Pitdakota, please know that I didn't state that the approximate 50% flu shot efficacy rate was tied to the study I cited. Please don't twist my words in that way. I have read many studies about flu shot efficacy, and considering that sometimes the flu shot matches the circulating strains, and sometimes it does not, and the known fact that the shot has seriously fluctuating efficacy each and every year, efficacy can be either existent to some degree, or nonexistent.
I have grave concerns about any medical procedure (such as the flu shot) that is given a blanket recommendation for every single person on the planet aged six months on up, on an annual basis, when not a single long term longitudinal safety study has been conducted on those who wish to receive a flu shot each year. What does "priming" the immune system on an annual basis do to the immune system? Does such annual priming contribute to the uptick of auto-immune disorders such as MS, Lupus, ALS, Diabetes, etc.? That would be nice to know, for sure. I find the lack of such research troubling.
I am constantly finding articles illustrating the moral bankruptcy of the pharmaceutical industry-- Glaxo bribing the health officials in China, Merck threatening to "neutralize" the doctors in Australia who dared to question the safety of Vioxx, and even the American Medical Association wanting to mandate vaccine experimentation on the US population without their consent. Check out this scary article, if you dare, entitled Should Participation in Vaccine Clinical Trials be Mandated? Are you, Pitdakota, and you, DooBdoo, and you, Upsidedown, and you, too, AspenGrove, willing to have anyone mandate your personal participation in vaccine clinical trials as a test subject? Do you believe in the safety and efficacy of vaccines, even vaccines that are in development, that completely?
I ask you, why should anyone place their faith in such a corrupt industry, complete with corrupt medical associations, over their own God, and intelligent and extraordinary design, complete with an immune system that even immunologists don't truly understand? I don't, and I won't.
Respectfully, I will leave you with the words of a PhD currently at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Peter Doshi from his May 16, 2013 article in the British Medical Journal : "But perhaps the cleverest aspect of the influenza marketing strategy surrounds the claim that "flu" and "influenza" are the same. The distinction seems subtle, and purely semantic. But general lack of awareness of the difference might be the primary reason few people realize that even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the "flu" problem because most "flu" appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive. (fig 2) All influenza is "flu," but only one in six "flus" might be influenza. It's no wonder so many people feel that "flu shots" don't work: for most flus, they can't."
Blogs & Forums
