential to not only cut your risk of the flu in half but also can protect you and your baby from serious complications, such as premature delivery and preeclampsia.

Now Look at What Happened to an Ohio Family Medicine Doctor

Dr. Daniel Neides, of The Cleveland Clinic wrote a blog post January 6, 2017 stating he got sick 2 hours after receiving a flu shot, the CDC highly recommended ‘containing no preservatives’. http://www.cleveland.com/lyndhurst-south-euclid/index.ssf/2017/01/make_2017_the_year_to_avoid_to.html

“I am tired of all the nonsense we as American citizens are being fed while big business – and the government – continue to ignore the health and well-being of the fine people in this country. Why am I all fired up, you ask?

I, like everyone else, took the advice of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) – the government – and received a flu shot. I chose to receive the preservative free vaccine, thinking I did not want any thimerasol (i.e. mercury) that the “regular” flu vaccine contains.

Makes sense, right? Why would any of us want to be injected with mercury if it can potentially cause harm? However, what I did not realize is that the preservative-free vaccine contains formaldehyde.

WHAT? How can you call it preservative-free, yet still put a preservative in it? And worse yet, formaldehyde is a known carcinogen. Yet, here we are, being lined up like cattle and injected with an unsafe product. Within 12 hours of receiving the vaccine, I was in bed feeling miserable and missed two days of work with a terrible cough and body aches.

My anger actually stems from a constant toxic burden that is contributing to the chronic disease epidemic. And yet the government continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth. We want our citizens to be healthy and take full advantage of the best healthcare system in the world (so we think), yet we don’t treat our bodies with the love and attention they deserve.”

Now See How the Medical Community Reacted

Scientists and doctors were horrified about the misinformation contained in the article, especially given that the source is affiliated with such a prestigious medical institution. A spokesperson for Cleveland Clinic told STAT on Saturday that Neides “will not be doing an interview.”

“He wrote this opinion piece on his own and it does not reflect the position of the Cleveland Clinic whatsoever, and we strongly support vaccinations and the protection of patients and employees,” said Eileen Sheil, executive director of corporate communications for the medical center.

Many doctors saw the post as an embarrassment for the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Benjamin Mazer, a resident physician in pathology at Yale New Haven Hospital who tweeted that the article was “one of the most vile, false things I have ever read by a doctor,” said in an interview that it wasn’t an isolated event.

“This is really part of a larger movement that distrusts mainstream medicine, distrusts mainstream public health, and really trades in conspiracy theories,” he told STAT. “This article is a really prime example of that. It’s just a shame that it’s a physician spreading these conspiracy theories because people naturally trust physicians.”

He was especially appalled at the misinformation that Neides was spreading about hepatitis B vaccines, which, Mazer said, “have prevented thousands of deaths.”

Non-clinicians were just as worried.

“When I see opinion pieces that stoke fears about the truly minuscule amounts of formaldehyde (a naturally occurring metabolite in every one of us) in vaccines or suggest that there is still some ‘debate’ as to whether or not vaccines and autism are linked, it sets off alarm bells and huge red flags in my head,” Michael Wosnick, the former scientific director of the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, told STAT by email.

So you see. This is an example of the environment swirling around the vaccine story. Unfortunately, instead of warning the public that annual flu shots may carry unknown risks and cause effects that are not well understood, public health officials continue to promote them as a panacea for influenza prevention. To say this is misleading is a vast understatement.

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