Injection Rejections

[Guest guest]

" WC Douglass " <realhealth

 

Injection Rejections

 

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 11:56:51 -0500

Daily Dose

 

 

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March 08, 2005

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Flu shots - shot in the foot

 

Just a few short months ago, the whole nation was in a panic, it

seemed. There wasn't enough flu vaccine to go around for the upcoming

winter - and in an election year, both Republicans and Democrats were

pointing the finger at each other for the " crisis. " The issue even

came up in one of the presidential debates, when President Bush

assured Americans that he was working on a deal with neighboring

Canada to boost supplies of this year's vaccine.

 

My point, as always when it comes to vaccines, is this: They're worthless.

 

This time last year (Daily Dose 2/20/2004), I told you about how a

study of hospitals conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention revealed that the millions of doses of influenza

vaccine injected into Americans last winter made only around a 2%

difference in infection rates - not statistically significant.

 

And guess what? There's an even bigger study out this year that

supports this exact same conclusion. According to an AP wire report, a

new National Institutes of Health study suggests that administering

flu shots to the elderly - supposedly the most " at-risk " demographic

of Americans - hasn't saved ANY LIVES AT ALL. Ever.

 

That's right, despite the millions (maybe billions) of your tax

dollars the government's spending every year to vaccinate the vast

throngs of weary seniors who've waited in long lines on the

recommendations of the government and medical establishment, the shots

may very well do no good at all. The study, published in the Archives

of Internal Medicine, focused on three decades worth of data from the

entire elderly population of the United States.

 

Naturally, the CDC plans no change in its guidelines on who should get

flu shots, despite this research - or the results of their own studies

of a year ago I mentioned earlier. They will continue to recommend an

annual flu shot for those 65 and older, just as they have since the

1960s. Why would the government keep needlessly scaring seniors into

getting flu shots - and keep recommending a course of prevention that

doesn't work?

 

I can think of one reason: There's an awful lot of profit to be made

by drug companies selling vaccine doses to the government. Maybe

that's why rates of vaccination among that age group have soared from

around 20% in 1980 to 65% in 2001. And I thought people got wiser with

age...

 

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Other needless needles for seniors

 

This is why I can never seem to get behind cosmetic surgery - there's

always some kind of corner-cutting going on...

 

According to a recent story making the rounds on the AP wire and other

sources, a federal judge has granted a government-requested injunction

ordering an immediate halt of sales (and a recall) on an Arizona

biotech company's product - raw botulism bacteria, marketed by the

company for use in place of the Botox wrinkle treatment.

 

While it's true that the popular cosmetic drug Botox (a temporarily

paralyzing neurotoxin) is derived from the botulism microbe, it isn't

the bacteria itself in raw form. It's a derivative of a protein

complex of the bacteria, or something along those lines. But the

company in question marketed to cosmetic surgeons a supposedly " low

dose " of pure botulism bacteria as an equivalent treatment to Botox -

and as a result, 4 people are now paralyzed in Florida, including one

cosmetic surgeon who injected himself with the bug.

 

Whether they'll recover, or even live, remains to be seen.

 

Botox injections are the most common non-surgical cosmetic procedures

in the United States, numbering more than 1.6 million a year. A great

many of these are performed on senior citizens. For me, the bottom

line on these " band-aid " anti-wrinkle procedures is this...

 

Better to be rippled than crippled.

 

Always " injecting " the truth,

 

William Campbell Douglass II, MD