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Study finds flu shots do little to help most vulnerable elderly
25 September 2007 - By Sabin Russell - sfgate.com
A team of National Institutes of Health researchers has
concluded that the often-touted benefits of flu shots to people over
the age of 70 are highly exaggerated - there is no real proof they
provide protection to the frail elderly.
The conclusion published Monday in an online edition of the British
journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases is unwelcome news for public
health officials in the United States who are preparing to launch the
annual flu shot campaign.
This season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hopes that
a record 132 million doses of flu vaccine will be manufactured for the
U.S. market, but the federal agency has been having a hard time
boosting the number of Americans who line up for the shots.
Last year, at least 18 million doses of flu vaccine went to waste.
Clearly worried that a study casting doubt on the value of the vaccine
might undo years of efforts to boost immunization rates, both the
study authors and top U.S. health officials
said the elderly still should seek out the shots. The authors
confirmed a strong consensus that the flu shots are effective for
people under 65.
"There absolutely should be no change in the recommendations," said
Dr. Tony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, where part of the latest study was carried out.
The study's lead author, Lone Simonsen, is a former epidemiologist at
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is now a
professor at George Washington University. She and her colleagues
stressed in their study that "even a partly effective vaccine would be
better than no vaccine at all."
| Comment: Simonsen's
statements are subjective and have not been proven. |
Nevertheless, the report underscores growing doubts about how
useful the current flu vaccines are for the elderly and provides
ammunition to those who argue that more powerful
shots need to be developed for the most vulnerable age group.
| Comment: Those that
argue to increase the intensity of contaminants injected into
children and elderly are quite sick in the head. |
Flu shots are currently recommended for nearly 200 million
Americans, but special emphasis has been placed on getting the vaccine
to those over the age of 65 and those living in nursing homes.
Three-quarters of the estimated 38,000 flu-related deaths in the
United States each year are among those over 69 years of age.
The CDC's long-standing goal is to have 90
percent of seniors ages 65 and older vaccinated against flu.
The policy has made progress: In the 2005-06 flu season, 69 percent of
that population was vaccinated, compared with just 15 percent in 1980.
| Comment: This is a
form of brainwashing. |
It is precisely that success that has led disease control experts
in recent years to question the value of the vaccine. With such a
large increase in immunization rates, a drop in flu deaths among the
elderly would have been expected. But several studies have failed
to show any such reduction.
The possible reason lies in the biology of the aging immune system.
Studies have shown that flu shots stir up protective antibodies quite
readily in young people, but the protective effect tends to decrease
with age.
Comment: Lies and
more lies! How do vaccines work?
"The theory is that small amounts of disease matter introduced
into the body will enter the blood, creating antibodies that
prevent the proliferation of the disease's wild form, thus
preventing one from contracting the disease against which he has
been vaccinated; this process allegedly creates an artificial
immunity to the disease.
When one develops a holistic understanding of how body systems
work in concert to prevent toxic materials from entering the
bloodstream, it becomes obvious that the antibody theory of
disease prevention is absurd. Even the CDC recognizes that the
presence of disease antibodies, the creation of which comprise the
entire justification for vaccines, does not necessarily result in
immunity from the disease."
From:
Vaccines: Weapons for the 21st Century |
A classic Dutch study in 1992 found that vaccine effectiveness was
57 percent in volunteers ages 60 to 69, but fell to only 23 percent
among those age 70 and over.
Confusing the matter is that numerous other surveys taken of residents
in retirement communities and nursing homes have shown that expected
winter death rates among the vaccinated elderly have fallen by 50
percent or more - proof, some have thought, that flu shots were
working wonders.
Simonsen and her colleagues said that this particular type of analysis
was skewed because the studies did not take into account that
healthier seniors were more likely than the most infirm to get
vaccinated. When the lower vaccination rates and naturally higher
death rates of the frail are factored in, the protective effect of the
shots virtually disappears.
In sum, the real proof that flu shots cut the death rates of people
over 70 is "slim," the authors concluded. What is needed, they
said, are more precise studies to tease out what, if any value, flu
shots have and then prove the value.
CDC spokesman Curtis Allen stressed that, although it is known that
flu vaccine is not as effective in the elderly as in the young,
"vaccination can still prevent serious complications from the flu."
The CDC estimates that influenza is responsible for 200,000
hospitalizations each year.
He also noted that there is scientific evidence that high vaccination
rates have prevented outbreaks of influenza in nursing homes.
"An improved vaccine with greater effectiveness among elderly persons
is clearly needed," he acknowledged.
| Comment: This is
just another way to make money and you're the target. |
The study authors noted that the "gold standard" for proving
whether or not a medicine or vaccine works is a randomized controlled
trial, where one group is assigned to a real drug and the other
receives a placebo. However, in a disease as deadly to the elderly as
flu, there are serious ethical barriers to giving an old person a
dummy flu shot.
One solution is to develop new vaccines for the elderly that are
boosted with "adjuvants," a chemical that tends to stir up the immune
system, so it produces more antibodies against invading viruses. The
boosted vaccine could be tested for effectiveness in a randomized
trial with volunteers who would either receive it or the standard
vaccine. No placebo would be involved.
Another solution might be to test higher doses of flu vaccine for the
elderly, or new formulations of vaccine that mix live and killed flu
viruses. Flu prevention strategies for the elderly might be changed to
include more aggressive use of antiviral drugs.
Such measures would not be necessary if the current flu vaccines
worked as intended. Researchers who used to think that was the case
are now not so sure.
Should I get a flu shot?
| Comment: Vaccines
only attack the immune system, as the immune system's job of
taking care of the body evolved, it is now going to deal with the
very thing it was designed to prevent. Instead of receiving
or picking up unknown elements in the environment naturally which
would most likely incur small amounts where the body would easily
and naturally combat them, the proponents of making money insists
your children must be given massive doses of toxins, and other
disgusting experiments with mutations and implanted predetermined
diseases. Once the poisons are in
the body, the body will spend more time trying to rid itself of
them in turn increasing the chances of more disease. Many of the
ingredients in vaccines are kept secret, just ask for a list of
ingredients and watch them laugh at you. |
Despite the new research, the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention still strongly recommends the vaccine for:
-- Anyone over the age of 50.
-- Pregnant women.
-- Children ages 6 months to 5 years.
To find a flu shot clinic near you
Go to the American Lung Association Web site at links.sfgate.com/ZXH.
E-mail Sabin Russell at srussell@sfchronicle.com.
| Comment: Again, I
never had a shot in my life, not even once. Can't ever remember
being sick, must have been a very long time ago, probably carried
over from all the shots I had when I was a child, but the list of
shots has increased dramatically over the years. It's your life,
but remember this, placing toxins inside your body just doesn't
make any sense at all, especially children. Forcing children
through mandatory vaccinations is a crime and should be
punishable. People should have the right to make their own choices
and not be enticed. |
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