Dr. Joseph Mercola, osteopathic physician, natural health practitioner, and founder of Mercola.com, a leading natural health website, has long warned against flu vaccination. As an unprecedented effort to vaccinate against H1N1 (swine) flu as well as seasonal flu marches forward, we felt it valuable to give readers a sampling of Dr. Mercola’s diverse concerns. The following are excerpted from Dr. Mercola’s articles at www.mercola.com, where the full articles with references and additional commentary are available.
Is the H1N1 Vaccine Really Safe?
While symptoms of H1N1 flu and seasonal flu are virtually identical, the H1N1 vaccine is showing signs of being quite different from the seasonal flu shot. There are factors involved with this vaccine that are brand new, which means it will be highly experimental and unpredictable.
Although both are produced using antiquated 50-year-old technology that involves injecting the virus into eggs and allowing it to grow, the virus being used to produce the swine flu vaccine has been found to reproduce much more slowly in eggs than the ordinary flu virus. And according to a separate CBS News report, the US government is now funding newer unprecedented technologies to speed up vaccine production, including one that involves growing the virus inside animal cells and another that involves flu proteins grown inside insect cells. The risks of these, and the current fast-tracked swine flu vaccine, are truly unknown at this time. Unfortunately, many people will not realize that when they line up for the swine flu vaccine, they are in fact accepting their role as test subjects. GlaxoSmithKline [maker of one form of the vaccine] has actually stated, “Clinical trials will be limited, due to the need to provide the vaccine to governments as quickly as possible. Additional studies will therefore be required and conducted after the vaccine is made available.”
Seasonal Flu Vaccine Concerns
The flu strains selected for developing a [seasonal] vaccine are cultivated in chick embryos for several weeks before being inactivated with formaldehyde, which is a known cancer-causing agent. Then they’re preserved with thimerosal, which is 49 percent mercury by weight. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the majority of flu vaccines contain thimerosal. Some contain as much as 25 micrograms of mercury per dose. This means that it may contain more than 250 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit for mercury. By now, most people are well aware that children and fetuses are most at risk of damage from this neurotoxin, as their brains are still developing. Yet the CDC still recommends that children over six months, and pregnant women, receive the flu vaccine each year.
In addition to mercury, flu vaccines also contain other toxic or hazardous ingredients like aluminum (a neurotoxin that has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease), Triton X-100 (a detergent), phenol (carbolic acid), ethylene glycol (antifreeze), Octoxinol 9 (a vaginal spermicide), and others.
Serious reactions to the flu vaccine include, but are not limited to: life-threatening allergies to various ingredients; Guillain-Barre Syndrome (a severe paralytic disease that is fatal in about 1 in 20 cases); encephalitis (brain inflammation); neurological disorders; and thrombocytopenia (a serious blood disorder).
Vaccine Makers Protected
The last swine flu vaccination campaign that took place in 1976 led to thousands of lawsuits. Damage claims totaled $1.3 billion. The vaccine claimed 25 lives and hundreds of previously healthy young adults were crippled from Guillain-Barré Syndrome. The swine flu itself claimed one life.
You may already know that since the 1980s, vaccine makers have been protected against lawsuits stemming from the use of childhood vaccines. Now, for the first time, they can wash their hands of any hazards stemming from a flu vaccine. The 2006 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (the PREP Act) allows the DHHS Secretary to invoke almost complete immunity from liability for manufacturers of vaccines and drugs used to combat a declared public health emergency. The PREP Act removes your right to a trial jury unless you can provide clear evidence of willful misconduct that resulted in death or serious physical injury. Hence, it’s in their best interest to know as little as possible about the adverse reactions it might cause.
Most Deaths Are From Pneumonia
The CDC and mainstream media use the statistic that 36,000 people die from [seasonal] influenza every year. Interestingly, that number has remained static. However, the truth is that less than 1,000 people actually die from type A or type B influenza. The other 35,000 die from pneumonia. This is actually clearly listed on the CDC’s own website, yet virtually everyone ignores this fact. The actual number of people who died from the flu in 2005 (this is the most recent data that’s available) was 1,806. The remainder was caused by pneumonia. In 2004, there were just 1,100 actual flu deaths.
