Mounting Debilities and Deaths from H1N1 Vaccine

By Dr. Mercola




Jordan McFarland, a 14-year-old boy from Virginia, is weak and struggling to walk after coming down with a reported case of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) within hours after receiving the H1N1 vaccine for swine flu.

McFarland left Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children in a wheelchair nearly a week after developing severe headaches, muscle spasms and weakness in his legs following a swine flu shot.

Jordan is among the first people in the U.S. to report developing the potentially life-threatening muscle disorder after receiving the H1N1 vaccine this fall. Increased cases of GBS were found in patients who received a 1976 swine flu vaccine.

Likewise, a young woman in France has also been diagnosed with GBS after a swine flu shot. The woman, identified only as a health worker, was diagnosed with GBS six days after she received the swine flu shot, according to the French health ministry

Swedish, Japanese, and Chinese health officials have also reported a number of serious side effects, including deaths of people who received the H1N1 vaccine.

In China, the Ministry of Health announced that the two people, including one teacher from Hunan province, died hours after receiving their inoculations.

Chinese health officials have pulled all vaccines manufactured in the same batch used to inoculate the teacher.

Fifty-four percent of Chinese residents reported in a China Daily survey that they would not get the H1N1 vaccine because of concerns about the shot's safety. Among those inoculated so far in China, more than 1,200 have complained of side effects ranging from sore arms, rashes, and headaches, to anaphylactic shock and sudden drops in blood pressure.


Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Oh, how short our memories are.

It was only four short years ago when President Bush projected that TWO MILLION Americans would die from the bird flu . Guess how many in the US died from bird flu?

Zero, not one person…

I actually wrote a NY Times best seller on this called The Great Bird Flu Hoax.

With the H1N1 flu we have yet another example of how the CDC and the World Health Organization brazenly distort reality.

In addition, they ignore and deny the dangerous and life-threatening side effects of their expensive solution, encouraging innocent people to suffer for the cause of “herd immunity” – the idea that the benefits of vaccinating everyone outweigh the rights of those who are harmed by the vaccine.

And even though reports of severe adverse reactions to the H1N1 vaccine, including deaths, are streaming in from countries around the world, these two governing bodies are continuing their campaign in the U.S. and around the world to promote a vaccine that has not been proven safe – or even necessary.

H1N1 is the Pandemic that Never Materialized Just Like Bird Flu

I’ve already addressed the non-necessity of this vaccine in previous articles revealing that H1N1 is nothing but a hyped-up blip on the radar. In fact, a former Ontario, Canada, chief medical officer of health went on CBC/TV and called H1N1 a “dud” as far as a pandemic goes.

Sadly, you’re not hearing this in the mainstream media, although stunning coverage by CBS Chicago has finally blown the lid off the hype. In an investigation by reporter Sharyl Attkisson, this station recently revealed that only a fraction of reported H1N1 cases actually are H1N1!

Sharyl found this out by doggedly pursuing the numbers, first through a Freedom of Information Act request from the CDC, and then by contacting each state individually when the CDC refused to respond.

The states’ responses were shocking: The vast majority of cases being reported as H1N1 actually are not flu at all – instead, they are some other kind of respiratory infection!

To read about this report and listen to an interview I did with Attkisson on this topic, please see this previous article.

No Vaccine is Completely Safe

This is an important message that needs to get out. But just as important is the safety issue. Because no matter what vaccine officials say in public, they know that no vaccine is completely safe.

They admit this among themselves. For example, a 2001 article in the American Journal of Epidemiology , on how much risk U.S. parents were willing to accept in exchange for a vaccine’s benefits, was prefaced with the statement, “Despite the obvious benefits of vaccination, no vaccine is completely safe.”

What the authors of the article found – the extent of risk that parents are willing to assume to obtain a vaccine’s benefits – is another story for a different day. But the point is, vaccine officials would like you to think that the worst a person could suffer from a vaccine is a sore arm and maybe a headache or a general feeling of tiredness.

The truth is far more sinister: NO VACCINE IS COMPLETELY SAFE. Yet, in public, health officials continue to play H1N1 Russian roulette with people’s lives. For example:

Quebec Woman Dies

At the beginning of November, a 42-year-old Quebec woman died two days after receiving the H1N1 vaccine. But did authorities report it as an adverse reaction to the vaccine?

No! Instead, they attributed her death to complications resulting from the H1N1 virus!

I suppose they did this because she developed flu-like symptoms. What they didn’t say was that flu-like symptoms are also some of the adverse reactions you get from receiving a flu shot.

They also didn’t say that other reactions can include Guillian-Barre Syndrome (GBS) convulsions, syncope (fainting), blood and lymphatic system disorders, and immune disorders such as anaphylaxis, just to name a few – all events that can be life-threatening enough to end in death.

It’s no surprise, then, that when an 80-year-old man died in Quebec after getting his H1N1 vaccine, health officials dismissed that too, saying it was too soon to link his death to the shot.

Instead, they stressed that adverse reactions to this vaccine are “rare” and that “there is no evidence that the vaccine is dangerous”.

But is that true?

When pressed for proof that the vaccine is safe, Canada officials point to GSK’s pre-marketing clinical tests, which show minor reactions in all but four cases. Of those four, only one was believed to be vaccine-related.

What they don’t explain is that the total number of people studied was just 253.

And that puts safety in a whole different perspective, because 1 out of 253 translates into a rate of 395 severe adverse reactions in every 100,000 people!

Safety Data Just Not There

Again, the mainstream press has not picked up on this. However, www.Straight.com , an online news source in Vancouver, not only is trying to get the word out, but also interviewed several health scientists who are alarmed by the terrifying truth about this vaccine.

“Where is the safety data that the government used to license this vaccine?” asked Chris Shaw, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia. Shaw is not allowing his 6-year-old daughter to get the shot.

Calling GSK’s package insert “a shocking document,” Shaw pointed out that there is “no safety data at all for several groups of people,” including pregnant women and certain age groups of children – all of whom are on the front lines for getting this vaccine.

Another scientist, Sucharit Bhakdi, a professor of medical microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, also spoke with Straight. He cited a paper he coauthored in October in the journal Medical Microbiology, where he warned of a possible uptick in heart problems due to mass H1N1 vaccination.

Bhadki also called Canada’s monitoring of the vaccine “flimsy” and pointed out that most vaccine safety studies only follow patients for a few days or months, when most serious vaccine reactions can take years to develop.

But again, you’re not hearing that in the mainstream media.

Vaccine Pulled in Manitoba

In the meantime, GSK’s H1N1 vaccine (which was granted FDA approval for use in the US as recently as November 10) was pulled in Manitoba, Canada after too many life-threatening reactions occurred there.

As reported on CTV/Canada on November 20, the vaccine was triggering so many anaphylactic reactions that health officials and GSK pulled more than 170,000 doses of one batch. They tried to downplay their actions by saying this was merely a “precaution,” perhaps because much of this batch had already been disbursed.They admitted that 36 severe adverse events had been reported, most of which were allergic reactions that occurred within minutes of the shot, and all of which were treated “promptly.”

But they glossed over the fact that one person died from an anaphylactic reaction, saying “the death hasn't been conclusively linked to the flu shot.”

Now, 36 severe allergic reactions may not sound like a lot to some people, but consider this: Manitoba health officials stated that severe allergic reactions from the batch in question was observed at a ratio of 1 in 20,000, which is FIVE TIMES higher than the typical rate of 1 in 100,000.

Turkish Republic Issues Warning

Five days earlier, on November 15, the Turkish Republic had already released an anaphylactic reaction memorandum to its vaccine centers, warning them to watch out for “frightening side effects” to this vaccine. It seems that a doctor there went into a coma after his H1N1vaccination, the Turkish press said.

The doctor was saved in the hospital where he works, and afterward he advised that these shots be given only in hospitals from now on.

Similar events are happening all over the world, but for the most part are not being reported in the mainstream press. For example, did you hear that in Japan, at the end of October, seven of 22,000 medical workers vaccinated with H1N1 had developed side effects, four of them considered serious? Or that 25 patients there had also reported side effects that included vomiting, allergic reactions and diminished consciousness?

No? Well, it’s true.

Ask for the Truth

The mainstream press just keeps plugging the same old propaganda, disregarding what is actually happening.

The truth is, while the mortality rate of swine flu is extremely low, what is happening is that people are dying or suffering life-altering disabilities shortly after receiving the flu vaccine, whether it’s seasonal or H1N1 – and officials accept this as the cost of doing business.

But do you?

I suggest that before you take this shot, ask your doctor to supply you with a package insert from the vaccine, and to discuss all the possible adverse reactions with you. Any health professional should be able to do this – in fact, it is part of something called “informed consent,” which is required for any medical procedure, including each and every vaccination.

But just in case your doctor doesn’t have the insert handy, or has forgotten about informed consent, you can find four of the five inserts here. I predict that what you learn there will not be something you read in your local newspaper.

Adverse Reactions Listed in Package Inserts

Here are just a few adverse reactions listed in the package insert from MedImmune’s Intranasal “live” vaccine (the one you see being administered up children’s noses on TV):

Guillian-Barre syndrome
Exacerbation of symptoms of mitochondrial encephalomyopathy
Gastrointestinal disorders
Immune system disorders, including anaphylactic reaction
The insert includes a disclaimer that it’s not possible to “reliably estimate” the frequency of these reactions or to establish a “causal relationship” to the vaccine, but the point is, they were reported reactions that the manufacture was required to list.

Sanofi Pasteur’s package insert is very interesting too, first, because it uses trials from its seasonal vaccine, Fluzone, as the comparison to its H1N1 vaccine. The reasoning for this is that they are manufactured by the same process, the insert says.

So, with that in mind, know that this insert also says that the total number of children studied for the 2003-2004 formulation of Fluzone was just 19 in the age group 6 to 23 months and only 12 for ages 24 to 36 months old!

Using that data, Sanofi reported only “mild” reactions to its vaccine. In the post-marketing of it, however, the company reported:

Guillian-Barre Syndrome
Anaphylaxis
Convulsions
Vasculitis
And more…
But again, since these reactions were not recorded under a carefully-controlled study with representative numbers – groups of 19 and 12 are hardly reflective of an entire population – the company doesn’t have to consider these reactions as significant or even connected with the vaccine.

This is just plain criminal, especially when you consider that the package inserts also tell you that these vaccines have not been tested for safety in pregnant or nursing women!

What this amounts to is that everyone receiving these vaccines is part of a big public health experiment – one that allows officials to play up the numbers of people who don’t report bad reactions, and to dismiss anything else, including deaths.

The good thing is, the H1N1 vaccine has not been mandated for the general public in the U.S. – yet. So, even if the mainstream press continues to ignore the adverse reactions, you can still be an informed consumer by doing your homework and deciding for yourself whether the risks are worth it to you.

And remember while you’re doing this homework, as I’ve said before, it is the state of your immune system that determines whether or not you will get sick if you come in contact with this virus. The virus itself has no special powers to kill or maim.

More Vaccines – and Their Adverse Effects – Coming

Learning everything you can about vaccines will become increasingly essential in the coming months and years, as vaccines are becoming all the rave, and more lucrative than drugs.

The pharmaceutical industry, with government officials’ blessings, are planning to roll out vaccines for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and AIDS. They’re even working on vaccines for addictions to cocaine and nicotine, as if they were infectious diseases!

Then again, we’re talking about neither logic nor true medicine here. We’re talking about dollars and cents and satisfying shareholders.

In fact, as reported by MSNBC, vaccines now are viewed as “a crucial path to growth,” due to lagging prescription drug sales. The article goes on to say:

“Investment in partnerships and other deals to develop and manufacture vaccines has been on a tear — and accelerating since the swine flu pandemic began. Billions in government grants are bringing better, faster ways to develop and manufacture vaccines. Rising worldwide emphasis on preventive health care, plus the advent of the first multibillion-dollar vaccines, have further boosted their appeal.

While prescription drug sales are forecast to rise by a third in five years, vaccine sales should double, from $19 billion last year to $39 billion in 2013, according to market research firm Kalorama Information. That's five times the $8 billion in vaccine sales in 2004.

Success on some vaccines in development, particularly for Alzheimer's and AIDS, likely would bring billions a year in sales.”

Emphasis on preventive health care… my foot.

This is one of the most crucial problems with our health care system. Many conventionally trained physicians, not to mention politicians and elected health officials, have NO IDEA what preventive health care is all about.

Vaccines certainly do not qualify.

Just five years ago, pharmaceutical companies abandoned the vaccine business in droves. Now, with the fresh lure of massive profits, companies are flocking back. Multi-million dollar government grants are already being used to test out new technology for the next pandemic, including the “holy grail of flu vaccines” – a universal flu vaccine that targets some part of the flu virus that doesn’t change year to year.

I, for one, can wait.