Ron Heflin/AP
Patients, and even physicians, could understandably attribute a miscarriage, autoimmune disease or even sudden death to a complication from a recently administered vaccination. But while understandable, relating a serious health problem to a vaccine--especially a flu vaccine--is often a mistake.
This is the conclusion of a worldwide analysis of life-threatening conditions and fatalities among potential swine flu vaccine recipients and people who had not received vaccines published in the online version of the The Lancet on Oct. 31.
A large group of infectious disease and vaccine specialists analyzed public health records and hospital data to determine normally occurring rates of major health events such as deaths due to heart attack or stroke, new-onset Guillain-Barre syndrome, spontaneous abortions and eyesight-damaging optic neuritis. Among their findings were that "in the UK, 21.5 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome and 5.75 cases of sudden death would be expected to occur within 6 weeks of vaccination as coincident background cases."
The group also determined that 397 of every 1 million pregnant U.S. women could be expected to have a miscarriage within of 24 hours of receiving a vaccine against the H1N1 influenza virus.
Rates of health problems above those found in the analysis would point to the swine flu vaccine as a causative agent. As study coauthor and Cincinnati Children's Hospital researcher Steven Black told the Associated Press, "People die every day for lots of reasons, but we tend not to think about that when a mass immunization campaign is happening, We're not saying we don't need to look at vaccine safety, but let's do it judiciously."
Summarizing what the data signified, University of Cambridge risk analyst David Spiegelhalter told ABC News, "If millions of people are vaccinated then just by chance we can expect bad things to happen to some of them, whether it's a diagnosis of autism or a miscarriage. By being ready with the expected numbers of chance cases, perhaps we can avoid over-reaction to sad, but coincidental, events"
Speigelhalter also wondered, "Why don't we ever see a headline 'Man wins lottery after flu jab'?"
To date, more than 5,000 people around the world have died as a result of complication from swine flu; at least 114 of these people have been children in the United States. No problems beyond mild injection reactions have been reported by or for individuals who have received the H1N1 vaccine.
Tidewater cities, like most localities throughout the nation, currently have a shortage of swine flu vaccine. Federal and state officials are promising increased supplies of the vaccine by mid- to late November, however. To find out where swine flu vaccinations will become available, click over to the Virginia Department of Health.
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P&G may have to pull vitamin C flu treatment off store shelves The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned Procter & Gamble that it believes the company is illegally promoting Vick's DayQuil Plus Vitamin C and NyQuil Plus Vitamin C as unapproved and mislabeled nonprescription drugs. P&G claims it is operating within federal laws and guidelines in marketing the vitamin-fortified cold and flu treatments with package text such as, "Fortify Your Household for the Cold and Flu Season. . . . Vitamin C: It won't cure a cold, but vitamin C can help blunt its effects. Aim for 500 mg a day." The FDA noted that peer-reviewed studies have failed to prove vitamin C's effectiveness as a cold preventive or treatment. P&G has until Nov. 16 to respond to the agency's warning, which comes as part of wider initiatives to keep unapproved and possibly harmful flu treatments off the U.S. market and to ensure that all medications have scientific support for their purported effects. |
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Comments
What a shame that you have to scare the public with this article. It is much better to be vaccinated than to get the disease and end up in a hospital with hugh bills that are preventable.
Ann,
Reread my article. Every sentence is aimed at reducing people's concerns about vaccinations, at encouraging people to receive vaccines, and at making the case for flu and swine flu vaccines being much safer than contracting any strain of influenza. I honestly have no idea how you could read my article and interpret it in any other ways.
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