MEDICAL: DISEASES: INFLUENZA : MEDICAL: VACCINES VACCINATION AND IMMUNIZATION: Does the Vaccine Matter?

[David P. Dillard]

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MEDICAL: DISEASES: INFLUENZA :
MEDICAL: VACCINES VACCINATION AND IMMUNIZATION:
Does the Vaccine Matter?



Does the Vaccine Matter?
by Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer
November 2009
<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/brownlee-h1n1>


Whether this seasons swine flu turns out to be deadly or mild, most
experts agree that its only a matter of time before were hit by a truly
devastating flu pandemicone that might kill more people worldwide than
have died of the plague and aids combined. In the U.S., the main lines of
defense are pharmaceuticalvaccines and antiviral drugs to limit the spread
of flu and prevent people from dying from it. Yet now some flu experts are
challenging the medical orthodoxy and arguing that for those most in need
of protection, flu shots and antiviral drugs may provide little to none.
So where does that leave us if a bad pandemic strikes?


Drive too fast along Red Lion Road, beside Philadelphias Northeast
Airport, and you will miss the low-rise cement building where the biotech
company MedImmune has been quietly pumping out swine flu vaccine at about
a million doses a week. Through the summer and fall, workers wearing
protective gear that covered them from head to toe brewed up batches of
live, genetically modified flu virus. Robots then injected tiny doses of
virus-laden fluid into glass vials, which were mounted into nasal
spritzers, labeled, and readied for shipment at the direction of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, which is helping
to coordinate the nations pandemic-preparedness plan. In the most
ambitious vaccination program the nation has mounted since the anti-polio
campaign in the 1950s, the federal government has commissioned MedImmune
and four other companies to produce enough vaccine to cover the entire
U.S. population.


Vaccination is central to the governments plan for preventing deaths from
swine flu. The CDC has recommended that some 159 million adults and
children receive either a swine flu shot or a dose of MedImmunes nasal
vaccine this year. Shots are offered in doctors offices, hospitals,
airports, pharmacies, schools, polling places, shopping malls, and big-box
stores like Wal-Mart. In August, New York state required all health-care
workers to get both seasonal and swine flu shots. To further protect the
populace, the federal government has spent upwards of $3billion
stockpiling millions of doses of antiviral drugs like Tamifluwhich are
being used both to prevent swine flu and to treat those who fall ill.



But what if everything we think we know about fighting influenza is wrong?
What if flu vaccines do not protect people from dyingparticularly the
elderly, who account for 90 percent of deaths from seasonal flu? And what
if the expensive antiviral drugs that the government has stockpiled over
the past few years also have little, if any, power to reduce the number of
people who die or are hospitalized? The U.S. governmentwith the support of
leaders in the public-health and medical communitieshas put its faith in
the power of vaccines and antiviral drugs to limit the spread and
lethality of swine flu. Other plans to contain the pandemic seem anemic by
comparison. Yet some top flu researchers are deeply skeptical of both flu
vaccines and antivirals. Like the engineers who warned for years about the
levees of New Orleans, these experts caution that our defenses may be
flawed, and quite possibly useless against a truly lethal flu. And that
unless we are willing to ask fundamental questions about the science
behind flu vaccines and antiviral drugs, we could find ourselves, in a bad
epidemic, as helpless as the citizens of New Orleans during Hurricane
Katrina.



<snip>




The complete extensive article may be read at the URL above.




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David Dillard
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