Flu Season - Who's Trying to Profit?

I am a Featured Contributor in the Diseases & Conditions category at Associated Content, and in the process of researching some upcoming articles I came upon a blog post that made a huge deal of the connection between Gaillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) and the H1N1 flu shot many of us received last year.

The post began with an incredibly oversized headline, screaming that the vaccine manufacturer admitted its product caused GBS. It then continued to tell us how:

The package insert for the Influenza A (H1N1) 2009 Monovalent Vaccine manufactured by Novartis has been leaked on the Internet.

Um, no. The package insert wasn't leaked. Drug manufacturers routinely make product monographs and package inserts available online. You just have to go to their web sites to find the information. failing that, you can do a search for the drug or vaccine in question, including expressions like "monograph" or "package insert."

The post went on to give a bunch of advice on how to survive a forced H1N1 vaccination. The recommendations were originally supplied by a former neurosurgeon, who now apparently makes his living providing nutritional services and "vaccine detox" advice.

The first advice on the list was to apply a cold pack to the vaccine site to, "block the immune response" - presumably meaning the vaccine would not work, and the recipient would not become immune to the flu. If that were truly the case, I wonder why it is routine advice to put a cold compress on the vaccine site to relieve discomfort? Wouldn't doctors and community nursing staff want to warn against applying cold to the site if it interfered with the efficacy of the vaccine?

The advice that followed included a huge laundry list of supplements people should take to prevent adverse reaction from the vaccine - products that I'm sure the good doctor (or former doctor?) would be happy to sell the reader for the right price. Some of the advice seemed to me contradictory - like the warning against taking zinc in combination with copper, followed by the direction to take daily multivitamin. The thing is, it was stressed the vitamin should not contain iron, but it seems copper in this supplement was OK. Why? I can't say for sure...

What concerned me more was the recommendations that people take mega-doses of fat soluble vitamin D for a prolonged period of time. Any large dose of vitamins should be discussed with your health provider before you pop it, especially fat soluble vitamins that will build up in your liver and fatty tissues. Taking too much of these vitamins is potentially toxic, so why would I take a dose 50 times greater than the recommended daily allowance if I wanted to detoxify my body?

The post ends with a brief discussion of what the reader should have learned from its contents. I think the more pertinent question ought to be why any reasonable person should take questionable medical advice from a web site that, in its flu kit supply category, is happy to sell me everything from outdated issues of Scientific American, to anti-parasite treatments containing wormwood, to motorcycle decals?

I have similarly seen a web site that went on at length about "vaccine-related" deaths documented in a published study. Problem is, if you read the actual study, the statistics are reviewed in detail and a large number of the deaths were completed unrelated. Off the top of my head, I remember one was due to a car accident within six months of vaccination and another was an accidental drowning. But on the anti-vax web site, these and other unrelated deaths were reported as though the vaccine had caused them.

Look folks, I know not everyone believes in vaccinations. I know often vaccines are given by health caregivers who fail to discuss potential risks and side effects. That's not right. It's also not right that some states forced citizens to be vaccinated against their will.

If you're going to make the decision that vaccines are not for you & your family, I respect that choice. But I also hope that you're doing your own research instead of accepting at face value all the things you read on just any "alternative" medicine or anti-vax web site.

Remember that, just as Big Pharma makes a profit from selling you pharmaceutical products and getting you to vaccinate your family, the people who oppose Big Pharma often stand to gain financially too. Maybe they are alternative health practitioners, looking to sell you services. Maybe they want to sell you supplements or even books. If you opting out of conventional medical services puts money in their pockets, can you trust them any more than you can trust the medical and pharmaceutical establishment?

Think for yourself. Parroting someone else's advice - and I guarantee you, dozens of web sites and blogs are quoting word for word the entire protocol pushed by that neurosurgeon turned vitamin salesman - is not thinking for yourself.

Be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get dirty if you want to think for yourself and make your own decisions. You're likely going to have to read a lot, and follow up most of what you read by tracing down the original sources. You may even have to learn how to read a study published in a peer reviewed journal.

It's not easy but as the old saying goes, sometimes if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.