MERCURY IN VACCINES AND THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC: A MEDICAL CONTROVERSY
The Washington Times
Commentary: Facing the flu all alone
By Hil Anderson
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONALLos Angeles, CA, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- San Francisco has declared an urgent state of emergency and taken jurisdiction over suddenly scarce flu vaccines, leaving the city nervously facing the cold-and-flu season without benefit of preventive medical science.
San Francisco, however, was not alone in declaring that flu shots would be reserved only for high-risk patient populations while reasonably healthy people would have to tough it out by washing their hands and staying away from those unvaccinated unfortunates who come down with a disease that is dangerous to some and an irritating rite of winter to others.
"For the most part, flu is an inconvenience for healthy people," California Public Health Officer Dr. Richard Jackson said Wednesday. "It makes you miserable and you will miss work. Flu can also kill at-risk individuals and we need to take care of our at-risk individuals first."
High-risk individuals include those with a pre-existing condition that leaves their immune system impaired, the elderly, the very young and those with HIV.
The announcement that Chiron Corp. would not be supplying roughly half of the United States' flu vaccine this winter came as a bombshell to a nation that takes great comfort in the prowess of its level of medical care and is adamant that children be vaccinated against a long list of diseases before they even step foot in school.
"Too few young children are protected against influenza, which for this age group, can be a very serious illness. This season, CDC not only encourages flu shots for young children, but we recommend them," Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control, said last month before Britain threw a wrench in the works by refusing to allow Chiron to ship the flu vaccine produced at its plant in Liverpool due to contamination problems.
Instead, most youngsters won't be getting shots -- nor will their parents, teachers and a lot of other people who aren't in the priority populations.
The sudden dearth of supplies came as a shock to individuals who rely on the security of a flu shot in the event that hand washing and avoiding crowds isn't enough to keep the dreaded germs away.
"I touch people's hands all day and it is important for me to get one," manicurist Geri Horton told the Los Angeles Times as she waited in a line Tuesday for a coveted vaccination with some 400 people at a Costco in Marina del Rey.
The scene was repeated across the country as senior citizens and other high-risk individuals queued up to get their own shots and vigilant prosecutors in various states warned against price gouging or even black market sales of stolen vaccine.
But it is still too early to tell if the nation will suffer through a particularly deadly flu season or if the seemingly grave air of emergency will fade from the headlines.
"We won't know the full extent of the impact on morbidity and mortality until the season is over," Jeff Goad, an assistant professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Southern California, told United Press International in an e-mail message Wednesday. "By mandating restrictions on use of the vaccine, we may be able to avoid higher than normal mortality rates among risk groups by having vaccine for these people, but it's impossible to confirm that at this time."
The CDC has also stated that it is impossible to predict the severity of a flu season because the time the disease begins breaking out and the length of the season can vary widely from year to year.
At the same time, the vast majority of people in the United States don't take the flu vaccine, and that includes those in the high-risk populations health officials and doctors insist should be getting annual shots.
Some anti-mercury advocates insist the organic mercury-based thimerosal used as a preservative and an antibacterial in multi-dosage flu vaccines is a greater threat than the flu itself, although the CDC is just as adamant in its view that mercury is not a great risk. California this fall thought differently and joined Iowa in banning thimerosal in vaccinations given to pregnant women and young children starting in 2006.
Vaccines containing thimerosal are expected to be completely clear of bacteria, so it remained unclear Wednesday why the British authorities concluded Chiron's production was potentially unsafe, and why they have not specifically addressed the genesis of the problem.
David Kirby, author of "Evidence of Harm," a forthcoming book on mercury and its alleged link to autism, said in a statement last week that the Chiron incident shed new light on the effectiveness of thimerosal and whether it should be used in vaccines at all.
"(Thimerosal) has never been proven to be 100-percent safe," Kirby said, "and now we see again that it is not 100-percent effective either."
Most people in the United States aren't worried about the mercury in the shot; however they simply don't want to spend the time and money for an inoculation.
Gerberding told reporters in Washington Tuesday that the CDC figured around 180 million people would benefit from a flu shot; however that was an admittedly broad number that included not only those vulnerable to the flu but their families and healthcare workers as well.
"Well, of course we have never vaccinated anywhere near 180 million people in our country," Gerberding said. "Last year, we had 87 million doses of vaccine and we utilized 83 million doses of vaccine. So we actually ended up with unused vaccine last year."
The flu is nothing to sneeze at. The federal government estimates the virus killed about 36,000 people last season and landed more than 100,000 in the hospital. But the vast majority of those stricken nonetheless survive and public health officials will be watching anxiously to see if large numbers of people going cold turkey causes the death toll to spike higher, or if taking basic precautions will allow the vast majority of people in the United States to weather the flu season with little ill effect.
© David Kirby, all rights reserved.
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