Figuring How To Terrify Us Over Swine Flu
'U.S. health officials say swine flu could strike up to 40% of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die."
So declares an Associated Press article, the writer of which you can picture trying to catch his breath as he pounds away at the keyboard. In its exclusive revelation of unpublished figures, AP says: "Those estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mean about twice the number of people who usually get sick in a normal flu season would be struck by swine flu."
No, they don't. The CDC's influenza Web site shows they're essentially the same.
Welcome to the wonderful world of swine flu hysteria, in which health agencies — be it the World Health Organization (which declared a worldwide pandemic with just 244 deaths) or the CDC — can tell any scary story they want with the assurance that the mainstream media will never challenge them. That includes pointing to a piglet and proclaiming it to be a wild, raging boar.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/13255
Friday, July 31, 2009
Mosquitoes deliver malaria 'vaccine' through bites
So, let me get this straight. It's considered to be unethical to test vaccines with a true placebo because vaccines are ASSUMED to be safe and effective and therefore, it's unethical to leave one group unprotected for the sake of testing them. BUT, it's ok to expose people to mutant mosquitoes which are known to be causing a pathogenic parasite. Hmmmmm.
In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.
The study was only a small proof-of-principle test, and its approach is not practical on a large scale. However, it shows that scientists may finally be on the right track to developing an effective vaccine against one of mankind's top killers. A vaccine that uses modified live parasites just entered human testing.
"Malaria vaccines are moving from the laboratory into the real world," Dr. Carlos Campbell wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. He works for PATH, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based global health foundation.
The new study "reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing" agent, even though it is harder to develop a vaccine this way and other leading candidates take a different approach, he wrote.
http://apps.who.int/malaria/wmr2008/malaria2008.pdf
In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later.
The study was only a small proof-of-principle test, and its approach is not practical on a large scale. However, it shows that scientists may finally be on the right track to developing an effective vaccine against one of mankind's top killers. A vaccine that uses modified live parasites just entered human testing.
"Malaria vaccines are moving from the laboratory into the real world," Dr. Carlos Campbell wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. He works for PATH, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based global health foundation.
The new study "reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing" agent, even though it is harder to develop a vaccine this way and other leading candidates take a different approach, he wrote.
http://apps.who.int/malaria/wmr2008/malaria2008.pdf
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Why the Flu Vaccine Doesn't Work
Each year enormous effort goes into producing that year's vaccine and delivering it to appropriate sections of the population. And yet, year after year there are studies showing that flu vaccines DO NOT provide any benefit.
Two years ago a study in the British Medical Journal concluded that the effectiveness of annual flu shots has been exaggerated, and that in reality they have little or no effect on influenza campaign objectives, including reducing the number of hospital stays, time off work, and death from influenza and its complications. Other studies, done prior and subsequently, also confirm these findings.
However, preventing flu-related deaths in the elderly has been, and still is, the primary argument for recommending flu shots each year. And, according to the theory of “herd immunity,” a majority of the population must be vaccinated in order to protect the lives of the elderly and other categories of people susceptible to flu-related complications.
However, the flu prevention strategy set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been called into serious question time and again. Another study from 2005, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine also could not find support for the use of flu vaccine to prevent deaths in the elderly. The report highlights that=2 0although immunization rates in people over 65 have increased dramatically in the past 20 years, there has not been a consequent decline in flu-related deaths.
Two years ago a study in the British Medical Journal concluded that the effectiveness of annual flu shots has been exaggerated, and that in reality they have little or no effect on influenza campaign objectives, including reducing the number of hospital stays, time off work, and death from influenza and its complications. Other studies, done prior and subsequently, also confirm these findings.
However, preventing flu-related deaths in the elderly has been, and still is, the primary argument for recommending flu shots each year. And, according to the theory of “herd immunity,” a majority of the population must be vaccinated in order to protect the lives of the elderly and other categories of people susceptible to flu-related complications.
However, the flu prevention strategy set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been called into serious question time and again. Another study from 2005, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine also could not find support for the use of flu vaccine to prevent deaths in the elderly. The report highlights that=2 0although immunization rates in people over 65 have increased dramatically in the past 20 years, there has not been a consequent decline in flu-related deaths.
Pregnancy likely to be swine flu shot priority
This is criminal! When the vaccine has never been tested for its safety in pregnancy - or anywhere else for that matter - to take this sort of chance with an unborn child and its mother is ridiculous! Especially when the drug companies and the government take no responsibility for their actions. If it were so safe as they claim - why have they sought out and obtained indemnity from prosecution and lawsuits?
Swine flu has been hitting pregnant women unusually hard, so they are likely to be among the first group advised to get a new swine flu shot this fall.
Pregnant women account for 6 percent of U.S. swine flu deaths since the pandemic began in April, even though they make up just 1 percent of the U.S. population.
On Wednesday a federal vaccine advisory panel is meeting to take up the question of who should be first to get swine flu shots when there aren't enough for everyone. At the top of the list are health care workers, who would be crucial to society during a bad pandemic.
But pregnant women may be near the top of the list because they have suffered and died from swine flu at disproportionately high rates.
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewContent.act?clipid=336404937&mode=cnc&tag=3.5721%3Ficx_id%3D20090728-stolfiler-ga0273
Swine flu has been hitting pregnant women unusually hard, so they are likely to be among the first group advised to get a new swine flu shot this fall.
Pregnant women account for 6 percent of U.S. swine flu deaths since the pandemic began in April, even though they make up just 1 percent of the U.S. population.
On Wednesday a federal vaccine advisory panel is meeting to take up the question of who should be first to get swine flu shots when there aren't enough for everyone. At the top of the list are health care workers, who would be crucial to society during a bad pandemic.
But pregnant women may be near the top of the list because they have suffered and died from swine flu at disproportionately high rates.
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewContent.act?clipid=336404937&mode=cnc&tag=3.5721%3Ficx_id%3D20090728-stolfiler-ga0273
Monday, July 27, 2009
Fast-tracked swine flu vaccine will be safe, officials insist
How many will have to die before this flu vaccine campaign - like the campaign in 1976 - is withdrawn? The other campaign was pulled 10 weeks after it was started. That was before the Internet - before we had the ability to actually communicate quickly with each other about what is going on. My prediction is that if this campaign is not made compulsory from the start (which may very well happen), it will be less than 10 weeks before there are so many injured or killed that it will be pulled once again. I would NOT want to be the minister for health when that happens.
The World Health Organisation has raised concerns about the fast-track production of the swine flu vaccine in Europe, where the treatment is due to be made available at least two months earlier than in the US. Britain is expected to be the first country in Europe to provide the vaccine, with the first of 132 million ordered doses due to be administered next month.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the drug regulatory body for the EU, is accelerating the approval process for the vaccine, and countries including Britain, Greece, France and Sweden plan to start using it as soon as it is cleared. The most vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women and young children, will be given priority.
The World Health Organisation has raised concerns about the fast-track production of the swine flu vaccine in Europe, where the treatment is due to be made available at least two months earlier than in the US. Britain is expected to be the first country in Europe to provide the vaccine, with the first of 132 million ordered doses due to be administered next month.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the drug regulatory body for the EU, is accelerating the approval process for the vaccine, and countries including Britain, Greece, France and Sweden plan to start using it as soon as it is cleared. The most vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women and young children, will be given priority.
From none other than the venerable Guardian newspaper - yet another voice of reason. Are people listening though? While parents blithely offer up their infants to the ‘gods’ of vaccination testing, one has to wonder if this is Darwin’s way? Why do we keep on being fooled by these pandemic promises by those who profit from disease?
The way we're collating figures for swine flu is wildly inaccurate and almost certainly inflating infection rates and public anxiety.
My best wishes to those who have had, and will get, swine flu, and my profound sympathies to the families of those who have died from it. To them it is real. But to those responsible for counting cases and designing defences to protect the population, it is a statistical disease.
Before the virus was discovered in the early 1930s there was no other way to measure it. Influenza has no unique clinical features. There is no diagnostic rash. Its symptoms can be caused by a multitude of other microbes. Its activities could only be measured by looking at groups rather than individuals; studying death rates (making the assumption that a rise in the winter was due to flu), and counting the number of cases in a community with "typical" symptoms (likewise assuming that if there was a big rise, its cause was flu).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/27/swine-flu-pandemic-rates
The way we're collating figures for swine flu is wildly inaccurate and almost certainly inflating infection rates and public anxiety.
My best wishes to those who have had, and will get, swine flu, and my profound sympathies to the families of those who have died from it. To them it is real. But to those responsible for counting cases and designing defences to protect the population, it is a statistical disease.
Before the virus was discovered in the early 1930s there was no other way to measure it. Influenza has no unique clinical features. There is no diagnostic rash. Its symptoms can be caused by a multitude of other microbes. Its activities could only be measured by looking at groups rather than individuals; studying death rates (making the assumption that a rise in the winter was due to flu), and counting the number of cases in a community with "typical" symptoms (likewise assuming that if there was a big rise, its cause was flu).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/27/swine-flu-pandemic-rates
Sunday, July 26, 2009
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