Influenza: marketing vaccine by marketing disease

Current influenza vaccine strategies may be a waste of money, but influenza is not just a manufactured gimmick. Public health data connects influenza to many mental health and developmental disorders. Influenza often immediately precedes the first episode of autoimmune disorders. Combined with a mild bacterial infection, influenza can turn deadly. Vaccines might prevent some of these secondary effects. Or vaccines might create the same conditions that natural infection does and contribute to these bad outcomes. Researchers need to do a better job testing for influenza and recording all types of bad outcomes from infection and from vaccination – including long term effects.
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Could surviving the flu make you more susceptible to the next one? Could vaccines reproduce this hazard? Avian H7N9 influenza in China has an unusual demographic – a high proportion of the victims are elderly men. Perhaps they have more exposure to poultry farms, but elderly men are also the most likely demographic to be vaccinated against previous influenzas. This is a clue that influenza may be like dengue fever – exposure to one strain may make you more susceptible to another strain.
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A retrospective study comparing 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 pH1N1 influenza data in the UK showed that there were more hospitalizations and deaths from laboratory confirmed pH1N1 in the flu season following the massive vaccination campaign (2010/2011). Researchers in Spain noted a similar increase in bad outcomes the year after the pandemic response.
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Real world studies of vaccine effectiveness have shown that having children is a better predictor of influenza infections than vaccination status. Ohmit et al report in Clinical Infectious Diseases that if one member of your household has influenza then vaccination does not protect you from influenza infection, in fact repeated vaccination was shown to lower the effectiveness in all settings, not just at home. Clearly antibody titers are not the best predictor of effectiveness of influenza vaccine.
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Adverse events to vaccines may provide some clues about how influenza causes harm. Narcolepsy cases associated with the influenza vaccine Pandemrix are indicative of the subtle harm that influenza infection causes. Narcolepsy is an autoimmune neurological disorder of sudden onset sleeping symptoms. E. Miller (UK-HPA) notes, “There is a strong association with human leucocyte antigen (HLA) DQB1*0602 and reported associations with environmental factors such as streptococcal infection, seasonal influenza, and more recently pandemic A/H1N1 2009 influenza.” Children in Europe developed narcolepsy after receiving an adjuvanted pandemic flu vaccine, Pandemrix. Neurologist John Shneerson brushed off the reactions in an HPA statement saying "Pandemrix may have triggered an immune reaction against the sleep centre cells in those children who were genetically predisposed to develop narcolepsy.”
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Indeed, inoculated children who developed narcolepsy had the risky HLA-DQ type, and maybe they would have developed narcolepsy after being exposed to influenza that season anyway even if they hadn’t been vaccinated. But this reveals another mechanism of influenza pathology –viral infections often trigger the first episode of autoimmune disorders. For narcolepsy, the vaccine was as bad as the natural influenza infection, but the vaccine was given by choice.
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Can we make better vaccines that don’t trigger these autoimmune disorders? We need to understand what part of the immune response triggers autoimmune symptoms, to safely fight pathogens without turning our immune systems on ourselves.
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My son is autistic. New research shows autism is a birth defect – there are changes in the brain and the placenta that are present at birth, but are not part of any regular testing. Current healthcare practices can only reliably detect autism at 2 years old, so babies that look healthy at birth could still be autistic. Autism is associated with immune activation in mother and child, and antibodies have been detected in moms of autistic kids that can cause autism in animal models. Being infected with influenza or having a fever during pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of autism in the offspring (also a higher risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.)
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Could prenatal influenza vaccination cause autism by creating cross reacting antibodies, or stimulating the maternal immune system, or just by causing fever? The US-CDC will tell you “no,” because studies show that babies born to vaccinated mothers are healthy at birth, and, like narcolepsy, no one has EVER reported autism in VAERS following prenatal vaccination. That’s amazing!! You would expect at least 1% of kids born to vaccinated moms would develop autism.
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Could prenatal vaccinations prevent autism? Maybe, but no one has bothered to do the studies. Thousands of women have been vaccinated against pandemic H1N1 in 2009/2010 in vaccine studies. Most of these studies ended when the children were born – some went as long as 7 months – too young to diagnose autism. But these kids are 2-3 years old now. Researchers should be calling these women to ask if their babies are meeting their developmental milestones. This follow-up would give us better data about whether influenza vaccines are really making a difference, or are causing more harm than good.
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Maybe the problem is not that the influenza virus causes the worst outcomes, but rather an unknown synergy between influenza and other organisms turns the encounter deadly. Rather than cheap vaccines in the drugstore, how about cheap and easy flu testing? Followed by a serum antibody titer, and real storage of the old serum samples. Also check for commensal bacteria at the time of influenza diagnosis, so that cultures are grown and sensitivities completed before the patient comes down with a secondary infection. You could even treat risk groups with antibiotics at the time you diagnose the first flu to prevent secondary infections. Early testing and storage of serum samples will give us a better way to ask questions in a retrospective way and to know that we are using the right treatment for the right disease – think Framingham Heart Study on a global level. China does this for poultry market workers.
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Early testing, researching the deadly interactions between influenza and bacteria, understanding viral triggers for autoimmune disorders, developing vaccines based on targeted technology, and following thorough with long term safety testing is the right course for eliminating influenza.

Continuing on from my last response, just a few more words.

For those who might have curled their lips saying, "How could she know -
there was no control?" - here is what I missed out of my first letter.

Over a period of about 2 years, there were many times when I made sure I got to
admitting patients and countermanded the orders, refusing to allow vaccines
to be administered to those whom I was consulted on.

I was able to observe over that time, how much easier it was to make a diagnosis without having to look through the confusing layers of acute illness combined with potential acute vaccine reactions.

It didn't take long to realize that the unvaccinated had a much smoother
shorter hospital delay with fewer secondary complications and that it was
far easier to figure out what was actually going on.

It was comparing the two groups, which made me really sit up and think.
When I went to find the studies proving that vaccines were safe for
seriously sick acute admission patients I could find no evidence at all.

When I presented my evidence comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated patients
to the hospital administration, I was told that in order for it to be validated, I should do my own study comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Which is bizarre, when you consider that that sort of "evidence" should be
provided by the vaccine manufacturer, not a doctor trying to "do no harm"
and create the very best outcome for those who came seeking help.

Sincerely
Dr Suzanne Humphries

Dear BMJ

I left my position as a hospital based Nephrologist in June 2011 after 2 years of attempting to convince the administration they were making a mistake by vaccinating very ill patients on their first day of admission often before a diagnosis had even been made. CHF, sepsis, acute kidney injury, severe renal failure in cancer patients getting IV chemotherapy were not reasons to with hold the influenza or pneumonia vaccines in these unsuspecting people.

If the vaccine sounded like a good idea to the patient, after the pharmacist described the availability and CDC recommendations from a one page brochure, the order was entered into a computer, with a physician's name, and the shots were dutifully administered by the RN, with no need for actual physician approval. It was built into hospital policy.

Any downfall in the patient's health after that was though to be a figment of my imagination, even when I held solid evidence in my hand with graphics of the rise in creatinine within 24-48 hours after the vaccine was given, when nobody else could implicate anything else. when I brought these cases in front of the administration and the chief of medicine I was told that it was not the vaccine and that the vaccines were safe and effective.

And I was asked what was wrong with me. "Smallpox was eradicated by vaccines. Polio went away after vaccines." I researched these two often parroted claims and was shocked to find enormous volumes of literature and vital statistics that undermine these long held mythologies.

I wrote a 12 page paper with over 40 references to support my claim that vaccines can contribute to kidney failure and worsening of pre-existing inflammatory disorders.

I asked simply that the vaccines be with held until the last hospital day, instead of the first. After a meeting to discuss my concerns, I was informed that the hospital vaccine policy would remain as is, and that I was confusing the nursing staff by dc'ing orders for vaccines.

I'm only writing a small segment of what really occurred to give you some idea. There was much more, and many wounded and died after influenza vaccines both in and out of the hospital.

Another response I got from another colleague was that that denominator was so huge on vaccines that my cases did not mean much. I doubt the spouse of the patient who died after major surgery and vaccination with new onset kidney failure felt that way. I doubt that those who had to remain in hospital for weeks longer and go onto temporary dialysis felt that way. And I never could understand why the insurance companies didn't care, since these vaccine reactions were costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient, more.

I don't know what part of the medical profession will ever get this. Once in a while another doctor would tell me that she/he did not get their own flu vaccines but they were still giving them to their patients. They would not listen to me, and did not want to know.

If they did listen and agree, they may have landed up where I did, doubting the ethics of recommending committees, doubting the necessity of other drugs I was taught were the only way, the best way. Realizing that many other things I was taught were incomplete and driven by pharmaceutical interests.

All that will take a respected nephrologist like me from the land of respect and preference to the land of "quacks" overnight. It is dangerous for doctors to think on their own, to disagree with the practices they are encouraged to carry out. I really thought my administration would care and listen to me, and I was thrown back on my heels by what happened. They had to keep up vaccine rates in hospitalized patients and I was a cog in the wheel.

It is notable that P. Doshi mentioned only two cases of side effects of flu vaccination. In reality the sporadic side effects are quite numerous, but because of their 'flu-like' nature they are not reported.

In Russia the vaccines produced locally (side effect of the support to national businesses) are bought by Government for 'free" vaccination.

Children in schools and kindergartens are the most prevalent subjects forced to be vaccinated for free. Almost every year in one or another region of Russia the vaccination is stopped because of the reports of the mass suffering of children from the side effects of vaccination. Usually the specific series of vaccines are recalled.

The pressure on physicians to use the already prepaid vaccines is so strong, that they fill the patients' records with false statements of vaccination. We know about this accidents, because from time to time here and there the criminal cases are opened against these physicians.