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New Mexico Media Outlets Peddle Pseudoscience for State Department of Health

by Ken Stoller

What part of “no thanks” do Center for Disease Control officials, the New Mexico Department of Health, KSFR, The New Mexican, KUNM and drug company executives not understand? Most Americans have wisely refused to get a flu shot this year, knowing that it is ineffective and dangerous. Despite all the hype about how 36,000 Americans die every year from influenza and 200,000 more are hospitalized, it is hard to find somebody who knows anybody who was hospitalized or died from infection with one of the three influenza viruses contained in the current flu vaccine.

Yet, those figures keep getting bandied about by public health officials - and then parroted by probably unsuspecting media outlets - who steadfastly refuse to produce the hard scientific evidence to back up their numbers. In light of the fact that only 20 percent of all flu-like illness in any given flu season is actually influenza, the truth is that there is no proof to back up the rhetoric. So far, the flu vaccine studies published in the medical literature fail to provide credibility for any of the inflated influenza mortality figures the CDC is using to try to scare people.

Guaranteeing Drug Company Profits

Unable to frighten Americans into getting an annual flu shot, public health officials have taken to playing the sympathy card. On behalf of drug companies, they are pleading for people to roll up their sleeves, dig deep into their pockets and shell out some bucks for the flu shot to guarantee the drug companies big profits. It doesn’t look good on drug company stockholder profit/loss statements when unused surplus vaccine has to be dumped after the flu season is over. No, wait! Now public health officials are saying that there is no such thing as the beginning and ending of a flu season: the flu is actually a killer all year round so everybody should get vaccinated all year round! Don’t leave home without it.

The British Medical Journal, The London Times, the BBC and dozens of news sites across Britain and Canada and elsewhere reported on the recent research of vaccine expert, Dr. Tom Jefferson of the respected Cochrane Collaboration, showing that there is little evidence that flu vaccines are effective in tackling seasonal outbreaks of the virus. The Cochrane Collaboration’s website makes it perfectly clear: “The ability of inactivated influenza vaccines to significantly reduce morbidity and mortality in a year from ‘the flu’ is unknown and data confirming influenza vaccine safety are limited, according to a new report in the British Medical Journal. A comprehensive analysis of influenza vaccine studies conducted around the world and published in the medical literature revealed that there is not enough scientific evidence to support annual influenza vaccination of all children, adults and the elderly. This is according to Tom Jefferson, MD, who coordinated the analysis for the Cochrane Collaboration. “There is a big gap between policies promoting annual influenza vaccinations for most children and adults and supporting scientific evidence” said Jefferson, “..given the significant resources involved in annual mass influenza vaccination campaigns, there is urgent need for re-evaluation of these strategies.”

Ninety percent of the flu vaccine this year contains mercury and with tens of millions of unused flu vaccine shots that contain the organic mercury preservative called Thimerosal, these vaccines are literally toxic waste. The most cost effective way of getting rid of this toxic waste is apparently to jab you and anyone else who can be cajoled into getting the flu vaccine. The public is the cheapest disposal site for this toxic waste even if the flu vaccine has to be given way at no charge.

Here is the background on the mercury-based vaccine preservative Thimerosal that doesn’t get into the press. Thimerosal goes back 75 years. It was invented and tested by Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company in 1930. The one study on the substance was done by Eli Lilly on 22 adult patients suffering from meningitis. There was no chance for follow-up to observe long- term effects, because all the patients died. Even if follow-up had been possible, damage to the developing brains of very young children would have remained an unknown. Eli Lilly said it was safe and the medical community just accepted it. After the creation of the FDA, the use of Thimerosal was simply continued. This is an unconscionable oversight failure and calls any safety claim made for Thimerosal into question.

It is a disturbing violation of human rights to push this poison on the public, and the media is very much to blame for this crime. We were all very surprised to see supposedly progressive newspapers and radio stations such as The New Mexican, KUNM and KSFR promoting the ineffective and dangerous flu shot. Shame on all of them for not investigating the claims of public health authorities before parroting them wholesale on an unsuspecting public.

Dr. Stoller is medical director of the Hyberbaric Medical Center of New Mexico (www.hbotnm.com) and can be reached at info@hbotnm.com

More info on the “Influenza Vaccine” here: http://www.cochrane.org/consumers/happenings.htm