Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, November 1, 2009
Why This Doctor Questions Flu Vaccination
by Dr. Damien Downing
(OMNS, November 1, 2009) 2009 may be the year of the vaccine show-down, the moment when enough of us start questioning all we’re being told about vaccines. A survey published in the BMJ in August ( http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/339/aug25_2/b3391 ) reported that less than half of healthcare workers in Hong Kong were willing to accept “pre-pandemic” flu vaccination. And that was before a letter from the Health Protection Agency to 600 United Kingdom neurologists on July 29th warning them to be on the alert for an increase in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome following the vaccination campaign.
If nurses and doctors start questioning vaccination for themselves, sooner or later we’ll have to advise patients to make their own minds up. They seem to be doing so anyway. A poll by Fox News ( http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/08/26/think-greater-risk/ ) , often described as a right-wing channel, found that 51% thought taking the H1N1 vaccine carried a greater risk than not being vaccinated.
Yet both in the USA and the UK, this year’s swine flu vaccine will be rolled out without adequate safety testing. What’s going on? Two things: profits and power.
Profits
Pharmaceutical companies love pandemics; they are a great way to sell practically-useless drugs such as Tamiflu. A thorough review ( http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(09)70199-9/fulltext ) by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at York University found that these drugs reduced the duration of flu symptoms by less than a day, and recommended that giving them to healthy adults “is unlikely to be the most appropriate course of action.” Pandemics are also a good way to sell vaccines. Manufacturers now stand to clean up to the tune of around $50 billion per year from influenza vaccines alone ( http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/08/13/Swine-Flu-Vaccine-Makers-to-Profit-50-Billion-a-Year.aspx ), on a vaccine without proper safety testing, and with efficacy totally unproven. A 2005 study was unable to “correlate increasing vaccination coverage after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group.” Instead they attributed the reduction in deaths to acquired “herd” immunity – nothing to do with vaccines. (1)
Global sales of vaccines were worth $24 billion in 2008, up 30% on the previous year, and greatly exceeding predictions from only 2 years before. ( http://knol.google.com/k/krishan-maggon/global-vaccine-market-review-2008-world/ ) Just in time for the manufacturers, as sales of “old-fashioned” pharmaceuticals are generally approaching saturation.
Power
Governments love pandemics. They support a system in which compulsory vaccination is imposed against our will, and where nutrients, which can provide cheap, safe and effective treatments for many problems are being outlawed on the basis of manipulated and flawed evidence. ( http://www.anhcampaign.org/ )The term “biopower” was first coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe the use by governments of technologies to control populations, that is, to control our bodies.
Vaccination is a good example of this; a technology that governments seek to impose on us, ostensibly to prevent a harm such as death and damage from measles. Take measles as an example; what is the real risk from it? Nobody really knows. All the recent evidence comes from developing countries with serious nutritional problems; one death in a million cases of measles, perhaps. What is the risk of developing autism if you get all or most of the long list of vaccinations for children? It’s 1 in 64 in the five-to-nine year olds now, according to Professor Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge. That means there are over 55,000 autists in that age group now, and 55,000 families stressed, heartbroken, even destroyed by it. Add the older kids still hobbled by autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and the younger ones yet to be diagnosed, and you get at least 100,000 children in the UK. Most swine flu vaccine contains thiomersal. That’s the preservative, nearly 50% of it mercury, that is probably a major cause of autism.
A proper risk analysis would identify the risk of autism as the greater likely cost, both human cost to the individual and financial to the state. Fair discussion of risk is prevented by management of the information flow. There is no mainstream news medium left on which you can rely for accuracy and balance.
A recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine ( http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/361/3/279 ) reported that the swine flu virus that caused the outbreak in 1977 “was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source.” During that outbreak, the USA launched a mass vaccination campaign, but this led to at least 25 deaths and 500 cases of Guillian-Barre syndrome. There were thousands of injury claims. This time around, to protect their profits, the manufacturers clearly needed immunity from prosecution, which has now been granted to them by the US and UK governments.
The Real Solution
There are dozens of official websites out there offering conventional advice on how to protect yourself from swine flu: stay away from other people, wear a mask, get vaccinated, take Tamiflu, and so on. But the real solution, the one they aren’t telling you about, is nutritional. There is plenty of evidence for nutritional intake making a difference – to your risk of developing flu symptoms, to your risk of complications, and to your time for recovery. The simple message is to consider taking the following (all doses approximate, and no danger from any of it):
- Vitamin D 4,000 International Units (IU) daily
- Vitamin A 25,000 IU daily (unless you’re pregnant or likely to become so)
- Vitamin C 1000 milligrams (mg) several times daily (at least)
- Zinc 25 mg daily
This is what I am doing, and what I advise my patients.
See your doctor and talk this over. Read the small print of course, and take other supplements if your body tells you it needs them. As for vaccination? That is, or at least should be, your decision.
References:
(1) Simonsen L, Reichert TA et al. Impact of influenza vaccination on seasonal mortality in the US elderly population. Arch Intern Med. 2005; 165:265-272.
(Dr. Damien Downing was qualified at Guy’s Hospital, London in 1972, and worked in hospitals and general practice in London, Leeds and York. He spent three years in the Solomon Islands as Medical Officer of Health for the capital, with responsibility for Mental Health Services and the Village Aid Project. On return to the UK in 1980 he established a private practice, focusing on nutritional and alternative therapies. He is president of the British Society for Allergy Environmental and Nutritional Medicine and editor of the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine. He is a member of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service Editorial Review Board.)
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Editorial Review Board:
Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.
Damien Downing, M.D.
Michael Gonzalez, D.Sc., Ph.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.
James A. Jackson, PhD
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, Ph.D
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Jorge R. Miranda-Massari, Pharm.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Gert E. Shuitemaker, Ph.D.
Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D., Editor and contact person. Email: omns@orthomolecular.org