This article in the
New York Times
has some interesting insights into the efficacy of Flu Vaccines and Anti-viral drugs…
Quotes:
“In one paper, international researchers analyzed all the data from patient studies on the flu vaccine performed worldwide in the last 37 years and discovered that vaccines showed at best a ”modest” ability to prevent influenza or its complications in elderly people.
”The runaway 100 percent effectiveness that’s touted by proponents was nowhere to be seen,” said Tom Jefferson, a researcher in Rome with the Cochrane Vaccine Fields project, an international consortium of scientists who perform systematic reviews of research data….”
“In the second paper, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta found that influenza viruses, particularly those from the dreaded bird flu strain, had developed high rates of resistance to the only class of cheap antiviral drugs available — drugs mainly used to treat flu once patients have caught it. These resistance rates have increased rapidly since 2003, particularly in Asia.
”We were alarmed to find such a dramatic increase in drug resistance in circulating human influenza viruses in recent years,” said Dr. Rick Bright of the disease control centers. ”Our report has broad implications for agencies and governments planning to stockpile these drugs for epidemic and pandemic strains of influenza.”
Before 2000, almost no virus was resistant to the drug Amantadine. By 2004, 15 percent of influenza A viruses collected in South Korea, 70 percent in Hong Kong and 74 percent in China were impervious. During the first six months of 2005, 15 percent of the influenza A viruses in the United States were resistant, up from 2 percent the year before. All human cases of the bird flu A(H5N1) strain — which is still extremely rare in humans — have been resistant, the researchers said.
The immediate implications of these finding are most ominous for the developing world, because wealthier nations have been stockpiling newer and vastly more expensive antiviral medicines, like Tamiflu, which are effective against the disease but still under patent.
Even so, the research is alarming because it demonstrates how quickly and unexpectedly flu viruses can become impervious to medicines once they are put into common use, as they would be in the case of a pandemic. Also, at their best, antiviral medicines do not cure influenza. They reduce transmission of the disease and lessen somewhat the symptoms and complications in people already infected, including the high rate of associated pneumonias….”
“What you see is that marketing rules the response to influenza, and scientific evidence comes fourth or fifth,” Dr. Jefferson said. ”Vaccines may have a role, but they appear to have a modest effect. The best strategy to prevent the illness is to wash your hands…”
Marketing rules the response to most infectious disease as well as most Vaccinations….Read what Barbara Simpson had to say about it yesterday…
“Here comes government. Under the guise of public health, citizens are required to use the vaccines. Every baby born is a new customer and, as the number of vaccines grows, so does the market need. What happens when they develop one vaccine for 20 or 30 diseases? It’s in the works. How soon before it’s mandated? What happens if doctors won’t treat you unless you comply? What happens if you refuse?…”
Jenny Hatch