My flu shot editorial follow-up

The Trenton Times is running a column that I wrote in the next week:

It is quite apparent that America has an addiction problem. Its not addiction to nicotine, alcohol, heroin or crack, though. Americans are addicted to the medical community. Statin drugs, blood pressure medications, Cylert, Vioxx, the list goes on and on. A search for the term 'drugs removed from the market' on Google returns hundreds of once FDA approved pills that were eventually taken away. Its a sad commentary on Americans and doctors in general when they hook an increasingly sedentary and obese population on drugs that they say are needed to control 'high' this and 'high' that. The middle-aged and senior community is actually our biggest drug abuser. They are hooked. You do not start on high blood pressure meds and cholesterol drugs and then get off them - you need them for life!

The biggest scam going this time of year every year is the flu shot. Larry Hanover's article, "Flu shots plentiful and popular', which appeared in the October 13th Trenton Times (on the front page for some reason), is peppered with words like 'grateful' and 'hype' to refer to the availability of this years vaccine while 'panic', 'awful' and 'heartbreaking' are utilized to paint the picture of last years vaccine shortage. Hanover points out that the Department of Health advises only high risk individuals should receive the shot before 10/24. High risk is defined as seniors over 65, children under 2, those in long term facilities, pregnant women and health care personnel. So demand is increased by utilizing scare tactics and marketing the fact that the vaccine may be in short supply. It feels like getting a Cabbage Patch Kid years ago or a Playstation on Christmas - pandemonium.

The National Institutes of Health researchers, basing their findings on more than 30 years of U.S. flu-shot data, announced that giving flu shots to the elderly has not saved any lives. "There is no evidence that any influenza vaccine thus far developed is effective in preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza. The producers of these vaccines know that they are worthless, but they go on selling them, anyway," according to Dr. J. Anthony Morris, formerly chief vaccine control officer at the FDA.

Tom Jefferson, MD, and colleagues at Cochrane Vaccines Field in Italy, conducted a review of the flu shots efficacy. Findings were reported in the September 22nd issue of The Lancet. According to the study, vaccines against influenza are only "modestly effective" in people in long-term care facilities and even less effective for elderly people still living in the community.

Dr. Marc Siegel, author of False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear, said, "We have set up a situation where a fear is created, and then we try to create the treatment for this fear. The public gets the idea that the flu is going to kill them and the vaccine will save them. Neither is true." "The vaccine doesn't work very well at all," said study author Dr. Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist. "Vaccines are being used as an ideological weapon. What you see every year as the flu is caused by 200 or 300 different agents with a vaccine against two of them. That is simply nonsense."

This study followed the Center for Disease Control stating in 2004 that that year's flu vaccine had little or no effectiveness against influenza-like illnesses. http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/01/15/flu.vaccine/ Of the 1,000 people who got the vaccine before November 1, 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. I think the words 'hype' and 'heartbreaking' should be used more appropriately to refer to the sale of a potentially dangerous snake-oil to the American population.

Basically they market a worthless, much hyped, $30 dollar injection of ethylene glycol (antifreeze), formaldehyde, aluminum and mercury. If you look at the ingredients of the inhaled vaccine, Flu-Mist, it gets worse. They throw in monosodium glutamate (MSG) for you to inhale.

Lone Simonsen, senior epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said perhaps we should expand vaccination to schoolchildren. We're told to avoid tuna fish because it has small amounts of mercury, to wear a mask when around formaldehyde, not to get antifreeze near our mouths and that aluminum may be a cause of Alzheimer's, but we're going to advise parents to inject it directly into their children because they've stockpiled the worthless garbage and need to turn a profit. This is the same industry that kept promoting Vioxx to us.

Last year, due to the shortage, less folks then ever received the flu shot. And guess what? It is one of the slowest flu seasons ever.

Americans are taking in more and more potentially dangerous drugs because, in general, we are lazy. Caveat emptor - do the research and make an informed decision. The medical and pharmaceutical communities are not necessarily out for your good - they are out for their bottom line.

Bob Mantz, Jr. is a health researcher and interviewer as well as an editor for Curezone.com - the 2nd most visited alternative health site on the internet. He's interviewed doctors, herbalists & alternative health practictioners for web broadcast and CDs. His writings have appeared in numerous newspapers, newsletters and websites. Bob resides in Cranbury.

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