Ok, discussion only - I hate arguments.

Was having a conversation with a client about flu shots and vaccinations.
My parents were very holistic. They didn't know that they were, and I don't think that word was used then. My one grandfather was an MD, but specialized in an area that today might be considered 'alternative'. We were raised very natural, and all five of us kids were not ever vaccinated (other than the required-by-law Polio). Later, because three of us traveled to Europe, we were vaccinated, but two of my sibs have never been vaccinated to this day.

So, I was curious. After all these years, I wondered what my sibs felt about the flu shot and emailed them all and asked if they'd ever had a flu shot; and whether they would ever get one?
All of them said no to both, just as was my answer. Then I asked them when was the last time any of them had the flu? Most of them said not for six to ten years past.

Now, there is no right or wrong answer, but I'm curious, how many of you out there do NOT get flu shots, and maybe some of your thoughts? Or post anyway, even if you do...

My aunt, a nurse, said she wouldn't get one, except she sort of has to at the hospital where she works.

I haven't had the flu in years.  I suspect that once I get it I'll start getting the shot.

My background is in biological sciences, so I'm not really too holistic but...I don't get flu shots. I think we tend to overmedicate ourselves in general (am I sure I'm not very holistic? ) For certain groups within the population, I think they are a good way to hedge your bets. For example, if you are immunocompromised, I think the flu shot is a great idea.

I don't get flu shots, and I don't get the flu.  Yeah, there's probably a cause-and-effect thing going on there, but I can't say which is which.

After getting the flu so bad I couldn't get out of bed for an entire week, I now get a flu shot every year. I haven't had the flu since. Prior to this I would sometimes get mild flu like symptoms nearly every winter.

Most people who post on these boards aren't actually in the groups strongly advised by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) to receive Influenza vaccination: the elderly, those VERY likely to be exposed, such as health care workers or people who live in very close quarters; e.g., military barracks, nursing homes, and those most at risk of becoming very ill if they contract Influenza (those with heart, lung, or kidney disease, and those who are immunocompromised, such as people living with HIV, people receiving chemotherapy, or transplant recipients).

For most healthy adults Influenza would be a VERY bad week, but not much more. Still, more people died from it in 1918 than died from the ongoing war - indeed many say the war ended because of the Influenza pandemic.

I sit at home the temporary victim of a nasty respiratory virus. It's not Influenza, so my flu shot didn't help me a bit. But if there IS an Influenza epidemic, then I may be better off (not "will be" because this year there is an unanticpated strain of Influenza A that is spreading rapidly in the U.S. It wasn't on the scene early enough last winter to be included in this years' vaccines, so even if you DO receive the vaccine, you may not be protected).

But you asked as well about vaccines in general. Ask your parents about Iron Lungs and crippled - or worse, dead - chidren (polio). Ask your grandparents about Smallpox. They're both gone for only one reason - vaccination, and the fact that we no longer have "herd" immunity against smallpox is something that makes people who worry about terrorist attacks for a living sweat far more than any 450 pound client with a 10/10 provider!

Those "mild flu-like" symptoms you used to have almost certainly WEREN'T Influenza. Most people who get the "real thing" can tell you the hour, if not the minute, they began to feel ill, within a few hours of which they have horrible chills, high fever, a cough that won't stop, and a headache that would make most migraine sufferers willing to trade for one of their "usuals."

Real Influenza occurs in epidemics, although there are scattered cases in non-epidemic years, and I don't think Influenza experts really understand why some years we have epidemics, some we don't.

When you receive the vaccine, you probably also receive an information packet that tells you it won't prevent common winter colds, so if you get your flu shot and get your cold anyway, it wasn't a vaccine failure.

There are additional considerations now. There are rapid, accurate tests that can be done in the ER when someone shows up with Influenza symptoms, and there actually ARE medications that can shorten the duration of the illness if started early enough. That's a separate issue from the vaccination question, but good to know if you haven't been vaccinated and get sick (or, because of the nature of the prevalent virus this year, you get vaccinated and get sick anyway).

Misunderstanding or not, since I've been getting annual flu shots, the symptoms are no more.

My job (or lack of) puts me in contact with many different people from very different places and backgrounds. Another good reason to protect myself.

Good job Bimmerguy.
But for a little more on immunizations...

The immune system is very complex and would take text books to explain it accurately.  But in a general way I think you can consider the "bug" that enters your body as a three dimensional puzzle.  There are different shapes on the surface that fit certain puzzle pieces that float around in your body.

When we get sick from a virus then get well we have all the pieces that fit that puzzle floating around in us.  This means that we are immune to that virus.  If that virus invades us again our body supplies the pieces that fit very quickly and then when they are in place the "finished puzzle" is quickly destroyed.  So, essentially you never get sick from a virus you've all ready had.

Now jump ahead a year.  The virus has mutated to a new form and invades you.  You have MOST of the puzzzle pieces ready for action but there are some pieces you don't have.  Your body has a way of reading the slot where the pieces fit and then making the necessary new shaped pieces.  

If the mutated virus is very similar to the last virus it won't take long to make the few new shaaped pieces needed.  If it is way different you will need to make many new shaped pieces and it will take a while longer.

Now, we have all had that tingle in our throat that cought our attention and we say "I think I'm getting a cold".  If the next day it's gone you probably forgot that you thought you were going to get sick.  This is a situation where you got a virus that is very similar to ones you've all ready had. Your body defeated the thing in short order.  On the other hand if you go on to get sicker the virus was not as similar to what you've previously had and your body is having a bigger job to make more and differet pieces.  The more different the virus the sicker you will likely get for the specific disease, ie., a common cold.

When the medical world makes a vaccine it sends into your body not the whole virus, but enough of the puzzle that will trick your body into making the puzzle pieces that are needed to fit.  Then when you get attacked by the real virus your body had made the pieces of the puzzle ahead of time.  

The act of making the puzzle pieces does occasionally give us some of the symptoms of the actual disease.  Such as a day of fever and a headache.  The goal is that the vaccine be easier on us than the actual disease.  I think that most would agree that the vaccine was better for Small Pox than the disease...back in the 50's.  Not so today.  Because there are a certain percentage of the population that will have a severe reaction to the vaccine and die.  Therefore, with Small Pox essentially eradicated from the earth, we'd kill a few people just buy giving the vaccine.  

What may be good for the population as a whole may not be good for a specific individual. Consider the order to vaccinate against Anthrax.  It's a risk/benefit issue.  When a person says that they have never been vaccinated and haven't ever gotten the disease, it is likely just luck of the draw.  If they did get the disease, say influenza, it might not hit them too hard and again they luck out.  But if they are in the high risk group, the disease may kill them.



Did this help???



-- Modified on 12/9/2003 6:52:26 AM

I don't get flu shots b/c any vaccines you get will weaken your immune system and make you more susseptable to illiness. The flu shot company is owned by the Bush family. There are 800 different strains of the flu virus and the flu shot on covers 5 know strains. So whats the point?

The Medical Mafia is a book written by Dr.Guylaine Lanctot which I would advise any "open" mind to read If you want to learn about our government and the trillion dollar business of the pharm company that supplies us with all our medication. If people would look to alt. and holistic medicine they would see that there are cures for almost everything out there. People need to get over the fact that its weird.

All vaccinations and pres.drugs exhaust the immune system and opens people to all sorts of disease that the bodies defense would normally repel.

I'll bet you've never seen someone dying of Small Pox. It's hideous. But it doesn't happen any more. For ONE REASON: vaccination

I'll bet you've not had a sibling reduced to living a withering life in an iron lung. That doesn't happen any more either. For ONE REASON: vaccination.

People with no axe to grind and NO allegiance to the Bush Administration labor for months each year at the CDC and the World Health Organization (which, last time I looked, was DECIDEDLY no friend of the Bush Administration OR the American Pharmaceutical Industry) trying to predict what strains of Influenza will sweep out of the Southern Hemisphere and into the Northern Hemisphere's winter in order to prepare a vaccine that will protect agains the circulating strains. They do a pretty awesome job of it, by the way.

There is much that is repugnant about the American Pharmaceutical Industry (Southern Africa is filled with villages of old people and orphans in part because of OUR pharmaceutical industry's predatory pricing policies. But precious few of those people seem to have been saved by alternative or holistic "medicine."

You may mean well, but you know very little about biology and the biosciences.

And don't have any intentions of getting one this year.  I've only suffered from the flu 4 or 5 times in my 46 years.  I've always felt it was an unnecessary invasion of my immune system and as you've said, won't help fight a common cold.  I'm in good health and in pretty good physical shape and I'm not in any of those groups that Bimmer specified who are advised to get flu shots.  


However, I was hit with a flu 7 weeks ago that knocked me on my butt for about 5 days.  I got to my doctor within the first 24 hours of getting sick and he prescribed something called Tamiflu (an anti-virul) that seemed to help.  (He told me that Tamiflu wouldn't have helped if I'd waited to see him.)  At that office visit, he suggested that I get a flu shot once I was fully recovered and felt better.  I'm scheduled to get one this week.  But I am going to cancel the appointment as I feel that I shouldn't bother at this point.  I've already gotten the bug and a flu shot now seems superfluous to me.

You really cannot GET the flu from the vaccine. Well, not until this year, that is. Most vaccines are produced from a fraction of the virus, typically from viral coat proteins. One problem with the immunity provided by such "killed" vaccines is that the immunity they provide is not quite the same as that produced by natural infection. Because of that, some vaccines are produced from INTACT but modified virus, which actually does cause a sub-clinical infection (meaning viral replication in the body can be demonstrated, but there's no disease). That doesn't mean that some people can't have serious REACTIONS to a killed virus vaccine, but that's not the same as the vaccine CAUSING the same infection.

And, of course, not EVERYONE who is vaccinated responds to the vaccine. If they don't, they're still susceptible, or if they're vaccinated at about the same time as they're exposed to the "real deal" they'll likely get the infection. For example, the scourge of the patients I take care of on dialysis USED to be Hepatits B. Now most of us vaccinate all our patients, but that actually has little to do with why Hepatits B infections are no longer a problem in dialysis centers, because fully 50% of the patients don't develop useful immunity from INTENSIVE multi-dose vaccination. That's another topic that would REALLY bore this audience

The most well known live-virus (sometimes called "attenuated virus") vaccine is the Sabin Polio vaccine. The original "Salk" killed-virus vaccine was an injection. It gave PRETTY good protection against polio, but the poliovirus is what's called an "enterovirus", meaning it's ingested and absorbed from the GI tract, and the immunity that results involves production of IgA antibodies by immunocompetant cells within the GI tract. Those IgA antibodies aren't made in response to an intramuscular injection. So, the immunity resulting from the Sabin vaccine, resulting from an actual INFECTION with an impotent virus, is "better" than that conferred by the Salk vaccine. Unfortunately, a few people HAVE developed real paralytic poliomyelitis from the Sabin vaccine, so the standard practice today is to give both.

I was a little boy terrified of needles when the Salk vaccine came out, and Matrix Girl would have been proud of my subscription to conspiracty theories. First they told me it was THREE enormous needles, then four, then FIVE. Then my sister was old enough to be vaccinated, and all she needed to do was swallow a sugar cube! Obviously some nefarious people at work there!

The reason I said "not until this year" regarding getting Influenza from the flu vaccine is that there is now an attenuated (live) influenza vaccine, called  flumist (or something similar). It's inhaled, so that theoretically our immune system is presented the viral particles in exactly the same way we would encounter the "wild" virus, and produce the IgA antibodies we would with "real" infection. Almost no one is using this vaccine in the U.S.

And, as far as you benefitting personally from Influenza vaccination, the fact is it's very hard to know. Influenza is actually an uncommon infection, but it's a SEVERE infection. You could infer that the vaccine protected you if you were living among unvaccinated people who had virologically documented or clinically VERY typical illness but you didn't get sick. Getting through the winter without a cold after receiving the Influenza vaccination has nothing to do with having been vaccinated, however. I'm not sure you were saying that, but it's the commonest argument people in the "risk groups" who should be vaccinated make: I had the vaccine but got the flu anyway. They DIDN'T get the flu. They had a rhinovirus, or adenovirus, but not likely REAL Influenza.

To all those who avoid the vaccine because of some "holistic" thinking or some bizarre conspiracy theory beliefs, go read up on the influenza pandemic of 1918.

675,000 americans died of the flu that year and fully 30-40 million around the world.

Why? No one knows! Despite cutting edge genetic analysis, researchers just don't know exactly why it was as deadly as it was. There was an anitgenic shift in the virus (of which there have been 3 or 4 this century- the most recent in 1968 not counting the bullet that was dodged when all chickens in Hong Kong where killed in the 1990's). We are now overdue on a serious shift in the genetic makeup of the influenza virus.

For those thinking that influenza is only dangerous to the old and weak, consider this: The 1918 influenza pandemic primarily killed the healthiest individuals in their 20's and 30's. And often it wasn't secondary bacterial infections that caused death in these people (the typical danger of flu that is usually very treatable with antibiotics). It was an unknown pathlogical characteristic of the virus itself that caused pneumonia and eventual death. Modern medecine most likely would have been powerless in the face of this pandemic.

Interesingly, there was an eariler flu outbreak in the spring of 1918. It was discovered that those who contracted and recovered from it in the spring survived the winter outbreak when 200,000 Americans died just in the month of Novemeber. Vaccination does the same thing.

Sorry for the alarmist tone of this post, but when the next big one hits, I'll be vaccinated and suggest you do as well.

Bimmerguy once again has said a lot very well.

Matrix you are so far off base with this rediculous line of thought that I fear for those you have influence over.  I'm not going to read your suggested book because I just don't have the time (and if you do have the time to read the libraries are chuck full of medical text books WITH references for you).  I do however live in the real world and know litterally hundreds of folks who do scientific reasearch on all kinds of human medical fronts.  To suggest that all this hard work is some kind of conspiracy is just plain fu*ked.  These people have dedicated their lives to helping others and ease human suffering.  

Why people would deny medicine with tons of reasearch and double blind studies and accept word of mouth remidies with no basis in fact is beyond me.

You write, "All vaccinations and pres.drugs exhaust the immune system and opens people to all sorts of disease that the bodies defense would normally repel". You obviously haven't a clue as to how the immune system works.  To you I say if you believe that prove it.  I can prove otherwise.

Sorry, sometimes idiocy is hard for me to tollerate...espcially when it can cause harm.

-- Modified on 12/9/2003 6:54:11 AM

I can easily back up all my statements. The problem is, is that you haven't plugged out of the matrix. Your still walking around like a drowne, not looking outside of the box. Have you ever considered that maybe I'm right.Have you read any conspiracy books, read about secret societies, or who the illuminati is? I will happily meet you and open up your eyes and free you of your dogmatic belief system. The question is are you ready........

So. Cal has it fair share of the alternative crowd like you.

What  is really interesting and yet sad is to see them in the hospital with diseases that could have been treated with known madical therapies.  Now it's a real struggle or too late because they had their coffee enemas and herbal soaks for just a few too many months.  The interesting part is to hear the verbage as to why they are now in the hands of modern medical practitioners.

I've seen limbs amputated, months of hospitalization in the infectious disease wards and cancer deaths.  All preventable if treated in time.

All too often they are the ones who are quick to sue over the negative outcome from their own neglect and stupid miss guided decisions.

One other interesting thing is that the courts have found that practitioners of these alternative therapies cannot be found guilty of malpractice.  Why?  One decision in Utah found that you can not MALpractice something that can not be practiced in the first place!

Matrix, I assume that you are a provider, I may be wrong.  But if so, I'd be interested to know if you use condoms and or spermaicdes?  I mean they are tried and true with statistical evidence as to their efficacy (and lack thereof as well).  Or do you use some homeopathic rub to keep the bugs at bay?

See you in the ICU Matrix.  Besure to bring your arroma therapy oils....and your conspiritory doctrine, for something to read.

-- Modified on 12/9/2003 5:05:15 PM

Let's see, whom should we believe? Someone whose life seems wrapped up in one decent movie (and two AWFUL sequels, by the way),

or those of us who subscribe to the scientific tradition of observation, synthesis, postulation, test, and conclusion?

If you're looking for guidance from fantasy literature, I'd suggest you go back and read the first few chapters of  C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" -- particulary the parts where the wise professor encourages the older children not to discard common sense when they observe what's happening around them.

As Justanotherdoc says, one of the most horrific tragedies we in medicine face is the eggregious harm that comes to innocent children "parented" by loonies like you. I hope I never suffer the indignity of meeting you as the "advocate" for one of my patients.