Flu Vaccine
Exposed
Studies show that flu vaccines
are unsafe and ineffective. This presentation by the Thinktwice Global
Vaccine Institute includes a visual depiction of flu vaccine production
-- how the flu vaccine is made and what it contains.
Signs and Symptoms of Influenza
As most of you probably know, influenza is a contagious viral respiratory
infection. Symptoms include:
- Fever
- Chills
- Runny nose
- Sore throat
- Cough
- Muscle aches
- Fatigue
- Decreased appetite
Typically, the condition will improve after two to three days of bed
rest, although some symptoms may persist for about a week.
What many people do NOT know, however, is that death caused directly
by the flu virus is very rare. The vast majority of so-called “flu
deaths” are in fact due to bacterial pneumonia – a potential
complication of the flu if your immune system is too weak.
Other complications can include ear- or sinus infections, dehydration,
and worsening of chronic health conditions.
The elderly and people with other pre existing medical conditions such
as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease, are at higher risk of developing
pneumonia after a bout of the flu.
The Flu Vaccine Does Not Prevent the Flu,
nor Protect Against the Vast Majority of Flu-Related Deaths
The conventional treatment for bacterial pneumonia is an antibiotic,
not a viral flu drug, so to think that taking a flu vaccine will prevent
death from pneumonia doesn’t really make sense.
“But the vaccine will prevent the flu, which will prevent the
possibility of developing pneumonia,” some might say.
That sounds good in theory, but the statistics simply do not support
this assertion.
Because study after study, and master studies that compile the results
from several studies to get a more objective result, keep coming to
the same conclusion: Flu vaccines DO NOT WORK, and in many cases do
more harm than good.
In fact, one shocking statistic brought to light in this video is that
BEFORE the CDC advocated vaccinating children under the age of five,
the number of children dying from the flu was very low, and on the decline.
Then, in 2003, just after children aged five and under started getting
vaccinated, the number of flu deaths SKYROCKETED. The death toll was
enormous compared to the previous year, when the flu vaccine was not
administered en masse to that age group!
How anyone can consider a strategy that yields a higher death toll to
be a “success” is a mystery to me.
The Problem with Flu Death Statistics
However, as frightening as much of this may sound, it’s important
to keep things in perspective. According to the statistics shown in
the video above, more Americans die from asthma, and even malnutrition
each year, than the flu.
Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
grossly distort the facts about flu deaths, making the flu virus seem
far more dangerous than is warranted. On the CDC’s
main flu page, they state that about 36,000 people die from the
flu in the United States each year. But if you search a little harder,
you can find the actual number of people who died
from the flu in 2005 (this is the most recent data that’s
available) was 1,806. The remainder was caused by pneumonia. In 2004,
there were just 1,100 actual flu deaths. The statistics the CDC gives
are skewed partly because they classify those dying from pneumonia as
dying from the flu, which is inaccurate.
How is the Flu Vaccine Made?
This is another area that many people do not understand or take into
consideration before getting a seasonal flu shot.
In January or February of each year, health authorities travel to Asia
to determine which strains of the flu are currently active. Based on
their findings in Asia, they assume that the same strains of viruses
will spread to the U.S. by fall.
At this point, U.S. vaccine manufacturers start making that season’s
flu vaccine, which will contain the strains found in Asia. However,
if the viral strains circulating in the U.S. that season are not identical
to those in Asia, the vaccine you receive is a complete dud.
And to add insult to injury, you’ve just been injected with a
laundry list of harmful ingredients.
What’s in the Seasonal Flu Vaccine?
The flu strains selected are cultivated in chick embryos for several
weeks before being inactivated with formaldehyde, which is a known cancer-causing
agent. Then they’re preserved with thimerosal, which is 49 percent
mercury by weight.
Even many health care professionals are confused about this and are
not aware that the preservative thimerosal is mercury. As a quick side
note, one of my chief writers told me that, “the doctor’s
office told me the vaccine does not contain mercury, just something
called thimerosal.”
Please, don’t be fooled by this incredible ignorance. If you have
carefully studied this issue there is a great possibility you may know
more than your physician about this topic. Don’t back down if
they tell you something you otherwise know to be true.
According to the CDC, the majority of flu vaccines contain thimerosal.
Some contain as much as 25 mcg of mercury per dose. This means that
it may contain more than 250 times the Environmental Protection
Agency’s safety limit for mercury.
By now, most people are well aware that children and fetuses are most
at risk of damage from this neurotoxin, as their brains are still developing.
Yet the CDC still recommends that children over 6 months, and pregnant
women, receive the flu vaccine each year.
In addition to mercury, flu vaccines also contain other toxic or hazardous
ingredients like:
Aluminum -- a neurotoxin that
has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease
Triton X-100 -- a detergent
Phenol (carbolic acid)
Ethylene glycol (antifreeze)
Betapropiolactone - a disinfectant
Nonoxynol - used to kill or stop growth of STDs
Octoxinol 9 - a vaginal spermicide
Sodium phosphate
How
Safe is the Flu Vaccine?
Serious reactions to the flu vaccine include, but are not limited to:
Life-threatening allergies to
various ingredients
Guillain-Barre Syndrome (a severe paralytic disease that is fatal
in about 1 in 20 cases)
Encephalitis (brain inflammation)
Neurological disorders
Thrombocytopenia (a serious blood disorder)
How
Effective is the Flu Vaccine?
Remember that the potential effectiveness of a flu vaccine is dependent
on the ASSUMPTION, made nearly a year in advance, that Asia’s
viral strains will be the ones hitting the U.S. When
they guess wrong, the vaccine is worthless from the very start.
But does that mean they withdraw the flu vaccine when they discover
it contains the wrong strains? NO! They just keep giving it out anyway.
But even if they were to overcome that hurdle and actually select the
correct strains, there’s still no evidence that it does anyone
any good to get a flu vaccine.
Study after study comes back showing the same dismal results: the flu
vaccines are not an effective method of prevention of the flu, and they
do not save lives. As mentioned earlier, they may even be responsible
for an increased death rate in some groups.
Sometimes determining efficacy is as easy as reading the information
coming straight from the vaccine manufacturer.
How about this quote taken directly from the flu vaccine FLULAVAL’s
package insert (which you likely never see when getting the flu
shot) for the 2009-2010 formula:
"FLULAVAL is an influenza virus vaccine indicated for active
immunization of adults 18 years of age and older against influenza disease
caused by influenza virus subtypes A and type B contained in the vaccine.
This indication is based on immune response elicited by FLULAVAL,
and there have been no controlled trials demonstrating a decrease in
influenza disease after vaccination with FLULAVAL.”
That’s right, NO controlled trials demonstrating ANY decrease
in your risk of contracting the flu at all after vaccination! (It also
states that each dose contains a total of 25 mcg of mercury.)
For those of you who are still unconvinced, know that there’s
plenty of scientific evidence available to back up the recommendation
to avoid flu vaccines. In addition to studies mentioned in the video,
here are several other examples showing that flu vaccines do not work
for any age group:
A study published in the October 2008 issue of the Archives
of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine found that vaccinating
young children against the flu had no impact on flu-related
hospitalizations or doctor visits during two recent flu seasons.
The researchers concluded that "significant influenza vaccine effectiveness
could not be demonstrated for any season, age, or setting" examined.
A 2008 study published in the Lancet
found that influenza vaccination was NOT associated with a reduced risk
of pneumonia in older people.
This supports an earlier study, published in The
New England Journal of Medicine.
Research published in the American Journal
of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine also confirms
that there has been no decrease in deaths from influenza and pneumonia
in the elderly, despite the fact that vaccination coverage among the
elderly has increased from 15 percent in 1980 to 65 percent now.
In 2007, researchers with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, and the National Institutes of Health published this conclusion
in the Lancet Infectious Diseases:
“We conclude that frailty selection bias and use of non-specific
endpoints such as all-cause mortality,have led cohort studies to greatly
exaggerate vaccine benefits.”
A large-scale, systematic review of 51 studies, published in the Cochrane
Database of Systematic Reviews in 2006, found no evidence
that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo in children.
The studies involved 260,000 children, age 6 to 23 months.
Last but not least, I think it says a lot that 70 percent of doctors
and nurses, and 62 percent of other health care
workers do NOT get the yearly flu shot.
The reasons why they opted to not get vaccinated were:
They didn't believe the vaccine would work
They believed their immune systems were strong enough to withstand exposure
to the flu
They were concerned about side effects
Might Influenza be Little More Than a
Symptom of Vitamin D Deficiency?
Vitamin D, “the sunshine vitamin,” may very well be one
of the most beneficial vitamins there is for disease prevention.
Unfortunately it’s also one of the vitamins that a vast majority
of people across the world are deficient in due to lack of regular exposure
to sunshine.
Published in the journal Epidemiology and
Infection in 2006, the hypothesis presented by Dr. John
Cannell and colleagues in the paper Epidemic
Influenza and Vitamin D raises the possibility that influenza
is a symptom of vitamin D deficiency.
The vitamin D formed when your skin is exposed to sunlight regulates
the expression of more than 2,000 genes throughout your body, including
ones that influence your immune system to attack and destroy bacteria
and viruses. Hence, being overwhelmed by the “flu bug” could
signal that your vitamin D levels are too low, allowing the flu virus
to overtake your immune system.
At least five studies show an inverse association between lower respiratory
tract infections and 25(OH)D levels. That is, the higher your vitamin
D level, the lower your risk of contracting colds, flu, and other respiratory
tract infections:
A 2007 study suggests higher vitamin D
status enhances your immunity to microbial infections. They found that
subjects with vitamin D deficiency had significantly more days of absence
from work due to respiratory infection than did control subjects.
A 2009 study on vitamin D deficiency in
newborns with acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) confirmed a strong,
positive correlation between newborns’ and mother’s vitamin
D levels. Over 87 percent of all newborns and over 67 percent of all
mothers had vitamin D levels lower than 20 ng/ml, which is a severe
deficiency state.
Newborns with vitamin D deficiency appear to have an increased risk
of developing ALRI, and since the child’s vitamin D level strongly
correlates with its mother’s, the researchers recommend that all
mothers’ optimize their vitamin D levels during pregnancy, especially
in the winter months, to safeguard their baby’s health.
A similar Indian study published in 2004
also reported that vitamin D deficiency in infants significantly raised
their odds ratio for having severe ALRI.
A 2009 analysis of the Third National Health andNutrition
Examination Survey examined the association between vitamin D
levelsand recent upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) in nearly
19,000 subjects over the age of 12. Recent URTI was reported by:
17 percent of participants with vitamin D levels of 30ng/ml or higher
20 percent of participants with vitamin D levels between 10-30 ng/ml.
24 percent of participants with vitamin D levels below 10ng/ml
The positive correlation between lower vitamin D levels and increased
risk of URTI was even stronger in individuals with asthma and chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease.
Another 2009 report in the journal Pediatric
Research stated that infants and children appear more susceptible to
viral rather than bacterial infections when deficient in vitamin D.
And that, based on the available evidence showing a strong connection
between vitamin D, infections, and immune function in children, vitamin
D supplementation may be a valuable therapy in pediatric medicine.
How to Prevent the Flu without Getting
a Flu Shot
For most people the flu shot does not make you healthy; it does just
the opposite and weakens your immune system.
If you follow a healthy lifestyle, you will not
have to worry about getting the flu. Take it from me -- I’ve
never received a flu shot, and I haven’t missed a day of work
due to illness in over 20 years. The key steps that I follow to stay
flu-free, which I suggest you follow too, include:
Get plenty of sunshine, safe tanning bed exposure
or supplemental vitamin D3
Eat right for your nutritional type, including avoiding sugar
Exercise
Get adequate sleep
Address emotional
stress
Wash your
hands regularly
Dr. Mercola
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