H1N1 vaccine study investigating hints of complications from vaccine

Federal health officials are investigating the first hints of any possible significant complications from the H1N1 vaccine, but stressed that the concerns will probably turn out to be a false alarm..........(ohhh of course they will!)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042304965.html

The latest analysis of data has detected what could be a somewhat elevated rate of Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis and death; Bell's palsy, a temporary facial paralysis; and thrombocytopenia, which is a low level of blood platelets, officials reported Friday. The data is being collected through five of the networks the government is using to monitor people who were inoculated against the swine flu.

Officials stressed that it is far too early to know whether the vaccine was increasing the risk of those conditions or whether there is some other explanation, such as doctors identifying more cases because of the intensive effort to pinpoint any safety problems with the vaccine.

Based on the preliminary report, the Health and Human Services Department's National Vaccine Advisory Committee, which has been charged with monitoring the vaccine's safety, voted unanimously to follow up on the findings. "We're at the first step of determining whether there is a problem," Guthrie S. Birkhead, who chairs the committee, said during a teleconference in which a subcommittee of experts presented its latest findings on the data. "There's a lot more work to determine whether there is."

Marie McCormick, who led the subcommittee, said there was a good chance the indications of problems could disappear with further analysis. Even if the link with Guillain-Barrésyndrome is confirmed, the committee calculated the vaccine at most could be causing one extra case per 1 million people vaccinated.

"We have categorized this as a potential, not even a weak, signal," McCormick said, adding that no signs of problems have been seen in the other networks of data the government has been analyzing.

Even if the possible risks turn out to be real, officials stressed that the danger of the flu remains far greater.

"From everything we know right now, the influenza vaccine, including the H1N1 vaccine, is very safe, and it's much riskier to get influenza than the influenza vaccine," said Anne Schuchat of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Officials said they were not surprised that some possible problems that turn out to be false alarms might be found, given how intensively the vaccine's safety is being monitored.

The vaccine was administered to 350 million to 400 million people worldwide, including as many as 80 million Americans, as part of an unprecedented response to the first flu pandemic in decades.

Since the inoculation program was launched, health officials have been particularly concerned about Guillain-Barré syndrome, in part because a vaccine made in 1976 in response to a different strain of H1N1 influenza led to a small increase in the number of cases of the condition.

But officials expressed confidence that the new vaccine is safe because it was produced with the same methods employed since then to make the seasonal flu vaccine, which has been administered safely to millions of people.

Each year, about 3,000 to 6,000 people in the United States develop Guillain-Barré syndrome whether or not they were vaccinated -- a rate of one to two people out of every 100,000 people. Some studies have indicated that the seasonal flu vaccine might be associated with one additional case of the syndrome out of 1 million vaccinated. And influenza itself can cause the syndrome.

Although the vaccine was produced in record time, antiquated technology and unexpected problems growing the virus fast enough to produce the vaccine meant that most of the doses did not arrive until after the second wave of infections peaked last fall. That led to widespread anxiety, frustration and lines across the country as people scrambled to find the first doses. By the time most of the vaccine was ready, the second wave was already receding and demand fell sharply, leaving millions of doses unused.

The relatively low number of deaths compared with previous pandemics and the millions spent on the vaccine have led to charges that the World Health Organization exaggerated the pandemic's risks. That prompted the Geneva-based arm of the United Nations to launch two investigations, which are ongoing.

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Suspicious H1N1's Origins

On April 24, AP reported that "Health officials are investigating a never-before-seen form of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses.... (It's) a growing medical mystery because it's unclear how (affected people) caught the virus. None (of seven cited had) contact with pigs." Nor had others reportedly affected in other US cities.



The "intercontinental" mixture included North American Swine Flu, North American Avian Flu, human H1N1 flu, and a fourth H3N2 strain found in Asia and Europe.

Suspicions about a synthetic laboratory-made virus have surfaced. Writing in NewsMax.com, Dr. Russell Blaylock quoted an unnamed virologist saying: "Where the hell it got all these genes we don't know." According to Blaylock: "Debate continues over the possibility that swine flu is a genetically engineered virus."

Dallas County Medical Director Dr. John Carlo voiced concern about the possibility that:
"This strain of swine influenza (may have been) cultured in a laboratory....something that's not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world...."
Recently interviewed on Russia Today TV, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen cited a University of Wisconsin lab conducting joint influenza vaccine research with drug company FluGen. On March 24, Reuters reported that:
"FluGen, Inc., an emerging leader in the development, production and delivery of influenza vaccines and related products, today announced it has secured exclusive rights to a novel, patent-protected vaccine-delivery technology (that) painlessly delivers seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines."
Madsen believes "the Swine Flu virus began in a lab," the objective being profits for vaccine makers with products "that may not actually be safe." Many noted experts share that view about all vaccines.
NutriMedical founder Dr. William Deagle reported that 6-8% of Swine Flu DNA matches no virus on record. He believes more lethal strains may appear in the fall.
Project Camelot "provide(s) a vehicle for researchers and whistle-blowers to get their stories out." Interviewed on its Whistleblower Radio show, Burk Elder Hale claimed that a senior drug company biochemist (unnamed to protect him) told him:
"....an aerosoled precursor has been put into the air and almost everyone has breathed it into their lungs. (When Swine Flu) vaccines (are) administered in the fall, (they'll) be activated when (their) constituents come into contact with the aerosoled precursor in the body and will cause a rapid spread of the H1N1 influenza A virus. The biochemist is very upset about the matter....and is a very reliable source that needs our utmost protection."

Catherine Austin Fitts is a former high-level US government official and Wall Street insider. She's now the editor of Solari.com and runs Solari, Inc. as an "online media company focusing on ethical investment and preserving family wealth."

Admitting she's no expert, she wrote this about Swine Flu on July 22:
"I believe one of the goals of the swine flu vaccine is depopulation. Perhaps it is the goal of a swine flu epidemic as well, whether bio-warfare or hype around a flu season....Lowering immune systems and increasing toxicity levels combined with poor food, water and terrorizing stress will help do the trick....a plague can so frighten and help control people that they will accept the end of their current benefits....without objection. And a plague with proper planning can be highly profitable. Whatever the truth (about) swine flu and related vaccines....it can be used (to) control (a) situation that is quickly shifting out of control."

"In short, an epidemic can be used to offset the inflation of capital with increasing deflation of the value and income of labor and continual demand destruction. (What's coming next is the) meaner face of 'the establishment against the rest of society.' "

The possibility of a diabolical depopulation scheme can't be dismissed. The idea's been around for decades, including from the 1974 Henry Kissinger project - National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200). It was backed by powerful economic interests to cull the world population of useless feeders so corporate giants could exploit world resources unimpeded.

Kissinger's scheme was to make birth control a prerequisite for US aid. He wanted the annual death rate doubled and for a population decline in the hundreds of millions by 2000. Poor third world women in countries like Brazil were involuntarily sterilized. Millions were harmed then. Perhaps today's toll from mandatory global Swine Flu vaccinations will be billions.

Yet US laws were passed to prevent it. In 1986, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) required:

-- giving parents written information on vaccine benefits and risks so they could decide on what was safe for their children;

-- maintaining a permanent record of all vaccines given children, including producer names and lot numbers;

-- keeping up to date medical records of all vaccinations given children; and

-- recording all serious health problems after vaccinations were administered and notifying the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) immediately.

At issue is whether federal laws and constitutional and Nuremberg protections will help. Nuremberg requires voluntary consent with full disclosure of known risks and avoidance of experimental treatments if there's any reason to believe harm may result. The Fifth Amendment protects against abusive government authority in stating that "No person shall....be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law...." The Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments." Harming human health is cruel and abusive. Mandating suspect drugs violates Nuremberg, the US Constitution, and other protective laws. Whether they'll be enforced is another matter.



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Rotarix rotavirus vaccine contaminated, officials say

(CNN) -- Federal health authorities recommended Monday that doctors suspend using Rotarix, one of two vaccines licensed in the United States against rotavirus, saying the vaccine is contaminated with material from a pig virus.


http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/22/rotavirus.vaccine/

"There is no evidence at this time that this material poses a safety risk," Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told reporters in a conference call.

Rotarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline, was approved by the FDA in 2008. The contaminant material is DNA from porcine circovirus 1, a virus from pigs that is not known to cause disease in humans or animals, Hamburg said.

About 1 million children in the United States and about 30 million worldwide have gotten Rotarix vaccine, she said.

Rotavirus disease kills more than 500,000 infants around the world each year, primarily in low- and middle-income countries, she said. Before rotavirus vaccine became available, the disease was blamed for more than 50,000 hospitalizations and several dozen deaths per year in the United States, she said.

The FDA learned about the contamination after an academic research team using a novel technique to look for viruses in a range of vaccines found the material in GlaxoSmithKline's product and told the company, Hamburg said. The drug maker confirmed its presence in both the cell bank and the seed from which the vaccine is derived, suggesting its presence from the early stages of vaccine development, she said. The FDA then confirmed the drug maker's findings.

GlaxoSmithKline emphasized Monday that the pig virus is not known to cause illness in humans, saying "it is found in everyday meat products and is frequently eaten with no resulting disease or illness."

"No safety issue has been identified by external agencies or GSK," Thomas Breuer, the drug maker's chief medical officer, said in a written statement. "GSK is committed to patient safety and to the highest manufacturing standards for all our vaccines and medicines. We are already working closely and discussing this finding with regulatory agencies around the world."

Another vaccine, RotaTeq, is made by Merck and was approved in 2006. There is no evidence that the Merck product is affected, Hamburg said. Both vaccines are given by mouth to infants to prevent rotavirus disease, which is marked by severe diarrhea and dehydration.

Asked whether Merck would be able to meet the nation's demand, Merck spokeswoman Pam Eisele said, "Obviously, we will work with the ... FDA to evaluate supply needs."

In the next four to six weeks, the drug agency will convene an advisory committee to make recommendations and seek input on the use of new techniques for identifying viruses in vaccine, Hamburg said.

"We're not pulling it from the market, we're just suspending its use during this period while we're collecting more information," she said. "It should not be in this vaccine product and we want to understand how it got there. It's not an easy call and we spent many long hours debating the pros and cons but, because we have an alternative product and because the background rates of this disease are not so severe in this country, we felt that the judicious thing to do was to take a pause, to really ask the critical questions about what this material was doing in the vaccine, how it got there."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said "a substantial amount" of the DNA was found in the vaccine. But, he stressed, "there is no evidence that it causes any disease. ... There is no evidence that it ever does anything."

The research group that discovered the contamination has asked not to be identified pending its paper's publication in a scientific journal, Hamburg said.

Anyone who has already received a dose of Rotarix should switch to the Merck product for the next two doses, Hamburg said. Preliminary testing of the Merck product has found no evidence of the porcine circovirus 1 DNA, she said. Doctors should be able to tell parents which of the two products their children received, she said.

Hamburg stressed that the suspension applies only to the United States. Public health officials in countries where the incidence of rotavirus is more severe may decide that the benefits of continuing to use the vaccine outweigh any concerns raised by the contamination, she said. "Such a decision would be very understandable," she added.

A similar virus, porcine circovirus 2, also does not cause disease in humans, but it does cause disease in its pig host, Hamburg said.

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An Unwelcome Third Wheel: Patient Vaccination Without Doctor Authorization

1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccines are now being given to sick hospital patients with or without their doctor’s consent. This is being done despite there being no data on the safety of doing so.

http://www.medicalvoices.org/vaccination/articles/vaccination-without-doctor-approval-in-a-us-hospital.html

I am a licensed, board-certified nephrologist, otherwise known as a kidney specialist, working in a large, city-based hospital. Because I rarely admit patients to the hospital other than for specific procedures, such as a kidney biopsy, I only recently became aware of my hospital’s policy regarding flu shots for sick people. Waking up to this new rule made me realize that Big Pharma is getting closer and closer to bypassing doctors completely to deliver direct patient “care”.

doctor1We have an elaborate electronic charting system at our hospital. All of the medications and procedure orders are placed into the patient’s record by doctors and nurses so that every person has access to all that is happening with the patient. A few weeks ago, I arrived to see my first patient of the day, a patient with a kidney ailment that leaks protein and usually progresses to complete kidney shutdown. When I opened her electronic chart, I expected my section to be empty. Instead, I saw an order for an influenza vaccine with my name on it. Even more shocking was that the order was highlighted bright blue, meaning, the shot had already been given. I thought perhaps I had opened the wrong chart or some sort of mistake had been made. But it was the right file; her name in the upper left hand corner. And my electronic signature was on the page after the order. My patient, with kidney failure and an autoimmune disorder had been given a flu shot without my consent.

I was informed that according to a hospital policy that had been in effect since 2007, a pharmacist is permitted to visit a patient and offer them a flu vaccine. If the patient agrees, the RN is instructed to administer the shot and document the event in the chart. The attending physician’s signature stamp is used to complete the order. No one called to ask, “By the way, your patient wants a flu shot; can we give her one?” I’m not sure what was said to her, but she obviously agreed, and I didn’t need to be involved. The pharmacist had written an order for an injectable substance that I considered toxic and inappropriate for my patient, and it was administered by the RN before I even got to the floor.

My dissatisfaction eventually made it to the Chief of Internal Medicine who challenged me to produce peer-reviewed journal articles in support of my objection. There were dozens of case reports of kidney disease or small blood vessel inflammation following influenza vaccination. In fact, one paper cited 16 patients in its written report(1). Under-reporting of adverse vaccine reactions is a known phenomenon. The National Vaccine Information Center estimates that only about two percent of adverse vaccine reactions ever get reported. It would follow that written and published case reports found in medical journals represent a miniscule sampling of the totality of vaccine injury cases. These implications should evoke at least some curiosity on the part of doctors and health care advocates.

The peer-reviewed literature was delivered to the department head. His initial response was to suggest that future vaccination orders be signed off by another physician so I didn’t have to be involved with the process of a nurse giving a “routine” flu shot. But the point had been missed; flu shots should not be given to sick patients.

I was challenging “routine orders” that had been in place since 2007. The defense for supporting the policy was that no side effects had been reported since the standing order had been instituted. I wondered to myself and then later inquired: How do you know that is true? Is it because nobody filed a formal report? If a patient became more ill after the shot, did you consider his condition to be a side effect of the vaccine, or was it simply called an unfortunate complication to the patient’s current illness? What if the patient was discharged from the hospital but readmitted several weeks later. Was the reason logged simply as a progression of his existing disease…or was the cause an overlooked, delayed side effect of the vaccination? If vaccine reactions are not considered as part of a patient’s differential diagnosis, how do you know? Without taking a vaccine history when considering a timeline of events, how could anybody possibly make the connection between a vaccine and a subsequent illness? How does anyone else know for that matter – that there were no side effects from the “routine” administration of flu shots, ordered by a pharmacist and given by a nurse, without doctor consent? The truth is, there is no real tracking and reporting system in place. And nobody is enthused about trying to start one. What has essentially happened is that the guards have all been told to go home and nobody is thinking to even look for the wolf.

I am sure there are thousands of unreported cases of kidney failure – and a wide range of other serious health conditions – because doctors fail to ask a very simple question as part of the admission evaluation: “When was your last vaccine?” And few doctors suspect any connection because the party line screams, “Vaccines are safe, effective and harmless. They keep people healthy and prevent infection.” If nobody looks, vaccine-related side effects and complications won’t be found.

There was a law passed in 1986, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, that made vaccine manufacturers and administering physicians immune from legal recourse in the event of a vaccine injury. This has given manufacturers a dangerously long leash and has enabled them to push vaccines through FDA approval with little need to create a safe product. Now drug companies have extended their reach into the hospital right past doctors, and put the power to vaccinate in the hands of pharmacists and executive committees, allowing them to make decisions about what is best for a patient.

For years, I have suspected that vaccines affect the immune system in an unnatural way. Those who are trained in the sciences should know this has to be true. For starters, the partial and temporary effect of a vaccination is significantly different than the precise and long-lasting cellular responses that come from a natural infection. Vaccines contain more viral and bacterial particles than what we are told; there are known allowable contaminants in vaccine cultures and in vaccine vials(2). The solutions also contain heavy metals, carcinogenic chemicals and toxic preservatives. Vaccine-induced antibodies can become “confused”. They can then adhere or deposit in small blood vessels and the kidney filters called glomeruli, causing inflammation and degeneration, known as an “autoimmune response”; the person’s own antibodies attack and destroy the body. The incidence of autoimmune disease has sharply increased in recent years, and I believe that vaccines have played a role. That is why it has never made sense to me to vaccinate anyone, let alone someone who is sick--- but especially someone already sick with an autoimmune disease. While patients who are immunocompromised may be at a disadvantage when faced with infectious pathogens, giving them a flu shot with toxic chemicals cannot, in my estimation, possibly protect them. Moreover, it is known that elderly patients and those who are losing protein in the urine don’t necessarily mount a strong or protective response to flu vaccine injections. Despite these facts, the CDC and various medical organizations still recommend injecting sick, elderly patients with flu vaccines.

There is no scientific basis for this. Vaccine research is conducted on healthy people. Vaccine research does not include double blind placebo studies; rather they use a false placebo which is often the prior years’ flu vaccine. Once a vaccine is approved for general use, the shot is routinely given to everyone. Case reports (1, 3-7) support the notion that it is highly possible that an unhealthy person could develop an exacerbation of an underlying kidney disease or that a healthy person could develop a new kidney disease after a vaccine. It should be common sense that patients who are sick and have advanced kidney disease are much more vulnerable to the 25 micrograms of mercury in multi-dose flu vaccines than healthy persons with normal kidney function.

Doctors take note: You are not in control anymore. Your patients can be harmed by vaccines that you have not ordered-- while your back is turned.

Patients: Be vigilant and ask questions. Big Pharma has dozed past another barrier and now its reach has expanded past your doctor and right into your hospital room. Propaganda about vaccines and the flu will be posted around the hospital. If ever there was a time to become highly suspicious of the motives in the world of hospitals and pharmaceutical business, it is now. Take these suggestions to heart:

*
When somebody other than your doctor enters your hospital room and offers you anything, even if they tell you the doctor ordered it, do not believe that you must accept it without first talking to the doctor in charge of your care. You have a right to know why you are being injected and what the risks are.
*
If there is ever a good time to get a vaccine, it is not while you are sick. Please consider both sides of the vaccination debate before agreeing to one. You won’t be given a fact sheet with balanced pros and cons by a conventional medical doctor or by the hospital.
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You have the right to refuse any drug, any shot and any intervention at any time, as long as you are psychologically competent.

Mine is only one story, but it represents things to come with the corporate takeover of medicine and the massive push for vaccines. It has been insidious but it is now showing up everywhere: In the schools, in Wal-Mart, in the mainstream press. The doctor-patient relationship is no longer valued or honored. Guidelines, recommendations and one-size-fits-all treatment programs of all comers for the sake of profit are the real driving forces. Our “health care system” has little to do with health. Even the word “health” has been mutated and twisted to represent some distorted picture that looks more like desperation for survival than thriving vitality. Health care centers that vaccinate with complete disregard for the truth about what they are actually doing to people, are not delivering a sound product that can be trusted and relied upon by those who hope to have their health guarded and restored.



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