Why are we still using the influenza vaccine?
The pseudo-skeptics say it - we have proof that vaccines work and anyone who says we don't is simply not using science - they are too stupid, too innumerate, to understand the literature which is perfectly clear. Vaccines work. End of story.
Except, it isn't the end of the story and more and more evidence is emerging - from the scientific literature itself - to show that vaccines are not working the way we've been told they should.
Here is an article from the Cochrane Collaboration - the largest database of medical literature in the English Language. You can download the entire artilce for free by clicking here and I seriously urge you to do so and to bring this information with you when you next go to see your doctor. Ask them if they would take a flu shot after reading this. Below are some of the important points from the article along with some comments from me.
Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults (Review)
Jefferson T, Di Pietrantonj C, Rivetti A, Bawazeer GA, Al-Ansary LA, Ferroni E
..."In the relatively uncommon circumstance of vaccine matching the viral circulating strain and high circulation, 4% of unvaccinated people versus 1% of vaccinated people developed influenza symptoms."
OK, let's look at that sentence carefully because there are a couple of very important factors to consider.
the admission that a vaccine actually matching the viral strain circulating in any particular year is uncommon. In other words, medicine doesn't get it right very often when they check their crystal ball to try and find out which strains of the flu virus will be circulating during any given year. And if there is not a match, there is no protection according to medical experts. So most years, the flu vaccine is a complete waste of time, money and makes vaccine recipients take an unnecessary risk for no benefit at all.
4% of the unvaccinated people get the flu vs 1% of the vaccinated. Hang on there! Are we really pushing a vaccine that has a list of side effects as long as your arm, won't work most years on the population because of poor matching of the circulating strains at a cost of tens of millions of dollars in Australia alone simply to reduce the risk of getting flu from 4% to 1%? And are we even talking about the flu? According to the sentence, we are discussing 'influenza symptoms'. Since the vast majority of 'influenza-like illness (ILI)' is not caused by flu viruses, is it possible that a significant portion of the people in both of these small groups (1% and 4% remember) might not have had flu infections anyway?
"Vaccination had a modest effect on time off work and had no effect on hospital admissions or complication rates. Inactivated vaccines caused local harms and an estimated 1.6 additional cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome per million vaccinations. The harms evidence base is limited."
So we are vaccinating the entire population, including infants, children and pregnant women for an increased risk of harm from the vaccine but only a modest effect on the amount of time off of work because for the two things we really DO want the vaccines to help with - reducing hospital admissions and complication rates from influenza - there is no effect at all. Is this medical policy by best practice and best evidence or medical policy by what is best for Big Pharma and hang the population?
Authors’ conclusions
Influenza vaccines have a modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms and working days lost. There is no evidence that they affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission.
Hang on a minute! we have read now that the only 'benefit' to flu vaccines is that people who get vaccinated may miss fewer days and the symptoms may be reduced and we know that they won't affect your chances of being hospitalised or having serious complications such as pneumonia. But read what the author concludes carefully because here is the kicker! Influenza vaccines have no effect on transmission. That means that if you are vaccinated, you are just as likely to spread influenza to those around you as if you were unvaccinated. This is what the AVN has been saying - backed by the medical literature - for years now! So much for the myth of 'herd immunity'. So much for all the finger pointing and angst caused by those who are too ruled by fear to think logically about this subject. The unvaccinated do NOT place the community at risk because being vaccinated does NOT stop you from spreading the disease. In fact, for those who are receiving live-virus vaccines, the community will be placed at greater risk because they can and do spread the virus to those they are in contact with who can then contract the disease.
WARNING:
This review includes 15 out of 36 trials funded by industry (four had no funding declaration). An earlier systematic review of 274 influenza vaccine studies published up to 2007 found industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this finding.
To all those medical apologists who continually insist that 'money doesn't influence science' and 'we can trust what is published in medical journals because it is above question', I say that this study demonstrates what so many previous studies have demonstrated though the pseudo-skeptics continue to ignore this proof (I will pull out the points below because they bear repeating over and over again):
"...industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size." There you have it. If you do a study that has been funded by a drug company, you are more likely to get that study published in a large, mainstream medical journal than if you publish a study that has been funded independently - even if the independent study is larger and better-designed. This is how incorrect and corrupt information that we constantly hear about drugs and vaccines gets published. Medical journals have lost the plot and sold out to pharmaceutical companies - they can no longer be considered credible sources of information on health.
"Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines." Hmmmm - again, something we have been saying for years and years and which is constantly downplayed by the defenders of the church of science. Only when you have studies that are completely free of financial ties to the companies whose products you are supposed to be testing will you get results that can be trusted. If you have financial ties, you will be much more likely to emphasise the good and downplay the bad - that's if you even put any of the bad into the final report - a rare event in medicine.
"...reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies." This requires no further comment - it speaks for itself.
"The content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this finding." So, even the 4% figure of protection might be too high since that is based on drug company-funded studies.
When the AVN calls for independence in science, we are shouted down and told that the science has already been done so why do we want to waste time and money on doing it again.
Those who say that the science has been done are either not aware of what science is or are involved in the obvious, open and shocking corruption that makes up most of medical research today. It is time for that to end and for real, independent scientific studies to be performed on drugs, vaccines and all medical products.