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

Amanda Terfansky Counter spoke at the Second International Husband/Wife Homebirth Conference in 2001.
She has a passionate story to share of empowerment and wholeness. Here is a link to her story, which is a transcript of her talk from the conference…
Quote:
“It is a long way that I have come over the past sixteen months. In March of 2000 I was a well-dressed, somewhat well-educated young mother with a great job in the medical field. We had just purchased our first home and a brand new car. I was pregnant with my second child. If the child was a girl, she was to be the last. My aspiration was to rush through child-rearing and complete my degree in Health Service Administration. One month later, seemingly crippled by the sickness of the pregnancy, I resigned my position.
And since then, oh, it IS so far the other way my life has gone. From the time I gave up my job until now, we have also given up our home, our sport utility vehicle, and our materialistic lifestyle. This change has rocked the boat with family, quelled friendships, and created an invisible rift between the rest of the society and myself. Our second child, a girl, is NOT the last.
I no longer subscribe to current medical dogma. I wear my babies, I sleep with them, I breastfeed them, and I give birth to them unassisted. I felt the PHYSICAL reaction; the racing heart, the butterflies in my stomach, and the dizziness that others have described feeling when they “discovered” unassisted birth. For me those feelings indicated that what I had found was right. And now that I have experienced it, I will not give up, shut up, let up, or slow down.
Somehow, at some point I should have seen it coming that I would end up a “birth activist,” if you will. Before even conceiving my first child I reveled in other women’s stories, and the beauty of their pregnant bodies. In college I read Mary Crow Dog’s account of giving birth at Wounded Knee, assisted by four women friends, and when I was pregnant with my son, I would fantasize about giving birth alone. But in all honesty I had no idea that in 1997, in America, people INTENTIONALLY did that.”

Here is my recipe for a great Anti-Viral Soup. It is chock full of garlic, nutrients, and all the ingredients needed to quickly nourish and cleanse the body if it becomes ravaged by a flu virus.
Start with Two full bulbs of garlic…

I purchased a large bag of these bulbs from Sam’s Club the other day – cost? $4.00

Break the cloves of garlic off the bulb and chop it up. I pick out about ten cloves worth of peeled garlic to add to the soup. The rest of the garlic and peels I add to my stock pot. Garlic is one of the most powerful anti-viral foods on the planet. Even chopping this garlic and getting it all over your hands, and sniffing the odors will help to kill virus in your kitchen and your home.
The idea of eating “chicken soup” for a “chicken virus” does seem a little weird, so this recipe is vegan (does not contain any animal ingredients) and is easy enough for even the novice cook to make.

You add the peels to the stock pot to extract as much power from the garlic as possible. Boiling for twenty minutes helps to pull those properties out of the garlic. It also helps to kill any air born viruses in your home as the steam from the soup spreads over your home.

Adding in the garlic – Cook on a medium heat while the lentils soak and the stock boils.

Add the Oatstraw Tea to the stock pot. Make sure not to add this to your soup pot, it will make the soup taste terrible. However, using it to make stock is one of the most powerful herbal additions to any food.

Oatstraw is an excellent food to eat for any viral disease.

Potatoes and Sprouted Lentils

Potato peels are a great addition to any stock. Just peel your potatoes right into the stock pot. Then chop the potatoes and add them into the soup pot.

When I purchase foods at the store, I always buy a variety of colors, sizes, and types of foods, to add different nutrients to my meals. For this recipe I used one baking potato and one red potato. But you can use any combination of potatoes. This same principle is good for onions, any vegetable, or grain. Get small amounts of different types of food to get a variety of flavors and nutrients into your foods.

I could talk all day about the goodness of Flax Seed. When people come to my cooking classes they are always surprised to hear that I use flax in almost everything I make. Flax is a natural anti-depressant, and it adds great flavor to any dish. I use two tablespoons in this recipe. Add the flax into the stock pot.

Add in Red Raspberry leaf tea to the stock pot. Raspberry leaves contain Vitamin C and Magnesium, both necessary nutrients to fight disease.

Sea salt added liberally to the stock pot will help to extract the nutrients from the foods. I put in about a full tablespoon of good quality sea salt.

Carrots in the sink

While I made the stock I asked my daughter Allison to peel the carrots.

You can add the peels to the stock pot to extract more vitamin A into the stock. This is a very important nutrient to help the body fight disease.

Sprouted lentils contain a high concentration of Vitamin C.

The soup pot with the lentils

Organic Brown lentils

Organic Quinoa – This high protein grain is easy to digest and is a great alternative to rice. I keep a bay leaf in the food bin to ward off weevils and moths.

One half cup of Quinoa

One cup of lentils

Adding in Quinoa to the garlic and onions

Stock pot simmering

Getting ready to strain the stock into the soup pot

Straining the stock into the soup pot. When I have put the first stock into the soup, I fill up the stock pot once more with the same foods, cover them with water, and again, boil a second pot of stock for twenty minutes. This ensures that the highest amount of the nutrients are extracted from the herbs and vegetables. It sort of “rinses” the final nutrients from the herbs, seeds, and vegetables.

Adding Cumin to the soup. Cumin helps to make the lentils more digestible. Also tastes great.

Sometimes I wonder if you can add too much cumin…

Adding in whole coriander to the soup pot.

This soup is now ready to be covered and simmered for three hours at a low temperature.

The final step is adding in powerful anti-viral oils and herb just before serving the soup. This step is one of the most important in terms of the overall “viracide” action of this soup. We want to kill off as many viruses and bacteria as possible. I add in one or two drops each of Thyme and Oregano oil. I purchase these oils from a company that produces therapeutical grade essential oils. Dried herbs also give good flavor and final color to the soup.

Adding in two drops of Thyme essential oil

Adding in a drop of Oregano oil

Finished Garlic, Lentil, and Quinoa Soup

Soup’s on! Serve this soup with whole grain toast, fresh fruit, or home baked rolls or bread.
Here is the recipe in a quick synopsis for those of you who missed amounts and steps while browsing through the pictures…
Jenny’s Flu Soup:
2 onions
2 bulbs of garlic (about 20 cloves)
2 tablespoons sea salt
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup oatstraw tea (you may need to go to a health food store to get this)
2 tablespoons flax seed
¼ c Red Raspberry leaf tea
½ cup quinoa
1 cup brown lentils
½ cup sprouted brown lentils
2 potatoes
10 large carrots
1 tsp cumin
10 whole coriander seeds
Essential oils of Thyme and Oregano
Dried herbs of Thyme, Oregano, and Parsley
Directions for soup:
Cook onions, garlic, and olive oil in a pot. Add in chopped potatoes, carrots, and one Tablespoon of the sea salt. Let this cook for a few minutes, then add in the Quinoa, and sprouted lentils. (Sprouted lentils have the highest concentration of vitamin C of any food). To sprout lentils just cover a half cup of them with water over night. Drain in the morning and keep them wet until a ¼ inch tendril of sprout is detected. (This takes about 35 hours)
Fill a separate pot with two quarts of water to make soup stock. Add in the peels from the garlic, flaxseed, the oatstraw, raspberry leaf tea, and the peels from the carrots and potatoes. Bring the stock up to a hard boil for twenty minutes.
Cover the cup of brown lentils with water in a bowl. After soaking them for a few minutes, add the lentils and the water to the soup.
After the stock is finished boiling, strain the liquid into the soup pot. Recover the stock vegetables with another 2 quarts of water, and bring to a boil. Once again, strain the stock vegetables and add that liquid to the pot of soup. This ensures that the maximum amount of nutrients from the herbs will be included in the stock. This stock is chock full of essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals.
Add in the ten whole Coriander seeds. Cover the pot and let simmer for three hours.
To finish the soup, add in the drops of Essential oils of Thyme and Oregano (one or two drops of each) – Therapeutic grade oils are best, and then toss in the dried herbs.
I made this soup for my family yesterday and asked them to describe it for you who are reading…
Husband Paul – “on a scale of one to ten, this soup was a six in terms of my all time favorite soup”
Shelly (16) – “it was OK, wouldn’t want to eat it every day”
Allison (13) – “too spicy, but I would eat it if I was sick”
Jeff (11) – I liked the carrots, but that was about it…”
Andy (9) – “yum!” (Andy will eat ANYTHING!)
Ben (2) – Ben would not even try the soup
I thought it was delicious, really spicy, with a powerful effect on my throat and sinuses, I could feel it moving through my system cooking out all the junk. I plan to make this soup a couple times this season both to help prevent the flu, and if we get it, to help cure those who may be ill.
Jenny Hatch

Our family went to the local Punkin Patch today. The fall weather was glorious! We had a great time playing in the corn maze, looking at the animals, and seeing all the sights. The farm grows corn, wheat, and oats, and had sample bottles of grains.

Here is a picture of me holding some wheat and oats

Jeffrey, Benjamin, Andrew, and Allison

Jenny Hatch