I love the Lancet. I have my own subscription, and it isn’t cheap. However, the Lancet took a cheap shot last week, when it retracted a paper on autism by Wakefield et al. immediately following a ruling by the UK’s General Medical Counsel. The Lancet has been embroiled in controversy (and repeatedly tried to extract…

I was hoping to avoid joining the Andrew Wakefield/Lancet fray, but so many inaccurate statements have been published in the last few days that I had to jump in. There is clearcut evidence for a syndrome of brain injury (and sometimes death) occurring after measles vaccine (and not after rubella or mumps vaccines). Who discovered…

From the UK’s Daily Telegraph, excerpts from a story about Australia’s new push to use up its swine flu stockpile. The multidose vaccine vials need to be used within 24 hours of opening. DOCTORS have been told to issue the swine flu vaccine throughout summer in order to deplete the Government’s stockpile before millions of…

A report claiming “dangerously low” adult levels of vaccinations just came out, sponsored by Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). TFAH focused on “emergency preparedness” and “pandemic preparedness” as the first two subjects covered in its last 2 annual reports (2005 and 2006)…

From the Council of Europe’s website: “Are decisions on pandemics taken on the best scientific evidence only?” was the question asked today at a public hearing of PACE’s Committee on Social, Health and Family Affairs into the handling of the H1N1 pandemic. The World Health Organisation’s flu chief defended his organisation, saying its advice was…

WHO’s Dr. Fukuda still isn’t making sense, only now he is discussing WHO’s work getting vaccine to poor nations. Swine flu cases began falling rapidly in the US in October. Countries have been trying to give away much of their vaccine stockpile since December. Yet WHO has only managed to get vaccine to two countries….

Here’s a big yawn from the Infectious Disease News: Mandatory policy increased influenza vaccine uptake among Health Care Workers. The article claims that the program’s “success” was supported by “consistent communication emphasizing patient safety and quality of care, coordinated campaigns, leadership support and medical director support to talk with any employee with concerns about the…

From PharmaTech comes the following paragraph, which implies that once a pandemic is identified, the WHO’s Pandemic Plan goes into effect. An evaluation of severity is missing from this scenario. Somehow, the assumption seems to be that pandemics (all pandemics, especially those associated with influenza viruses) are dire events with high mortality rates. Yet the…

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization has rejected as “irresponsible” allegations that swine flu is a fake pandemic. WHO also dismissed claims it colluded with drug companies to bring economic benefit to the industry by playing up the danger of the new H1N1 influenza strain. WHO officials met Tuesday with the Parliamentary Assembly of…

CDC called a few thousand random phone numbers and asked people whether they had been vaccinated. CDC said the response rate was poor. From this admittedly poor quality dataset, CDC told the world that 20% of Americans had been vaccinated against swine flu. But CDC had a high quality dataset telling it exactly how many…

From Niko Kyriakou at Truthout, excerpts: Wow, what a year 2009 was for makers of the swine flu vaccine. CSL Limited‘s profits rose 63 percent above 2008 levels, while in the third quarter of 2009 – just about the time H1N1 contracts picked up steam – GlaxoSmithKine enjoyed a 30 percent jump in earnings to…

The Jan. 24 WSJ ran an Op-Ed on the anthrax letters investigation and meaning of 1.4% silicon in the letter anthrax, by Edward Jay Epstein. Subtitled “The FBI disproved its main theory about how the spores were weaponized,” excerpts from the article follow: The investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks ended as far as the…

The Chilcot Inquiry into the facts surrounding the decision for Great Briitain to enter the Iraq War has now been lobbed a ball it probably can’t duck. A group of physicians have asked for release of data–including autopsy reports–on the death of David Kelly. Kelly, a WMD expert, told the BBC that Blair’s government had…

ZURICH (from Jan. 20, 2010: Reuters) – Switzerland’s medical regulator recommended patients with seriousautoimmune diseases should not use an H1N1 flu vaccine fromNovartis, saying there were no studies assessing the innoculation in thatpopulation. Swissmedic said on Wednesday it could not be ruled out that either or boththe adjuvant — which can enhance the immune response…

Snippets from Deutsche World online: Amid criticism that it exaggerated the dangers of swine flu, the World Health Organization (WHO) has begun a week long meeting in Geneva. Critics accuse the organization of having been too quick to proclaim a pandemic. British member of parliament Paul Flynn wants an investigation into exactly how the pandemic…

From the NY Times, Sept. 21, 2005 – Just as governments around the world are stockpiling millions of doses of flu vaccine and antiviral drugs in anticipation of a potential influenza pandemic, two new research papers published today have found that such treatments are far less effective than previously thought. “The studies published today reinforce…

The Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) calls for an investigation ofconflicts of interest at Federal Agencies which spearheaded the excessive,expensive, and unjustifiable federal expenditure in response to the false SwineFlu “pandemic” in the U.S. Indeed, “off the record”, CDC even stage-managed media coverage of the epidemic. Issues requiring investigation: 1. BARDA (the Biomedical Advanced…

WHO’s Strategic Group of Experts Working Group on Avian Flu (H5N1) Vaccine is working on “evidence-based recommendations” for using up stockpiles of avian flu vaccine that are reaching their expiration date. From WHO’s website: “Facilitate a SAGE review and decision on potential evidence-based recommendations on the use during the current inter-pandemic period of: H5N1 influenza…

CDC does not just award grants, it also obtains research grants from other federal agencies and industry. Here is one grant CDC got from an Australian biotech company to advance research on the company’s pandemic flu vaccine. How might such relationships affect CDC’s impartiality in fulfilling its mission to recommend vaccines for general use in…

Real data is important, and anecdotes are just anecdotal. Yet during the past 3 weeks I have been personally involved with 3 events that have me concerned. I am a doctor on an island of 13,000 people, where hundreds received swine flu vaccine. Coincidence 1: several hours after getting the swine flu vaccine, a man…

The BBC today notes that: The Council of Europe is planning an investigation, to begin later this month, into whether pharmaceutical companies influenced public health officials to spend money unnecessarily. In Geneva, a WHO spokeswoman acknowledged there were questions to be answered. She said the review of its management of the pandemic would be conducted…

Let’s draw a stupid line in the sand. Let’s fire employees who refuse a seasonal flu vaccine made up of antigens for 3 strains of flu that do not happen to be circulating in the US right now, and may never circulate. Check out the CDC’s graph detailing the flu strains found in the US…

I told readers in November that I would be discussing the expanding vaccine industry at more length. Fortunately, the media have obliged with excellent articles explaining the financial forces driving development of increasing types and numbers of vaccines. Articles like the one below also hint at why physicians are being pressured to vaccinate more and…

From SwissInfo: … Western European countries, including Switzerland, are queuing up to shift surplus stocks of the H1N1 flu vaccine after low public demand. … Sales of H1N1 vaccines have been a windfall for pharmaceutical companies. GSK is expected to be the single biggest beneficiary with anticipated sales of SFr3.7 billion by the end of…

From the famous Pharmalot blog by Ed Silverman (formerly a reporter at the Newark Star Ledger): That’s the contention by more than a dozen members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which reportedly plans to conduct an inquiry into the influence that drugmakers may have had on the World Health Organization, scientists…

from the BBC: Germany and The Netherlands announced similar sales late last year… The government bought 94 million swine flu vaccine doses – more than one for every French person – and started vaccinating in October. Only about five million people are recorded as having been vaccinated in France so far, AFP reports…

The map I previously posted disappeared off this website. However, WHO updates the map weekly. To see the current week’s map (and you may click to compare it with previous weeks) please go to the WHO site.

According to Dan Tuohy at the Manchester, New Hampshire Union-Leader, The state is encouraging more than 80 people to take antibiotics and anthrax vaccine after an environmental sample at the United Campus Ministry in Durham tested positive for anthrax. The announcement today comes after a young woman remains in critical condition with gastrointestinal anthrax. She…

Paul Waldie and Grant Robertson of the Globe and Mail, Canada have published a detailed investigative piece on how vaccines have been transformed into a huge industry in the space of a few years. Thirty-two percent growth per year has followed the expanding use of yearly flu vaccines (and the expanding population groups for whom…

From the BBC: Dr Margaret Chan says avian flu is more of a problem than swine flu The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned the global swine flu pandemic is not yet over and the virus could still mutate…. However she admitted she had not yet had a vaccine but said she…

Per CDC’s MMWR, as of November 24, VAERS data indicated 82 adverse event reports per 1 million H1N1 vaccine doses distributed, compared with 47 reports per 1 million seasonal influenza vaccine doses distributed. Adverse events designated serious were 50% higher (based on doses distributed, not doses used) for swine flu compared to seasonal flu. Monitoring…

Egypt’s health ministry has confirmed an H5N1 avian influenza infection in a 21-year-old woman, the country’s third case since late September, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today. She received Tamiflu. An investigation into the source of her infection revealed that the woman had close contact with dead poultry and had helped slaughter sick birds….

December 21, 2009 07:15 CET/ Novartis press release: Basel, Switzerland All three Novartis A(H1N1) 2009 influenza vaccines prequalified (read that as untested or inadequately tested for third world distribution) by World Health Organization (WHO) for use in developing world · First prequalification from WHO for multiple influenza A(H1N1) 2009 vaccines from a single company: Celtura®…

I will be talking more about how the H1N1 pandemic was exploited to greatly expand the use of vaccines, in the near future. This January 28, 2007 article by Daniel Costello in the LA Times provides important background on this whole issue, and begins to unravel the interconnected roles of large charitable organizations and big…

Here is a typical piece of industry hype on the dangers of a future pandemic, the need to build a bigger industrial base for vaccine production and the need to stockpile Tamiflu. But it didn’t appear in an industry publication; instead it was published in Science, the US’s premier scientific journal. The title is INFLUENZA:…

From Martin Enserink in the Oct. 16 Science, excerpts regarding claims of financial conflict of interest and fear-mongering on the part of Holland’s leading flu scientist, Albert Osterhaus: … fellow scientists have accused Osterhaus of fear-mongering. Luc Bonneux, an epidemiologist at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, says Osterhaus is part of a “flu mafia” and…

Millions more doses of swine flu vaccine were recalled this week after routine tests found they weren’t strong enough to meet minimum public health standards for protection against the virus. In a previous post, I cited literature that showed the nasal vaccine had been only 29% effective in adults in a previous year, even when…

MUST_READ from NPR (thanks to Marc Crispin Miller) … armed with the firm conviction that he was about to do good in the world, and coincidentally sell a ton of drugs for Merck, Jeremy Allen set out to completely rework the way that bone was measured in America. Now, to do this, he figured, the…

From 3/2008 CIDRAP: Until now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is advised by the ACIP, recommended flu vaccination for children from 6 through 59 months old. The new ACIP recommendation expands the target groups to include children from ages 5 through 18 years. That adds about 30 million children to the…

verbatim from National Public Radio: … [Gerberding] came to the CDC in 1998, and was credited with smoothly handling the media after the mysterious anthrax attacks that followed the World Trade Center attack. Merck is one of the largest vaccine makers in the world; Gerberding will be overseeing a $5-billion-a-year business starting in late January……

photo of Julie Gerberding, Reuters From Reuters’ Maggie Fox, we learn that the swine flu “pandemic” has opened avenues for increasing vaccine uptake in the US… by grabbing children in schools, which might reduce the impact of seasonal influenza. (Let’s experiment on tens of millions of American children to find out.) The vaccine spin doctors…

According to David Brown, 111 million doses of swine flu vaccine have been released to the cities and states by now. CDC estimated that in the second week of December 46 million Americans had received the vaccine. And I saw a new case of Bell’s palsy this week in someone a week after receiving both…

Does Taiwan allow law suits against the government for possible swine flu-related deaths? US law does not. Nor can you sue the manufacturer. Instead, you must apply to DHHS and only if a medical officer employed by DHHS says the vaccine caused the death can you be compensated by DHHS. About $300,000 is the maximal…

According to Reuters via the One Click Group, alternatively these countries could resell vaccine to other countries if manufacturers will not accept vaccine back. “… The Geneva-based WHO is coordinating efforts to encourage rich countries toshare vaccines with poorer nations who had little or no access to supplies.Fukuda said six manufacturers and 12 countries had…

Thanks to website “The Flu Case” we have a story in English derived from reports in two German newspapers, Zeit and Tages Spiegel: Wolfgang Wodarg , former SPD member of parliament, and chairman of the European parliament’s health committee, initiated the inquiry. The motion was passed unanimously by his colleagues in the European parliament‘s health…

from NPR: … In the U.K., under two percent of the population has stepped up, and only 17 percent of those at special risk of flu complications, according to Bloomberg News… Ah, but look at the Scandinavians. They are Europe’s model citizens when it comes to doing what public health officials want. According to Andrea…

From Theresa Boyle at Healthzone, Canada: Public health officials are misleading Canadians by continuing tocharacterize the H1N1 virus as a threat in the hopes of unloading millions ofdoses of unused vaccine, charges Ontario’s former chief medical officer ofhealth. They are trying to save face because of an expensive overreaction, Dr.Richard Schabas said Thursday as lineups…

According to FDA, “while no safety concerns have been identified to date, a project will be initiated this fall to focus on the safety of the pandemic (H1N1) influenza vaccine and of antiviral medicines for pregnant women and their newborns…” [a.k.a. the ‘Shoot first, answer questions later’ principle–Nass] “FDA is collaborating with CDC, HHS, private…

FDA’s website provides the following somewhat contradictory information on swine flu drugs in pregnancy: Yes, they are approved, and CDC recommends their use… but No, they have not been studied in pregnant women. Treatment of Influenza During Pregnancy The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends women in any trimester of their pregnancy who…

Excerpts from the AP’s Mike Stobbe: The recall is for about 800,000 pre-filled syringes intended for young children, ages 6 months to nearly 3 years. The shots, made by Sanofi Pasteur, were distributed across the country last month and most have already been used, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors were…

From the Nov. 25 WSJ: Cell culturing vaccines is not a well-developed technology, and may not shave much time off vaccine production. Nor will the plant’s cutting-edge technology do much to solve one of the biggest problems vaccine makers have faced in churning out this year’s swine-flu vaccine: a slow-growing virus. High-speed techniques that bypass…

From Infectious Disease News. It may be that media-induced fears and intellectual arguments have ‘maxed out’ the number of Americans choosing to be vaccinated. Perhaps the only way to increase vaccine ‘demand’ in future will be through mandatory vaccinations. School mandates make vaccines a requirement for children, but so far there are no adult mandates,…

per CDC: Dropping from a peak of over 50% positive swine flu tests, we had only 2% positive the week of Dec 1,2009. Approximately 98% of those with respiratory infections who were tested then for swine flu had something else. And since CDC has only advised testing severe cases, we can safely assume that under…

From Jacob Goldstein at the WSJ blogs: Swine-flu shots are going begging in Germany, and the government is selling some of its vaccine on the foreign market, NPR’s Shots blog notes. Only 5% of the overall population and 15% of doctors have gone to the trouble of getting vaccinated.

from the UMinn’s CIDRAP: “… It will be several more years before we are able to wean ourselves away from egg-based vaccine, but we are committed to moving ahead with 21st century vaccine development,” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a taped opening statement. Federal investments made since 2005 should improve…

BEIJING (Reuters) – “China’s vaccination campaign against the H1N1 flu strain is not proceeding as fast as it should be partly because people are needlessly worried about the safety of the vaccine, officials said on Friday…”

The profligate use of public health resources has not been confined to the billions spent on Tamiflu and swine flu vaccines. The Wall Street Journal points out that public health staff around the US have been “forced to cut back on childhood immunization clinics, restaurant inspections and planning anti-obesity programs to get the H1N1 job…

David Kelly was the British scientist and WMD expert (I met him once at an anthrax meeting in 1998) who leaked information to the BBC that Tony Blair’s government had “sexed up” (read “made up”) its report on Iraqi WMD. Soon he was found dead in the woods near his home. The Telegraph explains that…

Sir Liam Donaldson, the UK’s chief medical officer, reports the swine flu pandemic is “considerably less lethal” than feared, according to the BBC. A study led by Sir Liam found a death rate of just 0.026% in those infected, the British Medical Journal reported. In the US, approximately 2,000 lab-confirmed deaths have occurred from swine…

From FOX: a story about a young marine who nearly died after receiving smallpox vaccine. But when deploying soldiers get so many vaccines at once, including anthrax vaccine, how did the military manage to identify smallpox vaccine as the single cause? Lance Cpl. Josef Lopez still suffers from injuries he began experiencing in Iraq three…

From Dr. Sherri Tenpenny in the Dec. 8, 2009 Huffington Post: On November 24, 2009, Novartis officially opened its first, large-scale vaccine manufacturing facility in the U.S. Located in Holly Springs, North Carolina. The project is a collaborative effort between Novartis and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which contributed $457M for the…

The vaccine/bioterrorism industry is expert at making silk purses out of sows’ ears. Novartis, the company that failed to get its 50% share of swine flu vaccine out in a timely manner, and has a long history of vaccine failures, received a $400 million grant to open a vaccine plant in the US.However, the University…

The NY Times reports that after 2 months of wide use, there are no worrying patterns of adverse reactions found for swine flu vaccine, according to CDC. No increase in Guillain Barre cases has been identified. However, 5 children did die soon after vaccinations; the deaths are being investigated.

“We had to do something about swine flu!” And so the makers of Tamiflu (oseltamvir) are several billion dollars richer. As the BMJ (a.k.a. British Medical Journal) put it in 2005: “From a bit of a dud to the world’s most sought after drug in the space of six months, surely Roche cannot believe its…

According to HHS, BARDA “determined that none of the vaccine developers submitting proposals could meet the Project BioShield statutory requirements of having a product ready for licensure within 8 years. In response to this development, BARDA will modify its approach to the advanced development of a next-generation anthrax vaccine.” It is unclear why this happened,…

Meantime, today we have had the Irish and US CDC reporting the epidemic has passed its peak, while federal health officials “fear that if they concede the flu has peaked, Americans will become complacent and lose interest in being vaccinated“; there is more tamiflu resistance appearing in both the US and Wales; Canada has had…

The swine flu pandemic triggered a variety of government responses throughout the world. In the United States, plans to deal with the disease required that a variety of emergency procedures be used. Both the HHS Secretary and President had to declare emergencies. CDC advised FDA, which issued Emergency Use Authorizations. To invoke the Public Readiness…

Excerpts from another excellent Gardiner Harris piece: In a report expected to be made public on Thursday, Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, said 90 percent of universities relied solely on the researchers themselves to decide whether the money they made in consulting and other relationships with…

Sen. Charles Grassley has been pursuing various forms of medical malfeasance for years. On November 17 he honed in on the practice of ‘ghostwriting,’ in which medical ‘opinion leaders’ are sought after as authors of medical journal articles supporting a new drug, vaccine or medical device. Only problem is, the articles they ‘author’ were actually…

Excerpts from this Reuters article indicate, imho, that the pregnant patients have more sense than the doctors offering them vaccine. … “In all the pregnant women we’ve offered it to, I think only about one in20 has agreed,” Dr Chris Udenze, a family doctor based in Nottingham, centralEngland, said in the survey… Original estimates that…

From Dr. Heath A. Kelly, head of the epidemiology unit at Victoria’s Infectious Disease Reference Laboratory, comes this well-documented and clearly reasoned piece reviewing Australia’s experience with swine flu. Here are the main points: From the recognition of the swine flu pandemic in late April 2009, health professionals, politicians and the public needed to know…

Canada’s Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq (a politician with no medical training) issued an “interim order” for the sale of swine flu vaccine in Canada on October 13, 2009. Under the section titled “Authorization for Sale” are the following requirements that must be met to issue an interim order. These are: “… it is reasonable…

Excerpts from an article in the National Post, detailing remarks by Dr. Richard Schabas, Ontario’s former chief medical officer and a top health officer in the province: “In eastern Ontario where I live and work the outbreak is effectively over. If we’re immunizing people now essentially you’re barring the barn door after the horse is…

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg spoke at the Reuters Health Summit in New York, November 12, 2009. An excerpt from the Reuters article on her talk follows: Some experts have suggested the government could have increased supplies by embracing adjuvant vaccine technology that is widely used in Europe. Adjuvanted vaccines contain…

CDC updated its tables today with last week’s data. Swine flu hospitalizations for the last week of October increased more than 1,000 from CDC’s figure last week, presumably due to late reporting. Deaths similarly increased. However, the percentage of positive tests for flu has fallen over 20% from its peak, during the last 2 weeks…

Using modelling to estimate the number of flu-related deaths makes a lot of sense when many of those who die are in nursing homes, not hospitalized, and not tested for flu. “Many are close to death, with flu being only one factor leading to their demise,” notes today’s Washington Post. I would expect that several…

Nature (Brendan Maher & Declan Butler) report from three laboratories scrutinizing the pandemic flu virus.This is an interesting article about basic research on the swine flu virus at CDC Atlanta, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NY, and INSERM at Lyon. Plenty of background as in a Laurie Garrett story, but no amazing new insights.

“Once you start requiring doctors to get it, doctors are going to think it’s reasonable to make patients get it. It starts you down that mandatory route, and I don’t think we want to go there.” So said George Annas, renowned bioethicist, NEJM columnist and department chair of Health Law at Boston University School of…

I happened to stumble across this Congressional website tonight. It includes my answers to additional questions posed by the Committee after I testified on GWS in July 2007. It also includes my Senate testimony on GWS of September 2007. However, of special interest is a list of statistical analyses and informal studies conducted by the…

Sorry for repeating myself regarding this new method of dealing with injuries, but this is what the US government (DHHS) says: The PREP Act also authorizes a fund to provide compensation to eligible individuals who suffer specified injuries from administration or use of a countermeasure pursuant to the declaration. Any requests for compensation must be…

Excerpts from this NY Times article: … While the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, said the clinics had the staff and enough vaccine to accommodate about 500 middle- and high-school students per clinic per hour — or as many as 31,500 vaccinations a day — a department spokeswoman put the total vaccinations administered…

Funny that I was only able to find one US news source (a Texas TV station) that carried this AP story. From the Canadian Press: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday that his government won’t buy vaccines for swine flu that have not been properly tested or from producers who won’t take responsibility for…

A well-researched piece on adjuvants from CIDRAP (Oct. 30, 2007), by Maryn McKenna. US citizens will need to be concerned about novel adjuvants when the next pandemic strikes, but people in the rest of the world will be offered swine flu vaccine with these adjuvants now. Excerpts: There is currently no regulatory pathway by which…

Very nice summary article by Helen Branswell regarding assumptions scientists have made about influenza, and how many of these assumptions have had to be discarded, as swine influenza furnished plenty of surprising facts.

According to CDC, weekly swine flu hospitalizations began dropping the last week of October; the death rate also dropped. UPDATE: I called CDC on Monday, November 9, to ask why this wasn’t updated, as usually occurs on Fridays. I was told that 15 deaths (swine flu) and 3 deaths (non-subtyped influenza A) were reported last…

Another hospital’s mandatory flu vaccination program will end after rulings were made Monday in favor of two unions. Who’s fooling who? If, as the NEJM reported, the live nasal flu vaccine used last winter was only 29% effective in adults, mandatory vaccination of employees who use this vaccine will still leave 71% susceptible to the…

By the NYT’s Andrew Pollack; excerpts follow: On Thursday, the federal government ordered, on an emergency basis, 10,000 treatment courses of peramivir for its national stockpile. It is paying $22.5 million, or about $2,250 a patient. Shares of BioCryst rose nearly 13 percent, to $11.39. Peramivir is given intravenously, making it usable by hospitalized patients…

By Huffington Post’s Allen McDuffee: …Mandatory vaccine programs are a sensitive subject in the military, so it’s not a huge surprise that swift and visceral reactions to the [swine flu vaccine] program gained speed. With a vaccine that was so new and little known about it, like many Americans, troops were heading to the web…

Interviews with GPs in the UK/ Pulse Magazine: …Dr Niall Finegan, a GP in Salford, Manchester – close to a hot spot in Trafford – said he, the four other GPs and six staff members at his practice planned to refuse the vaccine, and that he did not believe there was enough evidence it was…

Re: Evaluation of Preterm Births and Birth Defects in Liveborn Infants of US Military Women Who Received Smallpox Vaccine. Margaret A. K. Ryan, Gia R. Gumbs, Ava Marie S. Conlin, Carter J. Sevick, Isabel G. Jacobson, Katherine J. Snell, Christina N. Spooner, Tyler C. Smith, for the Department of Defense Birth and Infant Health Registry…

You may wonder why I keep harping on inadequate testing and safety concerns. In addition to my experience treating patients who became ill following vaccinations, I have reviewed medical literature on vaccine safety. There are many stories of vaccines that appeared safe, but were later found to be dangerous. The Edmonston-Zaghreb “high titre” measles vaccine,…

Thanks to Eileen Dannemann for obtaining this memo from Iowa’s Assistant Attorney General. It includes a very clear explanation from DHHS explaining the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, Emergency Use Authorizations and Emergency Declarations in the context of H1N1 flu. Appended to it are a few additional comments from the Iowa AG’s office. This…

How much mercury? Contraindications? Dosing? It’s here in a simple format. And systemic reactions rates are reported to be 45%, said to be the same as for seasonal flu vaccines. (Why, if this vaccine only includes one third as much antigen, would adverse reaction rates be the same? Not sure if this is based on…

This week it was Neisseria meningitidis–which can rapidly kill (and spread). The affected grad student diagnosed himself. Last time (2004) several researchers at BU developed tularemia, a less acute illness. The diagnosis took longer, the disease was less likely to spread, but notifying the authorities took 6 months. The problem is that you can’t run…

The feds have done a lot right in terms of swine flu vaccine production. While they are receiving criticism right now, it’s only fair to note the things that have been done well. At the beginning of the epidemic, with lots of deaths in Mexico, the government decided to procure enough vaccine for all who…

This is an important short piece from Nature (online February 25, 2009) that I missed last February. It explains why the anthrax letter spores did not come directly from Ivins’ flask: they incorporate metals not found in Ivins’ spores, and were therefore grown under different conditions. Their progenitors probably did come from the flask, but…

Thanks to Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer, well known health journalists, for this erudite piece on the limitations of epidemiological data for flu vaccines and antiviral drugs. They are brave women to tackle and publish this piece: kudos! A new GAO report on FDA’s reliance on surrogate endpoints (such as using antibody levels generated by…

This NEJM Article points out that, although, “Drug labels are written by drug companies, then negotiated and approved by the FDA,” still, “information gets lost between FDA review and the approved label.” What often gets lost is data on harms due to the drug. Several examples are included, and it turns out that two popular…

Parents are concerned about the best way to protect their children, and are asking whether to vaccinate them. Parents have to make their own risk/benefit decisions. I hope the following is helpful: 1. Do you feel comfortable enrolling your child in clinical trials? At this point in time, the swine flu vaccine program in children…

Med Microbiol Immunol. 2009 Oct 23. [Epub ahead of print] Bhakdi S, Lackner K, Doerr HW. Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University Medical Center, Augustusplatz, 55101, Mainz, Germany, sbhakdi@uni-mainz.de. Programs for vaccination against the new influenza A/H1N1 targeting many hundred million citizens in Europe and the USA are to be launched in the fall…