NY swine flu vaccine order tabled...for now

October 25, 7:34 PMDC Ethical Issues ExaminerLaura Harrison McBride

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In New York state, it is only ethical to force people to inject themselves with viruses (attenuated or not) swimming in a noxious soup of adjuvant if there’s enough virus soup to ensure everyone in the target population is subjected to forcible medical experimentation.

If not, then it’s ethical in that state to say it’s OK not to vaccinate one’s self against a mild ailment or risk losing one’s job.

The New American reported yesterday that, “A rule that would have forced half of a million healthcare workers in the state of New York to be vaccinated for seasonal and swine influenzas was suspended on October 22 following a series of protests, lawsuits, a restraining order, and an alleged shortage of supplies.”

All of which makes Governor Patterson’s administration even more ethically suspect than it was before. Either the swine flu is so deadly that, without vaccinating everyone, human life as we know it would cease, or it isn’t. Even if it were, it would seem that at the very least, an Act of Congress should be required to force any citizen to undergo medical interventions that they do not desire. Indeed, that should be doubly so for ones such as this; swine flu is, according to many reports, not even as bad as the regular old yearly flu. (In case you missed it, New York, in its infinite wisdom, was trying to force health care workers to get both jabs against their will.)

Indeed, we should not even be discussing this. It is almost impossible to scan the web and not find references to myriad problems with this particular flu vaccine. It was ginned out too fast, the adjuvant used to deliver it are more toxic even than normal, testing was not rigorous enough to prove the safety of a bowl of spaghetti, never mind that the so-called medication that can kill just as easily as protect.

Moreover, the flu, according to an infectious disease expert from Harvard quoted in a different article in The New American, is not particularly virulent. In fact, it is less virulent than other strains that are with us year after year.

A primary reason behind caution toward receiving the swine flu vaccine, besides the possible negative effects of the vaccine itself, is that the H1N1 version of the swine flu is not very deadly in comparison with other variants of the flu.

Dr. Marc Lipsitch of Harvard University, an expert in infectious diseases, said that swine flu death rates have been overblown, and that the effects of the swine flu outbreak so far are comparable to a mild seasonal influenza. ‘Barring any changes in the virus, I think we can say we are in a category one pandemic,’ he noted. The CDC has five pandemic levels, with one being comparable to the seasonal flu. (Emphasis mine.)

Still, there is still the possibility that, under the tenuous leadership of David Patterson (who is filling Spitzer’s shoes with feet of clay), citizens could still be threatened with loss of personal liberties over this…or for that matter, anything else.

The New American concluded that, “The decision to forego mandatory influenza inoculations is a small practical victory for people concerned about big government and the vaccination. But the idea that the state can force private workers to submit to involuntary medical procedures still stands in New York, and this is only a temporary setback.”

Maybe we could convince David Patterson to take some federal dollars to do something stupid and salacious instead of ignorant and unethical; Spitzer’s sexual peccadilloes seem almost attractive in comparison to the wanderings in the ethical wilderness and forays into state control of citizens' bodies of his successor.

Or is it all about the money?