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[social_buttons]A cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington recommends avoiding the flu shot and taking vitamin D instead. Donald Miller, MD, says “Seventy percent of doctors do not get a flu shot.”
Health officials say that every winter 5–20 percent of the population catches the flu, 200,000 people are hospitalized, and 36,000 people will die from it. The National Vital Statistics Reports compiled by the CDC show that only 1,138 deaths a year occur due to influenza alone, and more than 34,000 of the “36,000″ flu deaths are what officials estimate are “influenza-associated” pneumonic and cardiovascular deaths.
There is also a lack of evidence that young children benefit from flu shots. A systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006;1:CD004879).
A randomized trial found that the incidence of influenza in infants whose mothers had a flu shot during their pregnancy was 4%. The incidence of flu in infants whose mothers did not have a flu shot was 10%. (NEJM 2008;359:) In the study, flu shots reduced the relative risk of influenza illness in infants by a seemingly impressive 63%, yet only 6 out of 100 infants actually benefited from the shot. The other 94 received no benefit – 4 got influenza anyway – and all are at risk from being harmed by the vaccine, particularly from the mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde in it. – Donald Miller, MD
Flu shots contain a number of substances which may have adverse effects on health, especially for children:
- Mercury: Two-thirds of the vaccines made for the 2008–09 flu season contain full-dose thimerosal, an organomercury compound, 49% mercury by weight. It is used to disinfect the vaccine. Each of these flu shots contain 25 micrograms of mercury, a mercury content of 50,000 part per billion, 250 times more than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit. Mercury is a neurotoxin, with a toxicity level 1,000 times that of lead.
- Formaldehyde, a known cancer-causing agent is used to inactivate the virus.
- Aluminum, added to promote an antibody response,is a neurotoxin that may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease.
- Other additives in the flu vaccine include:
- Triton X-100 (a detergent)
- Polysorbate 80
- carbolic acid
- ethylene glycol (antifreeze)
- gelatin
- various antibiotics such as neomycin, streptomycin, and gentamicin that can cause allergic reactions
So why does the CDC push the flu shot every year?
The CDC’s 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations each year on who should be vaccinated. Almost all the ACIP members who make these recommendations have financial ties to the vaccine industry.
Hmmm… Big money influencing public health policy.
The CDC put out a 7 part Recipe to increase demand for the flu vaccine:
- Influenza’s arrival coincides with immunization “season” (i.e., when people can take action)
- Dominant strain and/or initial cases of disease are:
– Associated with severe illness and/or outcomes
– Occur among people for whom influenza is not generally
perceived to cause serious complications (e.g., children,
healthy adults, healthy seniors)
– In cities and communities with significant media outlets - Medical experts and public health authorities publicly (e.g., via media) state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)–and urge influenza vaccination.
- The combination of ‘2’ and ‘3’ result in: Significant media interest and attention, Framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as “very severe,” “more severe than last or past years,” “deadly”)
- Continued reports (e.g., from health officials and media) that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people – helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.
- Visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) andpeople getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce)
- References to, and discussions, of pandemic influenza
Vaccination demand, particularly among people who don’t routinely receive an annual influenza vaccination, is related to heightened concern, anxiety, and worry. For example:
- A perception or sense that many people are falling ill
- A perception or sense that many people are experiencing bad illness
- A perception or sense of vulnerability to contracting and experiencing bad illness.
- Some component of success stems from media stories and information that create motivating (i.e., high) levels of concern and anxiety about influenza.
Great… more fear selling more vaccines.
Dr. Miller’s stance on Vitamin D and health:
The U.S. government and its citizens currently spend $2,000 billion dollars ($2 trillion) on “health care,” i.e., sickness care, each year. The cost of taking a 5,000 IU supplement of vitamin D every day for a year is $22.00. The cost for 300 million Americans taking this supplement would be $6.6 billion dollars. The number and variety of diseases that vitamin D at this dose could prevent, starting with a 50 percent reduction in cancer, is mind-boggling. If everyone took 5,000 IU/day of vitamin D, the U.S. “health care” industry would shrink. It would no longer account for 16 percent of the gross domestic product.
The increased number of deaths that occur in winter, largely from pneumonia and cardiovascular diseases, are much more likely due to vitamin D deficiency than to an increased prevalence of serologically-positive influenza virus (which also results from vitamin D deficiency).
Read the full flu vaccine article at LewRockwell.com
And another doctor is against everyone getting the flu vaccine:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/15ycdbSsnAU]
P.S. Due to the large number of comments accusing me of being irresponsible, I am adding this caveat: Ask your health provider (MD, Naturopath, or other professional) about flu shots, and make your decision based on that. This blog does not dispense medical advice. The point of the article is to show that there are conflicting opinions about vaccines, flu shots, and other medical treatments.
Image: NathanF at Flickr under Creative Commons License
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I’d be interested in hearing from others who’ve regularly had annual flu shots, then decided for whatever reason to not have one and then gotten a real bad flu. Well that’s me. After years of getting annual flu shots, I made a decision this year after reading all the cons against it to not get one. Now I’m into my 8th day of having the worst flu I’ve every had, and by the way, I take vitamin D (1000 units/day) regularly. I have a keen interest in natural medicine, but this flu shot thing has really got me thinking about maybe I’ve made the wrong decision. I pretty sure I’m going to get one next year.
Check out this link for more information on flu shots. Mary Tocco has researched flu shots for many, many years and has great video clips on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=dr+mary+tocco&aq=f
If the link doesn’t work, then go to http://www.youtube.com and search “Mary Tocco”.
Our family chooses not to get the flu shots, and we never get the flu. I have friends that get the flu shot and almost always get the flu. It’s almost humerous to watch them make that decision year after year. I choose to watch what I eat, and keep my immune system strong that way
Jeremy it is easy to make worthless comments (in November 2008) and with the wave of your hand think your ridicule is doing away with valuable information. Derek Markham in reporting on the article by Dr Donald Miller is not posting the illogical and non-scientific hypothisis of anybody. Dr Donald Miller is a cardiac surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle VA Medical Center. Dr Miller also is not an individual prone to erratic thoughts without any basis in fact. Dr Miller’s views are based in scientific facts about vitamin D. Dr Miller’s article is as much an article about vitamin D as it is an article about flu vaccinations. It just happens that a very direct link between flu and vitamin D has been discovered so Dr Miller entitled his article “Avoid Flu Shots, Take Vitamin D Instead.”
Just a few minutes of real research into vitamin D would reveal that a wealth of information is now coming out about the value of vitamin D. I have been researching about vitamin D for quite a while now and have read some fourty scientific studies on many aspects of health impacted by vitamin D. Many of these studies have been written just within the past year to two years so Dr Miller’s views are at the cutting edge of current research.
Rather than give you links to fourty studies on vitamin D I will give you the link to an article about vitamin D and its relationship to the flu. Anyone who has had the flu or has received a flu shot will be very interested in the article.
http://www.whale.to/a/cannell.html
The article linked above is entitled “Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D” by Dr John J. Cannell, MD. This is the kind of information that prompted Dr Miller’s article. Since this article was published Sep 15, 2006 Dr Cannell and many other researchers have further validated the theory Dr Cannell is introducing with this article.
“On the Epidemiology of Influenza,” a more in depth article about Dr Cannell’s research about vitamin D and its relationship to the flu was published in the Virology Journal, February 5, 2008. Here is a link to that article published in Virology Journal 2008, 5:29.
http://www.virologyj.com/content/5/1/29
I could give you many links to many articles and research studies but instead I am going to give you a link to the Vitamin D Council web site.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
Anyone who is really interested can go to this web site and find a wealth of articles, studies, and research about vitamain D, the flu, flu vaccines and many other areas of interest. If you have a child with Autism, Asthma, or Diabetes you will be especially interested to read what Dr Cannell and other researchers have discovered about vitamin D, wintertime exposure to the sun, and the exploding incidence of these three serious health conditions.
There is a wealth of information available about Vitamin D and it’s ability to keep a person safe from the flu virus, and even the common cold. You will find an overwhelming amount of info regarding the benefits of flu shots, as well. Most of that information comes from the companies which produce the drugs. For instance, a South Korean Veterinarian has developed a shot for the current H1N1 virus but it has recieved no media attention. Why not? I believe there is too much money to be made by other companies. He offered it up for free. Why the inattention?
I guess there is no corruption. There is no deception. Everyone can be trusted. Two planes knocked down three buildings in NYC in one day.
Conspiracy theorists, of which I am one, at least ask questions. Those who trust and do as they are told, and believe what they told, have a name as well. Sheeple.
Sleep tight.
Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51913.php
snip>
All of the patients on my ward had been taking 2,000 units of vitamin
D every day for several months or longer. Could that be the reason
none of my patients caught the flu? I then contacted Professors
Reinhold Vieth and Ed Giovannucci and told them of my observations.
They immediately advised me to collect data from all the patients in
the hospital on 2,000 units of vitamin D, not just the ones on my
ward, to see if the results were statistically significant. It turns
out that the observations on my ward alone were of borderline
statistical significance and could have been due to chance alone.
Administrators at our hospital agreed, and are still attempting to
collect data from all the patients in the hospital on 2,000 or more
units of vitamin D at the time of the epidemic.
Four years ago, I became convinced that vitamin D was unique in the
vitamin world by virtue of three facts. First, it’s the only known
precursor of a potent steroid hormone, calcitriol, or activated
vitamin D. Most other vitamins are antioxidants or co-factors in
enzyme reactions. Activated vitamin D – like all steroid hormones -
damasks the genome, turning protein production on and off, as your
body requires. That is, vitamin D regulates genetic expression in
hundreds of tissues throughout your body. This means it has as many
potential mechanisms of action as genes it damasks.
Second, vitamin D does not exist in appreciable quantities in normal
human diets. True, you can get several thousand units in a day if you
feast on sardines for breakfast, herring for lunch and salmon for
dinner. The only people who ever regularly consumed that much fish are
peoples, like the Inuit, who live at the extremes of latitude. The
milk Americans depend on for their vitamin D contains no naturally
occurring vitamin D; instead, the U.S. government requires fortified
milk to be supplemented with vitamin D, but only with what we now know
to be a paltry 100 units per eight-ounce glass.
The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the
skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and
governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans
made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made
it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We
just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our diet. If we
don’t expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D
from dietary supplements.
The third way vitamin D is different from other vitamins is the
dramatic difference between natural vitamin D nutrition and the modern
one. Today, most humans only make about a thousand units of vitamin D
a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderly or African
Americans, make much less than that. How much did humans normally
make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summer sun will
trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into the circulation
of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units, that’s the
single most important fact about vitamin D. Compare that to the 100
units you get from a glass of milk, or the several hundred daily units
the U.S. government recommend as “Adequate Intake.” It’s what we call
an “order of magnitude” difference.>end snip
I don’t know how effective vitamin D would be in preventing flu, but it does help maintain your body’s circadian rhythms and boosts one’s immune system.
I have been on Vitamin D for over a year. I believe in the vitamin D because I have not been sick at all. As the flu hits, I believe I am in better condition because of Vitamin D.
I will never get another flu shot since I had an adverse effect in the 80s and was sick for 2 weeks. There will always be another virus or bacteria that some people will get and some will die. The herd will always be culled one way or another–happens to every species. Especially one that has too many members for the environment to support. I’d rather see money spent on keeping the population down world wide. Instead, people watch TV shows that glorify having 8 or 17, 18 kids. It’s sad when people die, but that’s life.
My grandmother lived in the country and my mother and her brothers all lived in louisiana and never ever got a flue shot this is over 100 years ago….my people hardly went to the doctor….they got sick and got better..did they need a flu shot…??
I have been having some CFS issues lately. So i’ll be increasing my vitamine D intake and getting the “flu mist” form of the vaccine. I think they say that one is safer.
I’m surprised at some of the reactions to the information given by Dr. Donald Miller. Of course, any intelligent person would want to sift through ALL the information from many sources before making a decision. I checked Dr. Millers’ credentials and they are impressive: Professor, surgeon, Dartmouth, Harvard educated. Dr. Miller provides ADDITIONAL information for people to make informed decisions. In fact, it gives people an opportunity to check facts on both sides of the issues and to ask appropriate questions of their physicians. The Hippocractic oath state, “…never do harm…” depending upon which translation. If they don’t have the data for you, then continue to investigate! When patients start asking their doctors tough questions, and look on them as partners in their health, we’ll all benefit. Perhaps that is why you can now find vaccines without thimerosal today. Isn’t that what taking personal responsibility for your health and partnering with your health care providers in achieving optimum health should be about? The more information a person has, the more likely he/she is able to make the best decision for himself/herself and family. My experience with doctors has been that they welcome the patients’ input and want to dialogue about prevention, treatment, health options, etc.
I agree with the Vitamin D principle – BUT your analysis of the flu vaccine’s components is shrill and hysterical.
I have no idea who you chose to list biologically irrelevant agents such as Polysorbate 80 (used widely throughout medicine, BTW) and then place comments such as “detergent” and “antifreeze”. Ethylene glycol is indeed used in high concentrations as car antifreeze, but that doesn’t mean low concentrations are dangerous.
Medicine 101 says that the “dose makes the poison”. Common table salt will kill you if I make you consume or inject enough of it; but removing even a small percentage of it from your body will make you die a horrible death. I’m sure if I injected 400,000IU of Vitamin D into you, you would die terribly as well.
So let’s take ANOTHER look at this list of ingredients:
- Thimerosal – agreed, organomercury compounds are to be avoided on general principle, and are a source of concern to me. However the fact still stands that adults given thousands of times the organomercury dose have exhibited no noticeable ill-effects. You consume organomercury compounds in foods, water and air every single day – your body CAN get rid of low amounts, and does. The point is just not to cross the threshold.
FYI, many studies done on this subject have been unanimous in finding no causal link between vaccine-strength thimerosal and illness. Howewer, thousands of people die each year from not being immunised, partly from their fear of “mercury in my injection”. Oh, and evidence is also mounting that each ‘flu infection you get aggravates longterm congnitive and biological decline. Which is worse, d’ya think?
- Gelatine?! Oh no! It’s NEVER in this vaccine… what, you mean gelatin i.e. collagen, keratine and proteins of which most of your skin and body is made? Shock! Horror!
- Various antibiotics… yup, can cause an allergic reaction, but dude I would certainly prefer my injection NOT to have unknown nasties in it, wouldn’t you? Or are you the type of guy that likes to inject with a rusty needle too? Of course, we could choose to fear the (very) low risk of a reaction, but then see the possible consequences in my point above. FYI my mother is one of the most antibiotic-allergic people around; gets lots of vaccines as she travels a whole lot; and she hasn’t had an issue yet…
- A detergent? Oh no! Sounds creepy, until you realise that you’re using the word “detergent” in its chemical meaning and not the popular meaning. No, it doesn’t mean you have Tide in it. It means you have a surfactant in it. FYI your body is adept at making “detergents” for its own use as part of normal functioning. In this case, the “detergent” is a very commonly used product widely regarded as biologically inert.
- Ditto the surfactant Polysorbate-80.
- Carbolic acid… so harmless that even homeopaths recommend it as a solution!
So… apart from the use of thimerosal, your house of cards just came crashing down. Dude, I am totally in agreement about your general idea… but your argument is not helped when you abuse buzzwords and sow misinformation.
Knowledge is power; fearmongering is just fearmongering.
I don’t think this provides an accurate risk/benefit analysis of vaccines. And anyone that goes on about HIV NOT causing AIDS loses me. That person is not credible in any fashion whatsoever.
However, what most disturbs me about this blog–where is the evidence that vitamin D3 prevents flu? I’m all for use of micronutrients and use them. But I want evidence, not just unsubstantiated claims, particularly from an AIDS denialist.
Hi, I am not a dr., but I think the dr. is right, maybe then I will get the flu shot when it is properly researched and not loaded with so much mercury and additives.
Rationale, why is CDC pushing everyone to get the flu shot?
I think it is about money and not the protection of anyone. I think someone or something has panic the world governments and now everyone is suppose to get the swine flu shot. I think the public should write to their government officials and tell them to do a better job on researching the flu shot before it is introduced to children, young adults.
I am concerned citizen thinking we are doing more harm than good, so here is another scenario from me; maybe the swine flu shot is going to make a generation of retards, so they will follow the government’s agenda. Anyways that is what I think, so do not take the flu shot, because there is already too much additives in our bodies and the swine flu shot in our bodies will just overload you and me and make us more at risk of getting sick.
Ben a concerned citizen
in reviewing the comments, let anyone who wants a ’shot’ to get one,,,then they are ‘protected’ right? So, they should not be upset that I will not assume the 100% risk when I decide not to put toxins and who knows what else in my body or my family’s bodies, VITAMIN D makes a lot of sense and the CDC recently admitted that is does help prevent flu furthermore:there is big money in the ’shots’ do not kid your self!
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