Words Are Medicine » vaccination

A Real Resistance to The Swine Flu

Judith Acosta — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:19:13 +0000

Some people are finally just saying "no." One-third of the nurses in Britain have refused the vaccine even though it might mean losing their jobs. The internet is literally buzzing with resistance of the right kind–finally. And people are getting smart.

They have also had it with the Viral Fear mongers.

In Geneva on September 4^th (Reuters), the World Health Organization (WHO) said it has only counted 2,837 deaths worldwide, and that it has not posed as serious a threat as they had feared.

Swine flu, which is not that different from ordinary flu, has not even approached the levels of exposure or danger we somehow go through every year without so much as a shudder.

Ordinary seasonal influenza kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people globally.

Yet, the media can't resist. They continue to issue predictions of dreadful suffering and worldwide panic, such as the one Stephanie Nebehay reported: “The virus could eventually infect 2 billion people or a third of the world’s population.”

Or the way Dr. T. Aloudat, Health Officer at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, believed he had to alert us to the awful possibilities: “We do have an emergency on our hands, an emergency of a scale different from what we have seen before in the modern era.”

Yet, according to Doctors Mullane and Hartfrom Danbury, CT., there have been reports that the H1N1 virus may actually be “immune” to Tamiflu, the drug most commonly prescribed by allopathic physicians.

As a result, even die-hard allopathic physicians are beginning to consider alternatives.

The Dean of Research and Education at the Beijing Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Mr. Tu Zhitao, stated, “We have found that Tamiflu is not sufficient….it weakens the body and has adverse effects on body tolerance. This treatment [the herbal combination]…works to build the body’s resistance.”

As it turns out, what we need to both resist the flu and the viral fear are the very same things: sleep, good food, exercise, fresh air and some common sense. For those who know and have experienced the benefits of classical homeopathy, so much the better.

Taking care of ourselves, having meaning and purpose beyond the accumulation of gadgets and clothes that will be old news in 6 months, being accountable to ourselves for our own wellbeing—these things may be far more important than any vaccination.

WHO’s Not So Serious about Swine.

So Why Are We?

Wasn’t it Daffy Duck who used to say, “So, what’s all the hubbub, bub?” And why isn’t any one asking this simple question about the H1N1?

What is all the hubbub?

According to a report from Geneva on September 4th (Reuters), the World Health Organization (WHO) said it has only counted 2,837 deaths worldwide, and that it has not posed as serious a threat as they had feared. The U.N. agency is continuing to monitor the novel strain, but it has not detected the mutation which would signal a turn for the worse.

Ordinary seasonal influenza kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people globally. From WHO reports, the H1N1 is not all that different than the standard flu, producing only mild symptoms in most people. The only real danger is to those whose immune systems are already compromised with respiratory or cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or infections such as Lyme disease.

Despite these statements, they are continuing to issue dire warnings in the media, such as the one Stephanie Nebehay reported: “The virus could eventually infect 2 billion people or a third of the world’s population.”

Or the prediction by Dr. Tamman Aloudat, a senior health officer at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: “We do have an emergency on our hands, an emergency of a scale different from what we have seen before in the modern era.”

Why are we still being swept away by Viral Fear?

According to a report on RT.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4SmFxyust0), it seems the tides are starting to turn.

One-third of the nurses in England have refused to take the Swine Flu vaccine. And according to a report in Health Day News, some experts are expressing their trepidation about the U.S. plan to implement a vaccination program of unprecedented scale—600 million doses of an experimental drug that is borne in a solution of mercury (thimerosal).

The internet is swarming with protests about proposed forced vaccinations.

Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the U.S. Institute of Medicine and author of The Epidemic That Never Was, talked about the last time the U.S. backed a pharmaceutical company’s vaccination campaign.

In 1976, the government decided to vaccinate 43 million people. Not only did the outbreak never make it out of the barracks at Fort Dix, N.J., where it started and eventually stalled, but many immunized came down with a rare neurodegenerative condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome. Twenty five of those people died.

“There will be no way to be certain [whether the immunizations will be safe] until trails this summer,” Dr. Fineberg said.

According to Elyssa Hart, ND and James Mullane, ND, from Danbury, CT., there have been reports that the H1N1 virus may actually be “immune” to Tamiflu, the drug most commonly prescribed by allopathic physicians. They have dedicated their practice to prevention, including boosting the immune systems of their patients with diet, rest, exercise, and Chinese herbs.

America’s resistance to building its own resistance is a curiosity to say the least. Why are we more willing to be afraid (very afraid!), to be chronically unhealthy, to be unfit and unhappy than get up and take care of ourselves? Does the cookie aisle in Wal-Mart really have that much power over us that we’re willing to take a vaccine that is useless at best and lethal at worst rather than eat right, sleep right, and move a little more?

People—all of us, both healthy and unhealthy, albeit to different degrees—have pathologies and quirks. None of us can afford to throw stones. But it seems to me that there is a disproportionate amount of Americans who are addicted to their own fear and discomfort. They know no other way of relating to the people around them or to themselves but to be afraid and unwell.

The other day a patient came in with a chronic injury and did not want treatment of any kind for it. She said, “I need my pain. I need to know what I’m feeling.” In our discussion, however, which took some time, it evolved into something a bit more complicated. As a very young child, the only way in which she ever received any attention at home was when she was severely ill. Otherwise, her career-driven parents were too busy to care for her.

Is our culture like this? Are we attached to our own fears, our own illnesses, our own sufferings to the extent that we know no other way to function?

And why are we so afraid, so easily terrorized by rumors and suggestions?

As I explained in another Opednews piece (Viral Fear: The Disease of the American Soul, 2007), we live in a place of greater comfort and security than any other in recorded history. The overwhelming majority of us sleep in beds, have food and drink in our kitchens ready for the taking, can get rid of most of our discomforts with a few thin tablets of Tylenol or Advil. Yet we act as if we had nothing, no protection, no help in view, no future. We grasp at whatever crumb of security being tossed to us.

We’re thoroughly afraid of everything: of being alone, of being intimate, of being too skinny, of being too fat, of being too young, of being too old, of having too little, of having too much, of changing too fast and of being too still. We’re afraid of being alive and we’re terrified of dying. The irony is that our fears are precisely commensurate with the distortion in our perceived needs. The more we feel we need, the more afraid we are of not having it, being it or doing it. The more afraid we are, the more we need. And so it goes.

Primun Non Nocere: First Do No Harm

Judith Acosta — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:53:25 +0000

To do no harm. This is what every physician must swear upon graduating. But is this possible?

What Does Do-No-Harm Require?

One, beyond the obvious deliberate misdeeds or malicious negligence being called to “do no harm” requires at the very least a reasonable skepticism. This means that a physician—or any professional providing a treatment, especially a pharmaceutical one—should question whether that treatment has the right stuff to do what it's touted to do.

Viral Fear

As a psychotherapist and homeopath in NM, I am presented with a fair amount of anxiety on a broad range of topics from the people who come to see me. However, they are usually afraid of far more than they should be and do far less about the things they should be afraid of. People are afraid of ordinary household germs as if a serial killer were hiding in their basement, but they (as we saw recently) stand on rocky shorelines as hurricane-force waves batter the boulders they're standing on and drag them out to sea. We still don't watch what we're buying or what we're eating. And even more importantly, we take vaccines and pills as if they were harmless candy.

Read The Ingredients!

Particularly when we consider what vaccines are made of. Most Americans know about Thimerosal. But few know that aluminum is now being added to a number of vaccines to make them “work better.” The FDA has made the limits of ingestion clear on its website which documents aluminum toxicity from the dextrose patients receive in hospitals when they are hooked up to IV's. No studies have been done to determine what the effects of the aluminum in vaccines are, especially when given to infants.

The American Academy of Pediatrics did publish a policy statement in 1996 that alerted us to the fact that aluminum is a known danger to human neurology (and we can assume to other mammals as well) and that the threshold of aluminum is far lower than what is currently being used. But that doesn't seem to hold any sway over the pharmaceutical companies who are not only selling the product but funding the research.

Gardasil, the latest must-have vaccine for young women who are now being told to be afraid of cervical cancer, has just been forced to update their label warning to include expanded risks for those “immunized.” These include seizures, miscarriages, genital warts, and Guillain-Barre syndrome, an auto-immune disease that can result in permanent paralysis.

The Current State of Alarm

The only real virus we need to pay attention to, it seems, is the Viral Fear being seeded on every form of media. We are terribly worried about contracting and dying from the flu, but not terribly concerned about the proposed prophylactic treatments or how safe they are.

The US Centers for Disease Control released its latest statistics on the “novel flu” this past July. While it was apparently fairly transmissible with 37,246 cases reported, the death toll was only 211. That's 0.56%. And one researcher notes (jsonline.com) that the actual mortality rate may in fact be much lower than the CDC figures because almost every flu death is reported, while many illnesses that could be swine flu are going unreported. There is currently no testing for non-fatal swine or novel flu.

While there is a building demand amongst pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, certain universities (which are amply funded by pharmaceutical companies) and public health officials for vaccination, there simply aren't very good reasons for the panic and many, many reasons NOT to vaccinate. (See ThinkTwice.)

For true protection, many Americans might consider their diets, their sleep and rest habits, their exercise levels, the toxins they regularly ingest that inhibit immune response and lower their vitality,not to mention the drugs they take that make them more susceptible to infection of all kinds. In fact, lately the evidence seems to be mounting in favor of a very simple, very inexpensive, and very effective prophylaxis: Vitamin D. (But that is yet another article.)

The fact that no one speaks about is that there's nothing to suggest that these vaccines and chemicals are in any way helping us. One study reported by Science Daily (10/2007) stated that the flu vaccine was not associated with reduced hospitalizations or even outpatient visits among young children. Furthermore, vaccine effectiveness couldn't be demonstrated for any season, age or setting. Were there some specific risk groups that were statistically safer for the vaccine? No.

True Protection: Legal Immunity

Last month the Associated Press reported that a legal immunity will be set for the makers of swine flu vaccines so that any profits which proceed from making the vaccine will be unencumbered from any future claims. Currently, those profits are nearing $2-billion prior to distribution and medical training, which will bring with it other costs and, naturally, other profits.

There seems to be little to say after that, except –permaneo exsisto vulnero. At least one group of us will be solidly protected and free from harm.

More on Primun Non Nocere: First Do No Harm