BY DR. MAE-WAN HO & PROF. JOE CUMMINS

The vaccines are far more deadly than the swine flu; mass vaccination is not the answer to addressing the problem.

A SWINE flu outbreak occurred in Mexico and the United States in April 2009 and spread rapidly around the world by human-to-human transmission. The new type A H1N1 influenza virus is unlike any that had been previously isolated, judging from the first data released in May. It is a messy combination of sequences from bird, human and swine flu virus lineages from North America and Eurasia. A senior virologist based in Canberra, Australia, told the press he thought that the virus could have been created in a laboratory and released by accident. Some even suggest it was made intentionally as a bioweapon, while others blame the intensive livestock industry and extensive trafficking of animals over long distances, which provide plenty of opportunity to generate exotic recombinants. But what worries the public most is the mass vaccination programmes governments are putting in place to combat the emerging pandemic, which could well be worse than the pandemic itself.

WATCHDOG

THE US government is intending to vaccinate all children in September when school reopens and the country’s vaccine watchdog, National Vaccine Information Centre (NVIC), has called on the Obama Administration and all state governors to provide evidence that the move is “necessary and safe”, demanding “strong mechanisms for vaccine safety screening, recording, monitoring, reporting and vaccine injury compensation.”

The US Departments of Health and Homeland Security had declared a national public health emergency in April soon after the swine flu outbreak. As a result, some schools were closed, people quarantined and drug companies were given contracts worth US$7 billon to make vaccines that are being fast tracked by the Food and Drugs Administration. That means they will only be tested for a few weeks on several hundred children and adult volunteers before being given to all school children this fall.

Furthermore, under federal legislation passed by Congress since 2001, an Emergency Use Authorisation allows drug companies, health officials and anyone administering experimental vaccines to Americans during a declared public health emergency to be protected from liability if people get injured. US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has granted vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that may result from any new swine flu vaccine. And some states may make the vaccination mandatory by law.

The NVIC is asking whether the states are prepared to obey vaccine safety provisions in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which include: Giving parents written information about vaccine benefits and risks before children are vaccinated; keeping a record of which vaccines the children get, including the manufacturer’s name and lot number; recording which vaccines were given in the child’s medical record; and recording serious health problems that develop after vaccination in the child’s medical record and immediately making a report to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
NVIC also wants to know if the states are prepared to provide financial compensation to children injured by the swine flu vaccines, whether parents will be given “complete, truthful information about swine flu vaccine risks”, and have the right to say “no” to vaccination.

WHO

THE mass vaccination order has come from the World Health Organisation (WHO). Critics point out that the ‘vaccination experts’ are dominated by the vaccine makers standing to gain from the enormously lucrative vaccine and antiviral contracts awarded by governments. But the decisive argument against mass vaccinations is that flu shots simply don’t work and are dangerous.

There are widely acknowledged reasons why flu vaccines won’t work, as already pointed out with regard to the much touted vaccines against the ‘pandemic bird flu’ that has yet to materialise. The flu virus changes quickly, even without the help of genetic engineering in the laboratory, and especially with the help of the intensive livestock industry, whereas the vaccines target specific strains. Furthermore, flu vaccination does not give permanent protection, and must be repeated annually; the vaccines are difficult to mass-produce, and some strains won’t grow at all under laboratory conditions.

Numerous studies have documented that flu shots give little or no protection against infection and illness, and there is no reason to believe that swine flu vaccines will be different. A review of 51 separate studies in 2006 concluded that flu vaccines worked no better than a placebo in 260 000 children ranging in age from six months to 23 months. A report published in 2008 found flu vaccines in young children made no difference in the number of flu-related doctor and hospital visits.

On the other hand, a study of 800 children with asthma found that those receiving a flu vaccine had a significantly increased risk of asthma-related doctor and emergency room visits; the odds ratios were 3.4 and 1.9 respectively. This was confirmed in a report published in 2009, which showed children with asthma who received FluMist had a three-fold increased risk of hospitalisation.

TOXIC ADJUVANTS

FLU vaccines are equally useless for adults, including the elderly, giving little or no protection against infection or illnesses including pneumonia. Vaccines themselves can be dangerous, especially live, attenuated viral vaccines or the new recombinant nucleic acid vaccines, they have the potential to generate virulent viruses by recombination and the recombinant nucleic acids could cause autoimmune diseases.

A further major source of toxicity in the case of the flu vaccines are the adjuvants, substances added in order to boost the immunogenicity of the vaccines. There is a large literature on the toxicities of adjuvants. Most flu vaccines contain dangerous levels of mercury in the form of thimerosal, a deadly preservative 50 times more toxic than mercury itself. At high enough doses, it can cause long-term immune, sensory, neurological, motor, and behavioural dysfunctions. Also associated with mercury poisoning are autism, attention deficit disorder, multiple sclerosis, and speech and language deficiencies. The Institute of Medicine has warned that infants, children and pregnant women should not be injected with thimerosal, yet the majority of flu shots contain 25 micrograms of it. Another common adjuvant is alum or aluminium hydroxide, which can cause vaccine allergy, anaphylaxis, and macrophage myofascitis, a chronic inflammation syndrome.”

Five different companies have been contracted to produce vaccines worldwide: Baxter International, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis and AstroZeneca. Already stretched beyond capacity, there is every intention to make smaller vaccine doses go further with a range of new adjuvants, with the blessing of the WHO.

MILD SYNDROMES

AS of 22 July 2009, the CDC listed a total of 40,617 cases in the US, with 319 fatalities, giving a fatalites/case ratio of 0.8 percent; though the real death rate - among all cases of infection including the mild ones that go unreported - is probably much lower. Experts estimate that only one out of 20 cases are reported.

The UK is the worst affected European country, and the pandemic was in the headlines everyday in July. A new telephone helpline was set up on July 23 to let people get advice and tamiflu without seeing a doctor. In that week, there was a record rise in cases to 100,000 and a total of 30 deaths, giving a fatalities/case ratio of 0.03 percent, a more accurate reflection of the actual death rate.

There are obviously safer and more effective ways to combat the pandemic than mass vaccinations: washing hands often, sneezing into a tissue that can be safely disposed of, avoiding unnecessary gatherings, and delay opening schools - all advised by governments - and, we would add, eating healthily, exercise and getting enough vitamin D to boost your natural immunity.

Mae-Wan Ho is the director of the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) in the UK. Prof. Joe Cummins is Professor Emeritus of Genetics at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Courtesy: Third World Network Features.