Swine flu vaccination. Good medicine or gov't-pharmas con?

[Reality]

I do not say the following Dr Mercola is correct or not:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/29/Swine-Flu.aspx
posting the article in part:
Critical Alert: The Swine Flu Pandemic ? Fact or Fiction?

This is NOT the First Swine Flu Panic

My guess is that you can expect to see a lot of panic over this issue in the near future. But the key is to remain calm -- this isn't the first time the public has been warned about swine flu. The last time was in 1976, right before I entered medical school and I remember it very clearly. It resulted in the massive swine flu vaccine campaign.

Do you happen to recall the result of this massive campaign?

Within a few months, claims totaling $1.3 billion had been filed by victims who had suffered paralysis from the vaccine. The vaccine was also blamed for 25 deaths.

However, several hundred people developed crippling Guillain-Barr? Syndrome after they were injected with the swine flu vaccine. Even healthy 20-year-olds ended up as paraplegics.

And the swine flu pandemic itself? It never materialized.

More People Died From the Swine Flu Vaccine than Swine Flu!

It is very difficult to forecast a pandemic, and a rash response can be extremely damaging.

To put things into perspective, malaria kills 3,000 people EVERY DAY, and it's considered "a health problem"... But of course, there are no fancy vaccines for malaria that can rake in billions of dollars in a short amount of time.

One Australian news source,3 for example, states that even a mild swine flu epidemic could lead to the deaths of 1.4 million people and would reduce economic growth by nearly $5 trillion dollars.

Give me a break, if this doesn't sound like the outlandish cries of the pandemic bird-flu I don't know what does. Do you remember when President Bush said two million Americans would die as a result of the bird flu?

In 2005, in 2006, 2007, and again in 2008, those fears were exposed as little more than a cruel hoax, designed to instill fear, and line the pocketbooks of various individuals and industry. I became so convinced by the evidence AGAINST the possibility of a bird flu pandemic that I wrote a New York Times bestselling book, The Bird Flu Hoax, all about the massive fraud involved with the epidemic that never happened.

Your Fear Will Make Some People VERY Rich in Today's Crumbling Economy

Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) is approved for treatment of uncomplicated influenza A and B in children 1 year of age or older. It is also approved for prevention of influenza in people 13 years or older. It?s part of a group of anti-influenza drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors, which work by blocking a viral enzyme that helps the influenza virus to invade cells in your respiratory tract.

According to the Associated Press at least one financial analyst estimates up to $388 million worth of Tamiflu sales in the near future10 -- and that's without a pandemic outbreak.

    More than half a dozen pharmaceutical companies, including Gilead Sciences Inc., Roche, GlaxoSmithKline and other companies with a stake in flu treatments and detection, have seen a rise in their shares in a matter of days, and will likely see revenue boosts if the swine flu outbreak continues to spread.

Swine flue is extremely convenient for governments that would have very soon have to dispose of billions of dollars of Tamiflu stock, which they bought to counter avian flu, or H5N1.  The US government ordered 20 million doses, costing $2 billion, in October, 2005, and around that time the UK government ordered 14.6 million doses.  Tamiflu?s manufacturer, Roche, has confirmed that the shelf life of its anti-viral is three years.

As soon as Homeland Security declared a health emergency, 25 percent -- about 12 million doses -- of Tamiflu and Relenza treatment courses were released from the nation's stockpile. However, beware that the declaration also allows unapproved tests and drugs to be administered to children. Many health- and government officials are more than willing to take that chance with your life, and the life of your child. But are you?

 


But here?s the real kicker.

    When Tamiflu is used as directed (twice daily for 5 days) it can ONLY reduce the duration of your influenza symptoms by 1 to 1 ? days, according to the official data.

Why on earth would anyone want to take a drug that has a chance of killing you, was banned in Japan, is loaded with side effects that mimic the flu itself, costs over $100, and AT BEST can only provide 36 hours of SYMPTOM relief.  Just doesn't make any sense.

Please recognize that there is serious revenue in Tamiflu. The Financial Times reports that governments around the world have previously stockpiled 220 million doses in preparation for a pandemic that has yet to appear. The cost of this preparation is $7 billion dollars.

Should You Accept a Flu Vaccine -- Just to be Safe?

Watch the video above to see ridiculous 1976 commercials promoting Swine Flu shots.

[jemagee]

For work reasons I get this Mercola mailer via email whenever he sends it out.  I find it incredible that he has so many readers personally.

The media hysteria has increased demand for a vaccine that probably isn't ready for distribution.  You can't do sufficient vaccine studies in two months...you just don't have enough data or incubation period and such to determine the efficacy and effects of a vaccine, but the media is scaring the crap out of people so the government has to respond to the medias frenzy building so they fast track the vaccine.

Is the media believed in responsible journalism any more I expect the vaccine would undergo more rigorous (and standard) testing procedures.

I accidentally was watching a portion of the today show today and one of their top stories involved letterman and 'doing work' for his wife - and they said something like 'this is just one story that won't go away though you wish it would' - and I just laughed...

[ziggy]

"A pound of prevention, is a penny earned, which is worth two in a bush".

[westkoast]

Man this is just a government plot to inject you with nano bots that will be able to control you when they announce the new world order!!!!

Really though, I am not a fan of vaccines.  Certainly not ones for a deadly flu strain that has not been fully tested.  Maybe if I was a teacher at a public school or around a college campus I would think twice.  I am however not.

[rickortreat]

Vaccines do work and they do save lives, but they are not without risks. Anytime you inject something into your body, you are bypassing your digestive system and all the other natural protections your body has against contamination. Therefore whatever you are injecting better be pure, safe and effective. Most vaccines work by stimulating the bodies natural defenses, specifically antibodies that target the virus.  They usually work by making copies of the virus and then killing them so they maintain their chemical structure. Since the virus is dead, there's little chance of contracting the disease. Injecting it into the body, gives the body a chance to develop antibodies that target the virus so that if you come into contact with it, your body can kill it before it kills you.

The problem is that the vaccine needs to be sterile and free of other contaminants. The manufacturers add toxic chemicals to keep the vaccine sterile and some of these can be a problem, like thimersol, which is a mercury compound. Another problem is that not everyone's body is the same and some can respond differently to to the vaccine than others. This is why all drugs go through a series of studies to prove they are safe as well as effective.

The problem is that these studies take years, and in the case of an emergency epidemic, you don't have that time. Even in the case of normal drugs that take years to develop, sometimes ones get through that cause significant health problems. The last thing a drug company wants is to hurt people or cause them to loose faith in the safety and effectiveness of their products, but they also want to make a profit before the drug goes off patent or other manufacturers make copy-cat versions of the drug.

IF the virus is contageous enough and enough people can die from it, the virus is a better choice than doing nothing.  But determining that IF is where we run into problems. The media, scientists with a motive, and vaccine manufacturers all have their own perspective, but it comes down to actual statistical information to determine the problem. The CDC and the other agencies that accumulate the data tend to over-estimate the danger to justify their own existence. No one cares about funding them and paying scientists salaries UNTIL they're needed.  The Swine flu and the H1N1 turned out to not be major threats to humans or animals. They fit the profile for being able to be serious epidemics, but most people's immune systems and level of health were sufficient that the disease wasn't a problem.

Unless you see otherwise normal healthy people dying, it's better to do nothing then get an injection. It's a simle as that.

[SPURSX3]

This city had a horrible outbreak of it this year, My son got it from school the second week, then I got...NASTY NASTY flu.  but it went it's way after about 3 days.  There was a child, age 13 I believe who died from complications, from this flu.  I heard that Swine flu is deadly when more then one strain of flu, or other existing condition, exists.  Anyone know if that is that correct?  I don't know how well this vaccine would work, but considering how fast it ran through San Antonio, and having gone through this flu myself, I would consider getting it.  This really went through here like wild fire...