BMJ

Say It Isn’t So About Vaccines

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Activist Post | January 16 2013

BMJHow effective are flu vaccines? Well, long story short—not very! What? you probably are lamenting, in view of the present push to vaccinate everyone six months and older against the present seasonal influenza outbreak in the USA. That is the consensus of a report published in theBritish Medical Journal (BMJ) November 19, 2012 [1] wherein flu vaccine efficacy claims have been exaggerated significantly.

Those conclusions came out of a report generated by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy analyzing data from 1967 to 2012 that was based upon the review of the prestigious Cochrane Library studies.

In 2011 this author co-edited the monograph Vaccines & Vaccinations: The Need for Congressional Investigation wherein we cited the Cochrane Library’s work regarding influenza vaccines effectiveness in children, adults, and the elderly.

The Cochrane Library published the article “Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children” January 25, 2006 wherein the authors’ conclusion in the Abstract stated:

Influenza vaccines are efficacious in children older than two but little evidence is available for children under two. There was a marked difference between vaccine efficacy and effectiveness. No safety comparisons could be carried out, emphasizing the need for standardization of methods and presentation of vaccine safety data in future studies. …If immunisation [sic] in children is to be recommended as a public health policy, large-scale studies assessing important outcomes and directly comparing vaccine types are urgently required. [2]

In Issue 7 (2010) of the Cochrane Library, the article “Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults” concluded that:

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.

Furthermore, there was this WARNING:

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Study Finds Big Pharma Pushes Doctors To Overprescribe Drugs

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Natural News | September 15 2012

Know anyone taking prescription drugs? The odds are enormous you do. And it’s likely they are taking drugs they don’t need because their doctors are too quick to fall under the influence of Big Pharma’s aggressive drug sales reps.

Consider these statistics: almost half of all Americans are currently diagnosed with a chronic condition and 40 percent of those older than 60 taking five or more medications. Is it really possible that many people in the U.S. have illnesses that need to be treated with multiple drugs?

This question obviously raises issues about the nature of the relationship between the expanding definition of chronic illness and the explosion of prescription drug use in the U.S. — issues Michigan State University anthropologist Linda M. Hunt, PhD., decided to research.

Dr. Hunt looked into dramatic increases in the diagnosis of common, chronic conditions and the use of prescription drugs to treat these health woes . She specifically looked at two conditions which can often be relieved with lifestyle changes — type 2 diabetes and hypertension — that were treated in 44 primary care clinics.

Her research team interviewed 58 clinicians and 70 of their patients, and observed 107 clinical consultations in order to assess the doctors’ treatment strategies and the factors influencing their treatment decisions. They found that doctors usually prescribed at least two or more drugs per condition.

More than half of the patients studied were taking five or more drugs. Interviews with these people showed the cost of the drugs was often a hardship and the patients were often made sicker because of adverse side-effects.

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