National Vaccine Information Center – Flu Shot Study

For several years the CDC has employed behaviorists and communications specialists to instill fear and anxiety in the public about infectious diseases in order to promote mass vaccination. But the rhetoric about flu risks have been especially exaggerated. Example: The CDC says there will be between 36,000 – 70,000 or more deaths in the U.S. caused by the flu each year. Do you know how many people died from influenza in 2002? Would you believe 753…and only 257 in 2001? Google up: American Lung Association “Trends in Pneumonia and Influenza/Morbidity and Mortality” look on page 9. Over the last 23 years (every other year stats) the average U.S. death rate is about 1,200 per year from influenza. So, how does the CDC come up with 36,000 – 70,000 deaths from influenza? They add influenza and pneumonia together, but influenza is not a direct cause of pneumonia.

You may hear health professionals attempt to justify the legitimacy of combining flu deaths with pneumonia deaths with the statement that “influenza leads to pneumonia.” The facts do not support this frequent, broad misstatement by health professionals.
The American Lung Association (ALA) describes pneumonia as having over 30 different causes (one being the influenza virus). Neither the CDC nor ALA know the specific causes of the pneumonias that resulted in death. However, we do know that influenza is not the major cause.

Keep in mind that the influenza vaccine provides no protection from bacterial infections. The National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease as well as other health agencies estimate that the single bacteria – streptococcus pneumoniae – is responsible for 15% to 50% of all cases of pneumonia in the US, including up to 40,000 deaths annually.

Pneumonia is also caused by other bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus (staph), Pertussis (whooping cough), Streptococci, and Mycoplasma pneumoniae (a common cause of walking pneumonia). There are also many non-infectious causes of pneumonia such as asthma, aspiration of fluids, immunodeficiency, etc. So, it stretches credibility to assert that the flu causes pneumonia when, in fact, the data shows that it only causes a small minority of cases.

[SIZE=”3″][B]Studies Fail to Demonstrate Safety or Effectiveness of Influenza Vaccine in Children and Adults[/B][/SIZE]

See weblink http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061031/dctu060.html?.v=60

Tuesday October 31, 2:03 pm ET
[B]National Vaccine Information Center Calls for Influenza Vaccine Policy Change[/B]

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 /PRNewswire/ — An independent analysis by the internationally renowned Cochrane Collaboration of worldwide influenza vaccine studies, published in the British Medical Journal on Oct. 28, concluded there is little scientific proof that inactivated influenza vaccine is safe and effective for children and adults. Citing the Cochrane Collaboration finding as well as methodological flaws in a child influenza vaccine study published Oct. 25 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the National Vaccine Information Center is calling on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to stop recommending annual flu shots for all infants and children until methodologically sound studies are conducted.
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“There is a big gap between policies promoting annual influenza vaccinations for most children and adults and supporting scientific evidence,” said epidemiologist Tom Jefferson, Cochrane Vaccines Field, Rome, Italy, who coordinated the comprehensive analysis for the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration. “Given the significant resources involved in annual mass influenza campaigns, there is urgent need for re-evaluation of these strategies.”

The Cochrane Collaboration analysis found that the majority of published influenza vaccine studies were methodologically flawed with selection biases, confounders and heavy reliance on non-randomized studies. The report points out that potential confusion between respiratory infections caused by influenza viruses and those caused by non-influenza viruses can result in misdiagnosis and gross overestimation of the true impact of influenza on death and illness in a given influenza season. The report concluded that too few clinical trials have been conducted to prove vaccine safety and current evidence indicates that use of inactivated influenza vaccine has only a modest or no effect on preventing influenza in the children and the elderly.

“The CDC has pushed mass use of influenza vaccine in all children without scientific evidence the policy is either necessary or safe,” said NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher. “Where is the good science to back up the policy? If the recently published CDC-funded influenza vaccine study in JAMA is the kind of flawed science public health officials are using to convince the public the vaccine is safe, it is no wonder that many parents don’t trust what public health officials say about vaccination. The CDC should stop recommending annual influenza vaccination of all young children when there is insufficient scientific justification for it.”

The JAMA study, which was conducted by Kaiser Permanente doctors with CDC funding, was a non-randomized retrospective analysis of the medical records of children 6 to 23 months old who were given influenza vaccine as well as other vaccines between 1991 and 2003. Vaccines were not randomly administered and unvaccinated controls were not used. Children’s case histories were included in the study only if an HMO doctor had seen them within 14 days of influenza vaccination. Dozens of convulsions and other adverse events, including brain injury experienced by children after vaccination, were excluded from the study if the children had not been seen by a doctor within 14 days of the adverse event or were sick in the weeks before and after vaccination.

Because of arbitrarily chosen cut-off periods, adverse events which occurred before and after different observation times cancelled each other out and were not classified as vaccine-related. In some cases, convulsions and cases of Guillain Barre Syndrome were dismissed as “coincidental” or caused by other vaccines the children received by the 19 Kaiser Permanente and CDC authors — nine of whom reported financial ties to flu vaccine manufacturers and all of whom received CDC funding.

“Vaccine studies are using increasingly complex statistical techniques rather than time-tested research designs,” said NVIC Health Policy Analyst Vicky Debold, R.N., Ph.D. “The JAMA study is exactly the type of study criticized by the Cochrane Collaboration. There were so many limitations and exclusions in the study design that it is nearly impossible to interpret or replicate the findings. The true effect of the influenza vaccine on health outcomes cannot be identified in this single, flawed study, which should not be used as evidence that influenza vaccine is safe for infants and toddlers or to justify national vaccine policies.”

The Cochrane Collaboration (http://www.cochrane.org), which maintains the Cochrane Library and is the world’s leading producer of systematic reviews of scientific information about health care, is a UK registered international charity. Cochrane reviews are considered the gold standard for determining the effectiveness of health care interventions.

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is a non-profit, educational organization (http://www.nvic.org) founded in 1982 and is dedicated to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defending the informed consent ethic.

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Source: National Vaccine Information Center