The picture on the Star front page of a registered nurse injecting a flu shot (October 19, 2012), demonstrates, yet again, that public health officials do not read their literature nor practice “evidence-based medicine.”
The Cochrane Collaboration is an international network of more than 28,000 people from over 100 countries who work together to help health care providers, policy-makers, patients, their advocates and carers make well-informed decisions about health care, by preparing, updating and promoting the accessibility of Cochrane Reviews. The Collaboration is independent and free from pharmaceutical interests.
Cochrane Reviews (cochrane.org/reviews/index.htm) are based on the best available information about health care interventions. Cochrane Reviews explore the evidence for and against the effectiveness and appropriateness of treatments (medications, surgery, education, etc.) in specific circumstances. Designed to facilitate the choices that doctors, patients, policy makers and others face in health care, the complete reviews are published in The Cochrane Library four times a year.
Despite this easily available, time-saving resource, it seems that BC public health departments do not use them. If they did they would find out that the flu shot does not work for: babies, (shot no more effective than a placebo); children with asthma, (did not prevent asthma exacerbations); adults, (reduced the risk of influenza by six per cent and reduced the number of missed work days by one day); elderly living in nursing homes or the community, (non-significant effect). These reviews were based on samples of 294,000 children, 800 children with asthma, 66,000 adults, and 64 studies over the flu seasons of the elderly.
Dr. Roger Thomas of the University of Calgary, lead author of a research paper published in 2010 by the Cochrane Library, had this to say to the National Post, “What troubled us is that [shots] had no effect on laboratory-confirmed influenza.” The study found that immunizing nursing-home workers does nothing to prevent confirmed influenza cases among the homes’ elderly residents. “What we were looking for is proof that influenza… is decreased. Didn’t find it. We looked for proof that pneumonia is reduced. Didn’t find it. We looked for proof that deaths from pneumonia are reduced. Didn’t find it”. (dprogram.net/2010/03/11/flu-shots-futile-study/).
Furthermore, whale.to/vaccines/flu2.html lists 101 “side-effects” a.k.a “damage,” from flu vaccines reported in respected medical journals.
Perhaps the worst damage from flu vaccines is Guillain-Barré Syndrome where the victim suffers from progressive paralysis. In 2009, in Quebec, the number of cases of the syndrome doubled after use of the flu vaccine (news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/10/swine-flu-shots-may-be-linked-increase-in-rate-of-rare-neurological-syndrome-quebec-study/).
In my opinion, one person paralyzed for life as a result of a useless vaccine is one too many.
As health officials know, 85 to 90 per cent of flu-like illnesses are not caused by the influenza virus and these illnesses are only distinguishable from true influenza by a lab test. Of the hundreds of thousands of samples submitted for analysis to Canadian laboratories over the last 12 years, fewer than 12 per cent were found to be influenza A or B. Therefore, giving flu shots to the whole population is an expensive exercise in futility (12 year analysis of PHAC statistics: vran.org/about-vaccines/specific-vaccines/influenza-vaccine-flu-shot/).
Anyone with a modicum of common sense will not inject these noxious substances into themselves in the quaint belief they will not get a flu-like illness.
J.L. Craig
Nelson