1. The present flu vaccine is ineffective
2. He raises doubts about the effectiveness and safety of the new H1N1 vaccines.
3. The H1N1 scare was created by the big drug corporations.
Let us examine the points.
The present flu vaccines are useless
There is little evidence that flu vaccines are effective in preventing the flu, so says Tom Jefferson, MD, arguably the world’s leading expert on influenza vaccines.
Dr. Jefferson has authored 10 reviews of research on the influenza vaccine for the Cochrane Collaboration, which is a widely recognized leading international science institution that evaluates clinical research.
Although the media commonly promotes the flu vaccine for children, Jefferson and his research group summarized their investigation on this subject by asserting, “National policies for the vaccination of healthy young children are based on very little evidence.” They expressed strongest concern about the lack of efficacy and safety of flu vaccination of infants two years of age and under. They did note that the flu vaccine is effective in reducing the flu in children over two years of age, but they found little evidence that the flu vaccine was even effective in reducing school absences. Further, they found “no convincing evidence that vaccines can reduce mortality, hospital admissions, serious complications and community transmission of influenza.”
The strongest evidence of benefit to the flu vaccine is in the elderly. However, the researchers found that the benefits to the elderly were “modest.” In fact, the number of flu-related deaths in elderly Americans has actually increased steadily during the past 33-year-period despite the fact that there has been a large increase in flu vaccinations for this population. Only 20% of all elderly Americans had a flu shot in 1980, compared with 65% in 2001.
Jefferson expresses some considerable surprise at how few studies have been conducted on the elderly, especially recently. He notes, “Only five randomly controlled trials have been carried out in elderly people, of which only one was carried out in the past 2 decades using vaccines available today.”
Are the H1N1 vaccines safe?
Dr Jefferson raises the following points.
1) The study was tiny, only 240 adults. The authors made reassuring statements about Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS), which is ridiculous because GBS occurs in one out of 750,000 to 1 million vaccinations, and this study only had 240 participants;
2) One-third of these volunteers had side effects that resembled influenza-like illness (fevers, headaches, sore throats, etc.), so they were vaccinating to prevent symptoms that they were causing;
3) There was no placebo arm in the study, yet there’s no ethical excuse for not having a placebo arm because these are experimental vaccines; and
4) The description of what additive substances were in the vaccine was unclear. We know that there is thimerosal [mercury] in this H1N1 vaccine, but its manufacturer did not say whether there are additional substances like aluminum, which can be found in many other vaccines. We just don’t know. And they are advising this vaccine for pregnant women and children over six months of age!
The Swine Flu was hyped by the drug companies
Writes Dana Ullman,
In light of some recent efforts to make the H1N1 vaccination “mandatory,” it seems that Big Pharma’s commercial operations have become so successful that they have successfully lobbied politicians to require health and medical workers to get the H1N1 vaccine. Big Pharma’s efforts have been so successful that they have almost successfully fooled other scientists to think that it is “unethical” to conduct a placebo-controlled trial due to the (incorrect) assumption that flu vaccines are effective.
Even Big Media whose coffers are filled with Big Pharma’s advertising are not immune to this influence. Isn’t it a bit strange that the research of Tom Jefferson and his team have been virtually ignored by Big Media, despite the fact that their research has been published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal), the Lancet, the Cochrane Database, and other high-impact scientific journals. One would hope that the media and government would follow the research rather than the money.
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