How many Governors would be seen like this? Our Governor Rick Perry at Red's shooting range in Austin with a suppressed Beretta CX4Storm. Now this is a politician I can relate to!
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Cooking with Jack in 2026 – Epi-3896
3 weeks ago
Friday, July 17, 2009
Another reason to love Texas
How many Governors would be seen like this? Our Governor Rick Perry at Red's shooting range in Austin with a suppressed Beretta CX4Storm. Now this is a politician I can relate to!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Texas jobless benefit fund nearly tapped out
Texas jobless benefit fund nearly tapped out
82,000 to face delays; $643M to be borrowed from U.S.
By Robert T. Garrett
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Texas' unemployment insurance trust fund will run out of money early next week and will have to borrow $643 million from the federal government to cover claims through Oct. 1, a Texas Workforce Commission official said Tuesday. Also, commission spokeswoman Ann Hatchitt confirmed that about 82,000 unemployed Texans due to exhaust their benefits, starting this week, will not receive immediate 13-week extensions as expected.
In late May, the Legislature hastily passed a law that would draw down full federal funding for the extended benefits, as allowed by the federal stimulus package.
However, stringent federal rules and state computer problems have thwarted the launch of the new benefit, even though delay means that some people will lose benefits, Hatchitt said. She emphasized that payments for those who qualify will be retroactive to the date they're cut off.
Randy Townsend, the commission's chief financial officer, said at the commission's monthly meeting that about 285,000 Texans had stayed on unemployment compensation in the six weeks that ended June 27, nearly triple the number in the same period last year.
LaSha Lenzy, the commission official in charge of unemployment insurance, said 155,729 callers couldn't get through to the commission's call centers last week.
"That was expected," she said, because a new quarter began and claimants unsuccessful in the previous quarter often check to see whether they now qualify.
But Lenzy said also that a computer system unexpectedly shut down for four hours Monday morning.
For the week that ended July 4, the latest for which data are available, the state paid out $93 million in benefits, Lenzy said.
Townsend said the trust fund had only $119 million as of Friday.
Although it has been expected for months that the commission would have to take out interest-free loans from the U.S. Department of Labor to keep paying unemployment benefits, the official statement drew criticism.
State Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie said Texas should have accepted $556 million in federal stimulus funds to expand unemployment benefits. Gov. Rick Perry rejected the money, saying too many strings were attached.
"Unfortunately, hardworking Texas taxpayers and struggling businesses will shoulder the burden of Rick Perry's failure to do the right thing for our state and accept the unemployment insurance funds," Richie said.
But Perry said that the borrowing is routine. The state borrowed from the federal government in 2003, he said.
Perry, a Republican, said accepting the money would have required looser eligibility rules, burdening employers for years to come.
"I'm a big believer that you do not put additional burdens on businessmen and women — the job creators, wealth creators — in this state," he said.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/2009/07/15/0715unemployment.html
82,000 to face delays; $643M to be borrowed from U.S.
By Robert T. Garrett
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Texas' unemployment insurance trust fund will run out of money early next week and will have to borrow $643 million from the federal government to cover claims through Oct. 1, a Texas Workforce Commission official said Tuesday. Also, commission spokeswoman Ann Hatchitt confirmed that about 82,000 unemployed Texans due to exhaust their benefits, starting this week, will not receive immediate 13-week extensions as expected.
In late May, the Legislature hastily passed a law that would draw down full federal funding for the extended benefits, as allowed by the federal stimulus package.
However, stringent federal rules and state computer problems have thwarted the launch of the new benefit, even though delay means that some people will lose benefits, Hatchitt said. She emphasized that payments for those who qualify will be retroactive to the date they're cut off.
Randy Townsend, the commission's chief financial officer, said at the commission's monthly meeting that about 285,000 Texans had stayed on unemployment compensation in the six weeks that ended June 27, nearly triple the number in the same period last year.
LaSha Lenzy, the commission official in charge of unemployment insurance, said 155,729 callers couldn't get through to the commission's call centers last week.
"That was expected," she said, because a new quarter began and claimants unsuccessful in the previous quarter often check to see whether they now qualify.
But Lenzy said also that a computer system unexpectedly shut down for four hours Monday morning.
For the week that ended July 4, the latest for which data are available, the state paid out $93 million in benefits, Lenzy said.
Townsend said the trust fund had only $119 million as of Friday.
Although it has been expected for months that the commission would have to take out interest-free loans from the U.S. Department of Labor to keep paying unemployment benefits, the official statement drew criticism.
State Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie said Texas should have accepted $556 million in federal stimulus funds to expand unemployment benefits. Gov. Rick Perry rejected the money, saying too many strings were attached.
"Unfortunately, hardworking Texas taxpayers and struggling businesses will shoulder the burden of Rick Perry's failure to do the right thing for our state and accept the unemployment insurance funds," Richie said.
But Perry said that the borrowing is routine. The state borrowed from the federal government in 2003, he said.
Perry, a Republican, said accepting the money would have required looser eligibility rules, burdening employers for years to come.
"I'm a big believer that you do not put additional burdens on businessmen and women — the job creators, wealth creators — in this state," he said.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/2009/07/15/0715unemployment.html
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The High Cost of Independence
The High Cost of Independence
Jul 14th, 2009 | By Bill Jenkins | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics
Recently we here in the U.S. celebrated the 233rd Anniversary of our Independence Day. It is, as I hope you remember from your history lessons, the day upon which Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. The legal separation from England, however, actually occurred on July 2, two days earlier. This is when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution offered by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, which had been tendered to the Congress on June 7.
From it we draw the historic words, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent States…” The resolution was tabled for the day and taken up on June 8. But because some of the colonies, including Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, had not authorized their delegates to vote for independence (imagine that: politicians who are faithful to their constituents) the congress recessed for three weeks for the men to return home to find their colonies’ will.
Before recessing however, the congress appointed the famous Committee of Five, John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (PA), Thomas Jefferson (VA), Robert Livingston (NY), and Roger Sherman (CT), to produce a document that laid out the case for independence. The committee tasked Jefferson with the writing of the document, and the bulk of the work was his. After his initial draft, he presented it to the committee, who made only minor revisions. Then it was off to the Congress, where the debate really commenced.
The Congress re-convened on June 28, 1776.
It had been a hot spell in Philadelphia. Jefferson records that on his way to what is now known as Independence Hall, he stopped to look at a thermometer. Even in the early morning, it was already 80 degrees and rising. Inside the hall, which was all closed up to avoid the heated debate being heard in the streets outside, some have estimated the temperatures at 100 degrees. In the humid, bug infested convention, (there was a livery stable next door), the temperature was not the only thing rising.
Jefferson’s own design was to create a document that by its plainness and simplicity would be instructive and convincing, with arguments so plain and straightforward that none could contest them as they set forth the case for independence. Hoping to create a document that would convince those who read it, not the least of which were many fence-sitting colonists, he listed a long section of the crimes of the King against the colonies, many of which were eventually omitted. He also had written a substantial portion on the illegitimacy of the slave trade in MEN (capitalization was Jefferson’s). That too was eventually stricken from the finished edit.
There were those who refused to vote. There was even an abstention from New York in the final tally. The young nation was being stressed at every seam in that hot, humid hall.
But on July 2, 1776, the cornerstone of the new nation had been formed.
A day later, July 3, future president John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail the following words.
“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illumination, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”
His spirit was right, even if his timing was off by a couple days.
What was once memorized by grade school children as a world-shaping piece of literature is now known by very few modern students.
However, it’s final lines bear repeating…
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration, some names are still common among us: Franklin, Jefferson and Hancock. But the remaining 53 have been largely forgotten. What kind of men were they? What did they stand to gain from this Revolution?
They ranged in age from 23 (Edward Rutledge of South Carolina) to age 80 (Ben Franklin of Pennsylvania). 24 of them were lawyers or judges, 11 of them were merchants of various kinds, nine were farmers, and the remaining members were ministers, doctors, and statesmen.
With just a handful of exceptions, these were all men of substantial education, property and public standing. As compared with the rest of the populace of the 1700’s, they had blessings, eases, and pleasures in life enjoyed by very few. All of them had more to lose, than they had to gain.
John Hancock, who already had a bounty of 500 pounds on his head, was one of the wealthiest of the signers. From a family of considerable wealth, he inherited his mercantile fortune from his Uncle, Thomas Hancock. He was educated at Harvard, and had all that life could give him at the time. Yet he signed his signature with such size and flourish, that “it might be read without spectacles.”
He was not alone. The fever of liberty was running at a high pitch. Yet each of them knew the risks. Treason was punished by hanging. And the consequences did not end with themselves, but extended to their families as well. And there was already a massive English fleet docked in the harbor at New York.
And Hancock’s actions did not go unnoticed by the British. Nor did the those of the other suspected signers. All of them became ferociously hunted. Delegates from New York, William Floyd, Philips Livingston, Louis Morris, and Francis Lewis, each had their homes destroyed. Mrs. Lewis was captured and brutalized. Though later exchanged for two British prisoners, she never recovered. The Floyds were able to flee from New York into Connecticut, where they lived as refugees for the next seven years. Upon their return, they found nothing left of their estate. Livingston, whose large possessions were confiscated, died two years later still working in Congress. Morris was deprived of his family for the next seven years.
Delegate John Hart of New Jersey, attempted to come home to see his dying wife, but was turned back by soldiers. As she lay dying, soldiers destroyed his livestock and burned his farm. He was hunted from pillar to post. When the manhunt finally relented, he returned to find his wife dead and buried. His 13 children had been taken away. He died three years later absolutely broken, never seeing his family again.
Judge Richard Stockton rushed home from Philadelphia to evacuate his wife and children. Betrayed by a sympathizer to the Crown, he was torn from his bed where they were hiding in the middle of the night and subjected to a brutal beating. He was jailed, starved, and finally released after becoming an invalid. He did not see the end of the war or its victory, and his family was required to live off of the charitable help of friends and strangers.
The list goes on and on. One heartbreaking, gutwrenching story after another. Each of sacred honor, fortunes sacrificed and lives lost or forever altered. Yet not one recanted. Not one relented. Not one failed to deliver on his pledge to the others.
And most remarkably, there was one man…a man who had the chance to see his family spared. A man who could have saved his two sons if only he had rejected the colonial revolution and supported the King. He was Abraham Clark of New Jersey. Clark had two sons who fought for the new nation. They were eventually captured and taken to the notorious British prison ship Jersey, where more than 11,000 American soldiers died. The two suffered most severely for the “crimes” of their father, brutally beaten and starved.
Clark was offered his two son’s lives if he would just come out in support of the King. To those of us who live so soft and comfortably 200 hundred years in their wake, it must seem astounding that with a broken heart, he said, “No”.
Life. Fortune. Sacred Honor.
Regards,
Bill Jenkins
July 14, 2009
Jul 14th, 2009 | By Bill Jenkins | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics
Recently we here in the U.S. celebrated the 233rd Anniversary of our Independence Day. It is, as I hope you remember from your history lessons, the day upon which Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. The legal separation from England, however, actually occurred on July 2, two days earlier. This is when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution offered by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, which had been tendered to the Congress on June 7.
From it we draw the historic words, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent States…” The resolution was tabled for the day and taken up on June 8. But because some of the colonies, including Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, had not authorized their delegates to vote for independence (imagine that: politicians who are faithful to their constituents) the congress recessed for three weeks for the men to return home to find their colonies’ will.
Before recessing however, the congress appointed the famous Committee of Five, John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (PA), Thomas Jefferson (VA), Robert Livingston (NY), and Roger Sherman (CT), to produce a document that laid out the case for independence. The committee tasked Jefferson with the writing of the document, and the bulk of the work was his. After his initial draft, he presented it to the committee, who made only minor revisions. Then it was off to the Congress, where the debate really commenced.
The Congress re-convened on June 28, 1776.
It had been a hot spell in Philadelphia. Jefferson records that on his way to what is now known as Independence Hall, he stopped to look at a thermometer. Even in the early morning, it was already 80 degrees and rising. Inside the hall, which was all closed up to avoid the heated debate being heard in the streets outside, some have estimated the temperatures at 100 degrees. In the humid, bug infested convention, (there was a livery stable next door), the temperature was not the only thing rising.
Jefferson’s own design was to create a document that by its plainness and simplicity would be instructive and convincing, with arguments so plain and straightforward that none could contest them as they set forth the case for independence. Hoping to create a document that would convince those who read it, not the least of which were many fence-sitting colonists, he listed a long section of the crimes of the King against the colonies, many of which were eventually omitted. He also had written a substantial portion on the illegitimacy of the slave trade in MEN (capitalization was Jefferson’s). That too was eventually stricken from the finished edit.
There were those who refused to vote. There was even an abstention from New York in the final tally. The young nation was being stressed at every seam in that hot, humid hall.
But on July 2, 1776, the cornerstone of the new nation had been formed.
A day later, July 3, future president John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail the following words.
“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illumination, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”
His spirit was right, even if his timing was off by a couple days.
What was once memorized by grade school children as a world-shaping piece of literature is now known by very few modern students.
However, it’s final lines bear repeating…
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration, some names are still common among us: Franklin, Jefferson and Hancock. But the remaining 53 have been largely forgotten. What kind of men were they? What did they stand to gain from this Revolution?
They ranged in age from 23 (Edward Rutledge of South Carolina) to age 80 (Ben Franklin of Pennsylvania). 24 of them were lawyers or judges, 11 of them were merchants of various kinds, nine were farmers, and the remaining members were ministers, doctors, and statesmen.
With just a handful of exceptions, these were all men of substantial education, property and public standing. As compared with the rest of the populace of the 1700’s, they had blessings, eases, and pleasures in life enjoyed by very few. All of them had more to lose, than they had to gain.
John Hancock, who already had a bounty of 500 pounds on his head, was one of the wealthiest of the signers. From a family of considerable wealth, he inherited his mercantile fortune from his Uncle, Thomas Hancock. He was educated at Harvard, and had all that life could give him at the time. Yet he signed his signature with such size and flourish, that “it might be read without spectacles.”
He was not alone. The fever of liberty was running at a high pitch. Yet each of them knew the risks. Treason was punished by hanging. And the consequences did not end with themselves, but extended to their families as well. And there was already a massive English fleet docked in the harbor at New York.
And Hancock’s actions did not go unnoticed by the British. Nor did the those of the other suspected signers. All of them became ferociously hunted. Delegates from New York, William Floyd, Philips Livingston, Louis Morris, and Francis Lewis, each had their homes destroyed. Mrs. Lewis was captured and brutalized. Though later exchanged for two British prisoners, she never recovered. The Floyds were able to flee from New York into Connecticut, where they lived as refugees for the next seven years. Upon their return, they found nothing left of their estate. Livingston, whose large possessions were confiscated, died two years later still working in Congress. Morris was deprived of his family for the next seven years.
Delegate John Hart of New Jersey, attempted to come home to see his dying wife, but was turned back by soldiers. As she lay dying, soldiers destroyed his livestock and burned his farm. He was hunted from pillar to post. When the manhunt finally relented, he returned to find his wife dead and buried. His 13 children had been taken away. He died three years later absolutely broken, never seeing his family again.
Judge Richard Stockton rushed home from Philadelphia to evacuate his wife and children. Betrayed by a sympathizer to the Crown, he was torn from his bed where they were hiding in the middle of the night and subjected to a brutal beating. He was jailed, starved, and finally released after becoming an invalid. He did not see the end of the war or its victory, and his family was required to live off of the charitable help of friends and strangers.
The list goes on and on. One heartbreaking, gutwrenching story after another. Each of sacred honor, fortunes sacrificed and lives lost or forever altered. Yet not one recanted. Not one relented. Not one failed to deliver on his pledge to the others.
And most remarkably, there was one man…a man who had the chance to see his family spared. A man who could have saved his two sons if only he had rejected the colonial revolution and supported the King. He was Abraham Clark of New Jersey. Clark had two sons who fought for the new nation. They were eventually captured and taken to the notorious British prison ship Jersey, where more than 11,000 American soldiers died. The two suffered most severely for the “crimes” of their father, brutally beaten and starved.
Clark was offered his two son’s lives if he would just come out in support of the King. To those of us who live so soft and comfortably 200 hundred years in their wake, it must seem astounding that with a broken heart, he said, “No”.
Life. Fortune. Sacred Honor.
Regards,
Bill Jenkins
July 14, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
1976 Swine Flu Vaccine Clip from 60 Minutes
What a blast from the past. I recall the vaccine program. Lucky they pulled it before my family got the vaccines.
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/cbs+60+minutes,+swine+flu+vaccine/video/x9mh9f_swine-flu-1976-propaganda_webcam
FWIW - found this video from http://www.blacklistednews.com/
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/cbs+60+minutes,+swine+flu+vaccine/video/x9mh9f_swine-flu-1976-propaganda_webcam
FWIW - found this video from http://www.blacklistednews.com/
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Prepare for swine flu this fall, officials say
Prepare for swine flu this fall, officials say
People are advised to have a 2 week supply of food, water on hand, plus a month's worth of medications.
By Mary Ann Roser
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Fall may feel like a long way off as Austin withers in triple-digit heat, but health authorities said Friday that it's not too soon to prepare for the fall flu season and a likely return of the novel swine flu virus.
The H1N1 virus, or swine flu, still is making people sick in Texas and elsewhere. President Barack Obama said Thursday he is concerned about "the potential for a significant outbreak in the fall."
No one knows whether the virus will mutate into a stronger disease, although a vaccine that's in production could prevent widespread illness. Texas is still waiting to hear from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about when it will get the vaccine, and how much, said Emily Palmer, spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services.
Texas also isn't sure whether the federal government will impose requirements on states for vaccinating people. However, the federal government has said priority should be given to protecting children, health care workers, front-line workers (emergency responders, police and firefighters) and high-risk groups, such as pregnant women. If the vaccine proves to be safe and effective, health authorities said, schoolchildren could get vaccinated starting in October.
Because seasonal flu also will be circulating, people should get a regular flu shot, too, Palmer said.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday that Texas stands to receive $27 million in federal grants to prepare for an emergency response to flu this fall. Of that, nearly $7 million would go to hospitals to help them get ready for a possible surge in patients.
As of Friday, the CDC said there had been 37,246 confirmed and probable cases of swine flu since April and 211 U.S. deaths. Texas reported 4,464 cases and 21 deaths.
Swine flu, believed to be similar to seasonal flu in its severity, closed some schools in the spring and is now shuttering summer camps around the country. It mostly affects younger people, causing scientists to speculate that people older than 50 may have some immunity. Palmer said only 4 percent of Texas cases have been older than 49.
Health authorities advise taking some precautions now, in case there's a fall outbreak. Chief among them is having a two-week supply of water and food on hand and up to a month's worth of medications available.
If flu is widespread this fall, "some people are talking about high absenteeism," said Dr. Pat Crocker, chief of the emergency department at Dell Children's Medical Center in Austin. "If you took away 20 percent of the work force for six weeks, it's going to make a big dent in things."
Crocker and Palmer said people can stock up now on items that have a long shelf life. If the items aren't needed this fall, "you can cycle food through your pantry," Palmer said.
Many reasonably priced, nutritious items are available to frugal families, said Crocker, including beans, rice and flour. He also advises buying peanut butter, canned meats, canned tuna, MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), a daily vitamin like Centrum and water in 2½-gallon jugs.
The state health department's pandemic flu committee soon will offer guidance to schools, high-risk groups and others, Palmer said.
Crocker said being prepared does not mean being alarmed. "I don't want anyone to think there is going to be a collapse of civilization next fall, because I don't think there's going to be," he said. "But there could be a stress on the health care system and the delivery system that we haven't seen before."
maroser@statesman.com; 445-3619
Pickdog comment: The bolded part is prudent always as every prepper knows.
But why do I feel like the full court press is on to get us prepared for mass innoculation?
I and my family will not be taking any vaccines ever again.
This is a line in the sand even more firm than 2nd amendment issues.
Folks, get your Vitamin D-3 now. We ordered 12 bottles of 1000IU pills (1200 pills total) for a family of five. That should be about a 2 month supply. It was less than $40.00 including shpping from Puritan's Pride. Going to order another 12 bottles next week.
People are advised to have a 2 week supply of food, water on hand, plus a month's worth of medications.
By Mary Ann Roser
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Fall may feel like a long way off as Austin withers in triple-digit heat, but health authorities said Friday that it's not too soon to prepare for the fall flu season and a likely return of the novel swine flu virus.
The H1N1 virus, or swine flu, still is making people sick in Texas and elsewhere. President Barack Obama said Thursday he is concerned about "the potential for a significant outbreak in the fall."
No one knows whether the virus will mutate into a stronger disease, although a vaccine that's in production could prevent widespread illness. Texas is still waiting to hear from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about when it will get the vaccine, and how much, said Emily Palmer, spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services.
Texas also isn't sure whether the federal government will impose requirements on states for vaccinating people. However, the federal government has said priority should be given to protecting children, health care workers, front-line workers (emergency responders, police and firefighters) and high-risk groups, such as pregnant women. If the vaccine proves to be safe and effective, health authorities said, schoolchildren could get vaccinated starting in October.
Because seasonal flu also will be circulating, people should get a regular flu shot, too, Palmer said.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday that Texas stands to receive $27 million in federal grants to prepare for an emergency response to flu this fall. Of that, nearly $7 million would go to hospitals to help them get ready for a possible surge in patients.
As of Friday, the CDC said there had been 37,246 confirmed and probable cases of swine flu since April and 211 U.S. deaths. Texas reported 4,464 cases and 21 deaths.
Swine flu, believed to be similar to seasonal flu in its severity, closed some schools in the spring and is now shuttering summer camps around the country. It mostly affects younger people, causing scientists to speculate that people older than 50 may have some immunity. Palmer said only 4 percent of Texas cases have been older than 49.
Health authorities advise taking some precautions now, in case there's a fall outbreak. Chief among them is having a two-week supply of water and food on hand and up to a month's worth of medications available.
If flu is widespread this fall, "some people are talking about high absenteeism," said Dr. Pat Crocker, chief of the emergency department at Dell Children's Medical Center in Austin. "If you took away 20 percent of the work force for six weeks, it's going to make a big dent in things."
Crocker and Palmer said people can stock up now on items that have a long shelf life. If the items aren't needed this fall, "you can cycle food through your pantry," Palmer said.
Many reasonably priced, nutritious items are available to frugal families, said Crocker, including beans, rice and flour. He also advises buying peanut butter, canned meats, canned tuna, MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), a daily vitamin like Centrum and water in 2½-gallon jugs.
The state health department's pandemic flu committee soon will offer guidance to schools, high-risk groups and others, Palmer said.
Crocker said being prepared does not mean being alarmed. "I don't want anyone to think there is going to be a collapse of civilization next fall, because I don't think there's going to be," he said. "But there could be a stress on the health care system and the delivery system that we haven't seen before."
maroser@statesman.com; 445-3619
Pickdog comment: The bolded part is prudent always as every prepper knows.
But why do I feel like the full court press is on to get us prepared for mass innoculation?
I and my family will not be taking any vaccines ever again.
This is a line in the sand even more firm than 2nd amendment issues.
Folks, get your Vitamin D-3 now. We ordered 12 bottles of 1000IU pills (1200 pills total) for a family of five. That should be about a 2 month supply. It was less than $40.00 including shpping from Puritan's Pride. Going to order another 12 bottles next week.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Avoid Flu Shots, Take Vitamin D Instead
Avoid Flu Shots, Take Vitamin D Instead
by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
Another influenza season is beginning in the northern temperate zone, and our government’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will strongly urge Americans to get a flu shot. Health officials will say that every winter 5–20 percent of the population catches the flu, 200,000 people are hospitalized, and 36,000 people will die from it.
The CDC’s 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations each year on who should be vaccinated. Ten years ago, for the 1999–2000 season, the committee recommended that people over age 65 and children with medical conditions have a flu shot. Seventy-four million people were vaccinated. Next season (2000–01) the committee lowered the age for universal vaccination from 65 to 50 years old, adding 41 million people to the list. For the 2002–03 season, the ACIP added healthy children 6 months to 23 months old, and for 2004–05, children up to 5 years old. For the 2008–09 season the committee has advised that healthy children 6 months to 18 years old have a flu shot each year. Its recommendations for influenza vaccination now covers 256 million Americans – 84 percent of the U.S. population. Only healthy people ages 19–49 not involved in some aspect of health care remain exempt. Pharmaceutical companies have made 146 million influenza vaccines for the U.S. market this flu season.
Almost all the ACIP members who make these recommendations have financial ties to the vaccine industry. The CDC therefore must grant each member a conflict-of-interest waiver.
The CDC mounts a well-orchestrated campaign each season to generate interest and demand for flu shots. Along with posters for the public, flyers, and health care provider materials, it encourages doctors to "recommend/urge flu shots." Medical groups, nonmedical organizations (like the YMCA), and the media trumpet CDC-released messages on influenza, notably: "Flu kills 36,000 per year," "This could be a bad/serious flu year," and "Flu vaccine is the best defense against flu." The government promotes National Vaccination Week, which this year is December 8–14. This year, however, rather than uniformly following the government’s "Seven-Step Recipe" for generating demand for flu shots, the mainstream media has questioned their benefits.
The New York Times had an article in the September 2, 2008 issue titled "Doubts Grow Over Flu Vaccine in Elderly," which says, "The influenza vaccine, which has been strongly recommended for people over 65 for more than four decades, is losing its reputation as an effective way to ward off the virus in the elderly. A growing number of immunologists and epidemiologists say the vaccine probably does not work very well for people over 70, the group that accounts for three-fourths of all flu deaths." The article refers to a study done by the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle on 3,500 people, age 65–94, to determine if flu vaccines are effective in protecting older people against developing pneumonia (Lancet 2008;372:398–405).
The National Vital Statistics Reports compiled by the CDC show that only 1,138 deaths a year occur due to influenza alone (257 in 2001, 727 in 2002, 1,792 in 2003, 1,100 in 2004, and 1,812 in 2005). Bacterial pneumonia causes some 60,000 deaths each year, mainly in the winter, when surveillance data show increased prevalence of the flu virus. Using a mathematical (Poisson) regression model, officials estimate that the flu virus triggers some of the winter-time deaths from pneumonia, along with deaths in people with cardiovascular disease and other chronic illnesses. More than 34,000 of those "36,000" flu deaths are what officials estimate are "influenza-associated" pneumonic and cardiovascular deaths.
The Group Health study reported in the New York Times and other newspapers around the country found that flu shots do not protect elderly people against developing pneumonia. Pneumonia occurs with equal frequency in people over age 65 with or without a flu shot. Earlier studies, biased by the "healthy user effect," over-estimated the vaccine’s effect on pneumonia because they did not adjust for the presence and severity of other diseases in unvaccinated people. As the Group Health authors point out, "The study found that people who were healthy and conscientious about staying well were the most likely to get an annual flu shot. Those who are frail may have trouble bathing or dressing on their own and are less likely to get to their doctor’s office or a clinic to receive the vaccine. They are also more likely to be closer to death." Other investigators question that there is a mortality benefit with influenza vaccination. Vaccination coverage among the elderly increased from 15% in 1980 to 65% now, but there has been no decrease in deaths from influenza and pneumonia (Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2008;178:527–33). As one vaccine researcher puts it, "I think the evidence base [for mortality benefits from flu shots] we have leaned on is not valid" (Lancet Infect Dis 2007;7:658–66).
There is also a lack of evidence that young children benefit from flu shots. A systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006;1:CD004879).
Randomized controlled trials are the most reliable way to determine the efficacy – and safety – of a given treatment. No randomized trials show that flu shots reduce mortality from influenza or flu-related pneumonia. Some do show that the flu vaccine is somewhat effective in preventing influenza. In one widely quoted study, 1838 volunteers age 60 and over were randomized to receive a flu shot or placebo (a shot of saline). The flu shot reduced the relative risk of contracting (serologically confirmed, clinical) influenza by a seemingly impressive 50%. The incidence of influenza in the unvaccinated people in this study was 3%. In the vaccinated group it was 2% (JAMA 1994;272:1661–5). Flu shots reduced the absolute risk of contracting influenza by a meager 1% (not 50%, as the "relative risk" portrays it). In actuality, for every 100 people that have a flu shot only one will benefit from it – this, in medical parlance, is the "number needed to treat" (NNT) in order to achieve any benefit from the treatment. A flu shot provides no benefit for the other 99 people – 2 of them will get influenza anyway – and all 100 risk being harmed by the vaccine.
Another randomized trial by Zaman and coworkers published recently (NEJM 2008;359: published online September 17, in print October 9) found that the incidence of influenza in infants whose mothers had a flu shot during their pregnancy was 4% (6/159). The incidence of flu in infants whose mothers did not have a flu shot was 10% (16/157). In this study (done in Bangladesh and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and others) flu shots reduced the relative risk of influenza illness in infants by a seemingly impressive 63%. But only 6 out of 100 infants benefited from the shot. The other 94 received no benefit – 4 got influenza anyway – and all are at risk from being harmed by the vaccine, particularly from the mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde in it.
After officials select the three strains of flu virus that they think are most likely to be circulating during the next winter season (they picked the wrong ones last year), vaccine makers grow the viruses in fertilized chicken eggs, with 500,000 eggs per day (each examined by hand) for up to eight months. Formaldehyde is used to inactivate the virus. It is a known cancer-causing agent. Aluminum is added to promote an antibody response. It is a neurotoxin that may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. Other additives and adjuvants in the flu vaccine include Triton X-100 (a detergent), Polysorbate 80, carbolic acid, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), gelatin, and various antibiotics – neomycin, streptomycin, and gentamicin – that can cause allergic reactions in some people.
Two-thirds of the vaccines made for the 2008–09 flu season, 100 million of them, contain full-dose thimerosal, an organomercury compound, which is 49% mercury by weight. (An unidentified number of the other 50 million vaccines contain either "no" or "trace" amounts of thimerosal.) It is used to disinfect the vaccine. Each one of these 100 million flu shots contain 25 micrograms of mercury, a mercury content that is 50,000 part per billion, 250 times more than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit. Mercury is a neurotoxin, which has a toxicity level 1,000 times that of lead.
There is some evidence that flu shots cause Alzheimer’s disease. This most likely is a result of combining mercury with aluminum and formaldehyde, which renders them much more toxic together through a synergistic effect than each would be alone. One investigator has reported that people who received the flu vaccine each year for 3 to 5 years had a ten-fold greater chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease than people who did not have any flu shots (Int J Clin Invest 2005;1:1–4). (The brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease display three pathologic hallmarks: neurofibillary tangles, amyloid plaques, and phosphorylation of tau protein. Brain cells grown in test tubes develop these changes when exposed to nanomolar doses of mercury, doses similar to the amount of mercury a person gets from a flu shot.)
Mercury in vaccines has also been implicated as a cause of autism. Vaccine makers have now removed thimerosal from all childhood vaccines, except flu shots. For more on this subject see my article "Mercury on the Mind," with its recommended reading list, and Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy by David Kirby.
Three serious, acknowledged adverse reactions to the flu vaccine are joint inflammation and arthritis, anaphylactic shock (and other life-threatening allergic reactions), and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a paralytic autoimmune disease that fells people several weeks after their flu shot. One woman with post-vaccination GBS writes:
"I had a flu shot in November, and by December I became weak and continued to get weaker until I collapsed and was taken to the hospital… I was helpless, totally paralyzed with Guillain-Barré syndrome… I was in ICU for three weeks and then transferred to a rehabilitation center. Three months later I was released to come home because I could ambulate approximately 100 feet with a walker. I continued rehabilitation as an outpatient for the next three months until I could walk with hand crutches. Today, I need a cane. I was not forewarned of any possible hazard when they gave me the flu shot."
Another:
"I have a friend, now in a wheelchair, who took the flu shot, got Guillain-Barré and now cannot walk."
Another woman, diagnosed with GBS after a flu shot, spent 16 months in the hospital paralyzed on a ventilator and life support. After several subsequent multi-month hospitalizations she writes:
"On my last visit to my neurologist I was able to walk about 6 feet holding his hand, not much but it took years to be able to do that. I scratch my head when I hear them promoting flu shots… Most people that I come into contact with – in the hospital and out (nurses, doctors, and regular people) – after hearing my story, feel that it is better to chance the flu and not get the shot." (These statements are in Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Families and Health Practitioners: Guide to Immunizations Risks and Protection by Neil Miller [no relation], pages 84–86.)
The package inserts that come with the flu vaccine note that GBS is a potential complication. There are 1 to 2 cases of GBS per 1 million vaccinated persons. (There were 10 times that many cases of GBS in 1976 with the flu vaccine used that year). Taking a flu shot is essentially the same as buying a lottery ticket for acquiring Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Seventy percent of doctors do not get a flu shot.
Flu virus exists in people year-round, and new strains seed a population during the "off-season." In the northern and southern temperate zones, flu epidemics occur in the cold part of the year, October–March and April–September respectively. Flu epidemics occur in the tropics during the rainy season.
Explanations for why flu epidemics occur in the winter when it is cold – people being indoors in close contact, drier air dehydrating mucus and preventing the body from expelling virus particles, the virus lingering longer on exposed surfaces, like doorknobs, with colder temperatures – do not explain why flu epidemics occur in the tropics.
Something that can explain why flu epidemics also occur both in warm and cold climates is this: During a flu epidemic, wherever it may be, the atmosphere blocks ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation from the Sun. In the temperate zones above latitude 35 degrees North and South, the sun is at a low enough angle in the winter that the ozone layer in the atmosphere absorbs and blocks the short-wavelength (280–315 nanometers) UVB rays. In the tropics during the wet season, thick rain clouds block UVB rays.
Skin contains a cholesterol derivative, 7-dehydrocholesterol. UVB radiation on skin breaks open one of the carbon rings in this molecule to form vitamin D. The activated form of vitamin D (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D) attaches to receptors on genes that control their expression, which turn protein production on or off. Vitamin D regulates the expression of more than 1,000 genes throughout the body. They include ones in macrophages, cells in the immune system that, among other things, attack and destroy viruses. Vitamin D switches on genes in macrophages that make antimicrobial peptides, antibiotics the body produces. Like antibiotics, these peptides attack and destroy bacteria; but unlike antibiotics, they also attack and destroy viruses.
Vitamin D also expresses genes that stop macrophages from overreacting to an infection and releasing too many inflammatory agents – cytokines – that can damage infected tissue. Vitamin D, for example, down regulates genes that produce interleukin-2 and interferon gamma, two cytokines that prime macrophages and cytotoxic T cells to attack the body’s tissues. In the 1918–19 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 500,000 Americans, young healthy adults would wake up in the morning feeling well, start drowning in their own inflammation as the day wore on, and be dead by midnight, as happened to my 22-year-old grandmother and my wife’s 24-year-old grandmother. Autopsies showed complete destruction of the epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract resulting, researchers now know, from a macrophage-induced severe inflammatory reaction to the virus. In a terribly misguided way, these victims’ own immune system attacked and killed them, not the virus, something in future pandemics vitamin D, in appropriate doses, can prevent.
A creditable hypothesis that explains the seasonal nature of flu is that influenza is a vitamin D deficiency disease. Cannell and colleagues offer this hypothesis in "Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D" (Epidemiol Infect 2006;134:1129–40). They quote Hippocrates (circa 400 B.C.), who said, "Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year." Vitamin D levels in the blood fall to their lowest point during flu seasons. Unable to be protected by the body’s own antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides) that this gene-expresser engineers, a person with a low vitamin D blood level is more vulnerable to contracting colds, influenza, and other respiratory infections (e.g., respiratory syncytial virus).
Studies show that children with rickets, a vitamin D-deficient skeletal disorder, suffer from frequent respiratory infections; and children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get a cold. Given vitamin D’s wide-ranging effects on gene expression, other studies, for example, show that people diagnosed with cancer in the summer have an improved survival compared with those diagnosed in the winter (Int J Cancer 2006;119:1530–36).
A growing body of evidence indicates that rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults (both a softening of bones due to defective bone mineralization) are just the tip of a vitamin D-deficiency iceberg. Tuberculosis and various autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, and type I diabetes have a causal association with low vitamin D blood levels. Vitamin D deficiency plays a causal role in hypertension, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, and stroke. It is also a risk factor for metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes, chronic fatigue, seasonal affective disorder, depression, cataracts, infertility, and osteoporosis. At the bottom of the vitamin D iceberg lies cancer. There is good evidence that vitamin D deficiency is a causal factor in some 15 different common cancers. (NEJM 2007;357:266–81.)
The increased number of deaths that occur in winter, largely from pneumonia and cardiovascular diseases, are much more likely due to vitamin D deficiency than to an increased prevalence of serologically-positive influenza virus (which also results from vitamin D deficiency).
Experts reckon that an optimum blood level of vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D) is 50–99 ng/ml. (Children need a blood level >8 ng/ml to prevent rickets. It takes a concentration >20 to maintain parathyroid hormone levels in a normal range. A level >34 is needed for peak intestinal calcium absorption. And in elderly people neuromuscular performance steadily improves as vitamin D blood levels rise to 50 ng/ml.) The government’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamin D is 400 IU (international units) a day, an amount sufficient to prevent rickets and osteomalacia but not vitamin D’s other gene-regulating benefits. To achieve all of vitamin D’s benefits one has to take an amount ten times the government’s RDA – 4,000 to 5,000 IU a day.
A light-skinned person will synthesize 20,000 IU of vitamin D in 20 minutes sunbathing on a tropical beach, at which point vitamin D synthesis shuts down for the day (it takes a dark-skinned person 6 to 10 times longer to make this amount). Human breast milk does not contain vitamin D, since, from an evolutionary standpoint, our African ancestors’ infants, reared near the equator, could readily synthesize this gene regulator from sunlight in their skin. Food contains very little vitamin D. (The highest concentrations are in wild salmon, mackerel, sardines, and cod liver oil.) Federal regulations now require that some foods, like milk, be fortified with vitamin D. But one would have to drink 200 glasses of milk to obtain the amount of vitamin D a light-skinned person can make in 20 minutes sunbathing.
The majority of Americans are vitamin D deficient, with a 25-hydroxy D blood level <20 ng/ml, or insufficient, with a level of 20–<30 ng/ml. Cheap vitamin D supplements (D3, not D2) provide the only way most of us can maintain a year-round vitamin D blood levels greater than 50 ng/ml. That requires taking 4–5,000 IU of vitamin D a day (50,000 IU every ten days or 150,000 IU a month).
Taking vitamin D in these doses is safe, far safer than a flu shot with all the bad chemicals it contains. Concerns about vitamin D toxicity are overblown. One can take a 10,000 IU vitamin D supplement on a daily basis without any adverse effects. In healthy persons, long-term consumption of more than 40,000 IU a day is necessary to cause an elevation in the blood calcium level (hypercalcemia), the first manifestation of vitamin D toxicity (Am J Clin Nutr 2006;84:694–97). Check your vitamin D (25-hydroxy D) blood level. People with granulomatous diseases like sarcoidosis should also check their blood level of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, the active form.
Can a shot (or tablets) of vitamin D prevent influenza better than a flu shot? There is good reason to believe that it can.
Doctors in India and Canada give people a once-yearly injection of 600,000 IU of vitamin D (MJA 2005;183:10–12). That would be better, and safer, than having a flu shot. Daily, weekly, or monthly vitamin D tablets work just as well. For more on this subject see my article "Vitamin D in a New Light" and visit Dr. Cannell’s Vitamin D Council website.
Investigators have completed one double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial that shows vitamin D prevents colds and influenza significantly better (P <0.002) than a placebo pill (Epidemiol Infection 2007;135:1095–6). A large multi-center randomized trial conducted over multiple flu seasons comparing vitamin D to a flu shot can show conclusively which is better, and safer. But given the financial stakes underpinning flu shots, and unpatentable vitamin D, who will fund it?
In the meantime, considering what is most likely to be the outcome of such a trial, if it is ever conducted, I recommend that you avoid flu shots and take vitamin D instead.
Notes
Influenza virus Flu viruses are classified into types A, B, and C. Type A viruses cause most influenza epidemics. They exist, replicate, and mutate in swine and horses; seals, dolphins, and whales; migratory water birds, geese and ducks; domestic birds chicken and turkeys; and humans. Type B and C viruses exist only in humans and only type B causes (relatively mild) infections. Influenza A viruses are further categorized into subtypes on the basis of two surface antigens (proteins): hemaglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). There are 15 different H and 9 different N antigens. The 1918–19 Spanish flu pandemic was caused by an H1NI Type A virus. Subtypes of influenza viruses are further classified by the names of cities, states or countries, along with the year they were discovered. For the 2008–09 (northern temperate zone) season, officials predict and have directed vaccines to be made against A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1), A/Brisbane/10/2007 (H3N2), and B/Florida/4/2006. In an unusual departure, they are all different from the previous season, which missed the strains that caused influenza that season. What doctors diagnose as "influenza" is often an influenza-like illness caused by a respiratory virus other than the flu. Serologic tests are necessary to prove that one’s respiratory illness is actually caused by the flu virus.
Other things to do to prevent the flu Avoid sugar. It suppresses immunity. Avoid Omega-6 vegetable oils (corn, safflower, sunflower, peanut, canola, and soybean oil). Americans consume 50 times more of these oils than are necessary for good health. In this amount they are powerful immune suppressants. Take a well-balanced multivitamin/mineral capsule on a daily basis. Eat garlic. Manage stress. Exercise. Get enough rest. And wash your hands. Viruses spread most often from touching contaminated objects, like doorknobs, phones, shared computer keyboards, and shaking hands.
October 3, 2008
Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and writes articles on a variety of subjects for LewRockwell.com. His web site is www.donaldmiller.com
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
Another influenza season is beginning in the northern temperate zone, and our government’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will strongly urge Americans to get a flu shot. Health officials will say that every winter 5–20 percent of the population catches the flu, 200,000 people are hospitalized, and 36,000 people will die from it.
The CDC’s 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations each year on who should be vaccinated. Ten years ago, for the 1999–2000 season, the committee recommended that people over age 65 and children with medical conditions have a flu shot. Seventy-four million people were vaccinated. Next season (2000–01) the committee lowered the age for universal vaccination from 65 to 50 years old, adding 41 million people to the list. For the 2002–03 season, the ACIP added healthy children 6 months to 23 months old, and for 2004–05, children up to 5 years old. For the 2008–09 season the committee has advised that healthy children 6 months to 18 years old have a flu shot each year. Its recommendations for influenza vaccination now covers 256 million Americans – 84 percent of the U.S. population. Only healthy people ages 19–49 not involved in some aspect of health care remain exempt. Pharmaceutical companies have made 146 million influenza vaccines for the U.S. market this flu season.
Almost all the ACIP members who make these recommendations have financial ties to the vaccine industry. The CDC therefore must grant each member a conflict-of-interest waiver.
The CDC mounts a well-orchestrated campaign each season to generate interest and demand for flu shots. Along with posters for the public, flyers, and health care provider materials, it encourages doctors to "recommend/urge flu shots." Medical groups, nonmedical organizations (like the YMCA), and the media trumpet CDC-released messages on influenza, notably: "Flu kills 36,000 per year," "This could be a bad/serious flu year," and "Flu vaccine is the best defense against flu." The government promotes National Vaccination Week, which this year is December 8–14. This year, however, rather than uniformly following the government’s "Seven-Step Recipe" for generating demand for flu shots, the mainstream media has questioned their benefits.
The New York Times had an article in the September 2, 2008 issue titled "Doubts Grow Over Flu Vaccine in Elderly," which says, "The influenza vaccine, which has been strongly recommended for people over 65 for more than four decades, is losing its reputation as an effective way to ward off the virus in the elderly. A growing number of immunologists and epidemiologists say the vaccine probably does not work very well for people over 70, the group that accounts for three-fourths of all flu deaths." The article refers to a study done by the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle on 3,500 people, age 65–94, to determine if flu vaccines are effective in protecting older people against developing pneumonia (Lancet 2008;372:398–405).
The National Vital Statistics Reports compiled by the CDC show that only 1,138 deaths a year occur due to influenza alone (257 in 2001, 727 in 2002, 1,792 in 2003, 1,100 in 2004, and 1,812 in 2005). Bacterial pneumonia causes some 60,000 deaths each year, mainly in the winter, when surveillance data show increased prevalence of the flu virus. Using a mathematical (Poisson) regression model, officials estimate that the flu virus triggers some of the winter-time deaths from pneumonia, along with deaths in people with cardiovascular disease and other chronic illnesses. More than 34,000 of those "36,000" flu deaths are what officials estimate are "influenza-associated" pneumonic and cardiovascular deaths.
The Group Health study reported in the New York Times and other newspapers around the country found that flu shots do not protect elderly people against developing pneumonia. Pneumonia occurs with equal frequency in people over age 65 with or without a flu shot. Earlier studies, biased by the "healthy user effect," over-estimated the vaccine’s effect on pneumonia because they did not adjust for the presence and severity of other diseases in unvaccinated people. As the Group Health authors point out, "The study found that people who were healthy and conscientious about staying well were the most likely to get an annual flu shot. Those who are frail may have trouble bathing or dressing on their own and are less likely to get to their doctor’s office or a clinic to receive the vaccine. They are also more likely to be closer to death." Other investigators question that there is a mortality benefit with influenza vaccination. Vaccination coverage among the elderly increased from 15% in 1980 to 65% now, but there has been no decrease in deaths from influenza and pneumonia (Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2008;178:527–33). As one vaccine researcher puts it, "I think the evidence base [for mortality benefits from flu shots] we have leaned on is not valid" (Lancet Infect Dis 2007;7:658–66).
There is also a lack of evidence that young children benefit from flu shots. A systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006;1:CD004879).
Randomized controlled trials are the most reliable way to determine the efficacy – and safety – of a given treatment. No randomized trials show that flu shots reduce mortality from influenza or flu-related pneumonia. Some do show that the flu vaccine is somewhat effective in preventing influenza. In one widely quoted study, 1838 volunteers age 60 and over were randomized to receive a flu shot or placebo (a shot of saline). The flu shot reduced the relative risk of contracting (serologically confirmed, clinical) influenza by a seemingly impressive 50%. The incidence of influenza in the unvaccinated people in this study was 3%. In the vaccinated group it was 2% (JAMA 1994;272:1661–5). Flu shots reduced the absolute risk of contracting influenza by a meager 1% (not 50%, as the "relative risk" portrays it). In actuality, for every 100 people that have a flu shot only one will benefit from it – this, in medical parlance, is the "number needed to treat" (NNT) in order to achieve any benefit from the treatment. A flu shot provides no benefit for the other 99 people – 2 of them will get influenza anyway – and all 100 risk being harmed by the vaccine.
Another randomized trial by Zaman and coworkers published recently (NEJM 2008;359: published online September 17, in print October 9) found that the incidence of influenza in infants whose mothers had a flu shot during their pregnancy was 4% (6/159). The incidence of flu in infants whose mothers did not have a flu shot was 10% (16/157). In this study (done in Bangladesh and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and others) flu shots reduced the relative risk of influenza illness in infants by a seemingly impressive 63%. But only 6 out of 100 infants benefited from the shot. The other 94 received no benefit – 4 got influenza anyway – and all are at risk from being harmed by the vaccine, particularly from the mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde in it.
After officials select the three strains of flu virus that they think are most likely to be circulating during the next winter season (they picked the wrong ones last year), vaccine makers grow the viruses in fertilized chicken eggs, with 500,000 eggs per day (each examined by hand) for up to eight months. Formaldehyde is used to inactivate the virus. It is a known cancer-causing agent. Aluminum is added to promote an antibody response. It is a neurotoxin that may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. Other additives and adjuvants in the flu vaccine include Triton X-100 (a detergent), Polysorbate 80, carbolic acid, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), gelatin, and various antibiotics – neomycin, streptomycin, and gentamicin – that can cause allergic reactions in some people.
Two-thirds of the vaccines made for the 2008–09 flu season, 100 million of them, contain full-dose thimerosal, an organomercury compound, which is 49% mercury by weight. (An unidentified number of the other 50 million vaccines contain either "no" or "trace" amounts of thimerosal.) It is used to disinfect the vaccine. Each one of these 100 million flu shots contain 25 micrograms of mercury, a mercury content that is 50,000 part per billion, 250 times more than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit. Mercury is a neurotoxin, which has a toxicity level 1,000 times that of lead.
There is some evidence that flu shots cause Alzheimer’s disease. This most likely is a result of combining mercury with aluminum and formaldehyde, which renders them much more toxic together through a synergistic effect than each would be alone. One investigator has reported that people who received the flu vaccine each year for 3 to 5 years had a ten-fold greater chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease than people who did not have any flu shots (Int J Clin Invest 2005;1:1–4). (The brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease display three pathologic hallmarks: neurofibillary tangles, amyloid plaques, and phosphorylation of tau protein. Brain cells grown in test tubes develop these changes when exposed to nanomolar doses of mercury, doses similar to the amount of mercury a person gets from a flu shot.)
Mercury in vaccines has also been implicated as a cause of autism. Vaccine makers have now removed thimerosal from all childhood vaccines, except flu shots. For more on this subject see my article "Mercury on the Mind," with its recommended reading list, and Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy by David Kirby.
Three serious, acknowledged adverse reactions to the flu vaccine are joint inflammation and arthritis, anaphylactic shock (and other life-threatening allergic reactions), and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a paralytic autoimmune disease that fells people several weeks after their flu shot. One woman with post-vaccination GBS writes:
"I had a flu shot in November, and by December I became weak and continued to get weaker until I collapsed and was taken to the hospital… I was helpless, totally paralyzed with Guillain-Barré syndrome… I was in ICU for three weeks and then transferred to a rehabilitation center. Three months later I was released to come home because I could ambulate approximately 100 feet with a walker. I continued rehabilitation as an outpatient for the next three months until I could walk with hand crutches. Today, I need a cane. I was not forewarned of any possible hazard when they gave me the flu shot."
Another:
"I have a friend, now in a wheelchair, who took the flu shot, got Guillain-Barré and now cannot walk."
Another woman, diagnosed with GBS after a flu shot, spent 16 months in the hospital paralyzed on a ventilator and life support. After several subsequent multi-month hospitalizations she writes:
"On my last visit to my neurologist I was able to walk about 6 feet holding his hand, not much but it took years to be able to do that. I scratch my head when I hear them promoting flu shots… Most people that I come into contact with – in the hospital and out (nurses, doctors, and regular people) – after hearing my story, feel that it is better to chance the flu and not get the shot." (These statements are in Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Families and Health Practitioners: Guide to Immunizations Risks and Protection by Neil Miller [no relation], pages 84–86.)
The package inserts that come with the flu vaccine note that GBS is a potential complication. There are 1 to 2 cases of GBS per 1 million vaccinated persons. (There were 10 times that many cases of GBS in 1976 with the flu vaccine used that year). Taking a flu shot is essentially the same as buying a lottery ticket for acquiring Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Seventy percent of doctors do not get a flu shot.
Flu virus exists in people year-round, and new strains seed a population during the "off-season." In the northern and southern temperate zones, flu epidemics occur in the cold part of the year, October–March and April–September respectively. Flu epidemics occur in the tropics during the rainy season.
Explanations for why flu epidemics occur in the winter when it is cold – people being indoors in close contact, drier air dehydrating mucus and preventing the body from expelling virus particles, the virus lingering longer on exposed surfaces, like doorknobs, with colder temperatures – do not explain why flu epidemics occur in the tropics.
Something that can explain why flu epidemics also occur both in warm and cold climates is this: During a flu epidemic, wherever it may be, the atmosphere blocks ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation from the Sun. In the temperate zones above latitude 35 degrees North and South, the sun is at a low enough angle in the winter that the ozone layer in the atmosphere absorbs and blocks the short-wavelength (280–315 nanometers) UVB rays. In the tropics during the wet season, thick rain clouds block UVB rays.
Skin contains a cholesterol derivative, 7-dehydrocholesterol. UVB radiation on skin breaks open one of the carbon rings in this molecule to form vitamin D. The activated form of vitamin D (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D) attaches to receptors on genes that control their expression, which turn protein production on or off. Vitamin D regulates the expression of more than 1,000 genes throughout the body. They include ones in macrophages, cells in the immune system that, among other things, attack and destroy viruses. Vitamin D switches on genes in macrophages that make antimicrobial peptides, antibiotics the body produces. Like antibiotics, these peptides attack and destroy bacteria; but unlike antibiotics, they also attack and destroy viruses.
Vitamin D also expresses genes that stop macrophages from overreacting to an infection and releasing too many inflammatory agents – cytokines – that can damage infected tissue. Vitamin D, for example, down regulates genes that produce interleukin-2 and interferon gamma, two cytokines that prime macrophages and cytotoxic T cells to attack the body’s tissues. In the 1918–19 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 500,000 Americans, young healthy adults would wake up in the morning feeling well, start drowning in their own inflammation as the day wore on, and be dead by midnight, as happened to my 22-year-old grandmother and my wife’s 24-year-old grandmother. Autopsies showed complete destruction of the epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract resulting, researchers now know, from a macrophage-induced severe inflammatory reaction to the virus. In a terribly misguided way, these victims’ own immune system attacked and killed them, not the virus, something in future pandemics vitamin D, in appropriate doses, can prevent.
A creditable hypothesis that explains the seasonal nature of flu is that influenza is a vitamin D deficiency disease. Cannell and colleagues offer this hypothesis in "Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D" (Epidemiol Infect 2006;134:1129–40). They quote Hippocrates (circa 400 B.C.), who said, "Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year." Vitamin D levels in the blood fall to their lowest point during flu seasons. Unable to be protected by the body’s own antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides) that this gene-expresser engineers, a person with a low vitamin D blood level is more vulnerable to contracting colds, influenza, and other respiratory infections (e.g., respiratory syncytial virus).
Studies show that children with rickets, a vitamin D-deficient skeletal disorder, suffer from frequent respiratory infections; and children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get a cold. Given vitamin D’s wide-ranging effects on gene expression, other studies, for example, show that people diagnosed with cancer in the summer have an improved survival compared with those diagnosed in the winter (Int J Cancer 2006;119:1530–36).
A growing body of evidence indicates that rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults (both a softening of bones due to defective bone mineralization) are just the tip of a vitamin D-deficiency iceberg. Tuberculosis and various autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, and type I diabetes have a causal association with low vitamin D blood levels. Vitamin D deficiency plays a causal role in hypertension, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, and stroke. It is also a risk factor for metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes, chronic fatigue, seasonal affective disorder, depression, cataracts, infertility, and osteoporosis. At the bottom of the vitamin D iceberg lies cancer. There is good evidence that vitamin D deficiency is a causal factor in some 15 different common cancers. (NEJM 2007;357:266–81.)
The increased number of deaths that occur in winter, largely from pneumonia and cardiovascular diseases, are much more likely due to vitamin D deficiency than to an increased prevalence of serologically-positive influenza virus (which also results from vitamin D deficiency).
Experts reckon that an optimum blood level of vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D) is 50–99 ng/ml. (Children need a blood level >8 ng/ml to prevent rickets. It takes a concentration >20 to maintain parathyroid hormone levels in a normal range. A level >34 is needed for peak intestinal calcium absorption. And in elderly people neuromuscular performance steadily improves as vitamin D blood levels rise to 50 ng/ml.) The government’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamin D is 400 IU (international units) a day, an amount sufficient to prevent rickets and osteomalacia but not vitamin D’s other gene-regulating benefits. To achieve all of vitamin D’s benefits one has to take an amount ten times the government’s RDA – 4,000 to 5,000 IU a day.
A light-skinned person will synthesize 20,000 IU of vitamin D in 20 minutes sunbathing on a tropical beach, at which point vitamin D synthesis shuts down for the day (it takes a dark-skinned person 6 to 10 times longer to make this amount). Human breast milk does not contain vitamin D, since, from an evolutionary standpoint, our African ancestors’ infants, reared near the equator, could readily synthesize this gene regulator from sunlight in their skin. Food contains very little vitamin D. (The highest concentrations are in wild salmon, mackerel, sardines, and cod liver oil.) Federal regulations now require that some foods, like milk, be fortified with vitamin D. But one would have to drink 200 glasses of milk to obtain the amount of vitamin D a light-skinned person can make in 20 minutes sunbathing.
The majority of Americans are vitamin D deficient, with a 25-hydroxy D blood level <20 ng/ml, or insufficient, with a level of 20–<30 ng/ml. Cheap vitamin D supplements (D3, not D2) provide the only way most of us can maintain a year-round vitamin D blood levels greater than 50 ng/ml. That requires taking 4–5,000 IU of vitamin D a day (50,000 IU every ten days or 150,000 IU a month).
Taking vitamin D in these doses is safe, far safer than a flu shot with all the bad chemicals it contains. Concerns about vitamin D toxicity are overblown. One can take a 10,000 IU vitamin D supplement on a daily basis without any adverse effects. In healthy persons, long-term consumption of more than 40,000 IU a day is necessary to cause an elevation in the blood calcium level (hypercalcemia), the first manifestation of vitamin D toxicity (Am J Clin Nutr 2006;84:694–97). Check your vitamin D (25-hydroxy D) blood level. People with granulomatous diseases like sarcoidosis should also check their blood level of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, the active form.
Can a shot (or tablets) of vitamin D prevent influenza better than a flu shot? There is good reason to believe that it can.
Doctors in India and Canada give people a once-yearly injection of 600,000 IU of vitamin D (MJA 2005;183:10–12). That would be better, and safer, than having a flu shot. Daily, weekly, or monthly vitamin D tablets work just as well. For more on this subject see my article "Vitamin D in a New Light" and visit Dr. Cannell’s Vitamin D Council website.
Investigators have completed one double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial that shows vitamin D prevents colds and influenza significantly better (P <0.002) than a placebo pill (Epidemiol Infection 2007;135:1095–6). A large multi-center randomized trial conducted over multiple flu seasons comparing vitamin D to a flu shot can show conclusively which is better, and safer. But given the financial stakes underpinning flu shots, and unpatentable vitamin D, who will fund it?
In the meantime, considering what is most likely to be the outcome of such a trial, if it is ever conducted, I recommend that you avoid flu shots and take vitamin D instead.
Notes
Influenza virus Flu viruses are classified into types A, B, and C. Type A viruses cause most influenza epidemics. They exist, replicate, and mutate in swine and horses; seals, dolphins, and whales; migratory water birds, geese and ducks; domestic birds chicken and turkeys; and humans. Type B and C viruses exist only in humans and only type B causes (relatively mild) infections. Influenza A viruses are further categorized into subtypes on the basis of two surface antigens (proteins): hemaglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). There are 15 different H and 9 different N antigens. The 1918–19 Spanish flu pandemic was caused by an H1NI Type A virus. Subtypes of influenza viruses are further classified by the names of cities, states or countries, along with the year they were discovered. For the 2008–09 (northern temperate zone) season, officials predict and have directed vaccines to be made against A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1), A/Brisbane/10/2007 (H3N2), and B/Florida/4/2006. In an unusual departure, they are all different from the previous season, which missed the strains that caused influenza that season. What doctors diagnose as "influenza" is often an influenza-like illness caused by a respiratory virus other than the flu. Serologic tests are necessary to prove that one’s respiratory illness is actually caused by the flu virus.
Other things to do to prevent the flu Avoid sugar. It suppresses immunity. Avoid Omega-6 vegetable oils (corn, safflower, sunflower, peanut, canola, and soybean oil). Americans consume 50 times more of these oils than are necessary for good health. In this amount they are powerful immune suppressants. Take a well-balanced multivitamin/mineral capsule on a daily basis. Eat garlic. Manage stress. Exercise. Get enough rest. And wash your hands. Viruses spread most often from touching contaminated objects, like doorknobs, phones, shared computer keyboards, and shaking hands.
October 3, 2008
Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and writes articles on a variety of subjects for LewRockwell.com. His web site is www.donaldmiller.com
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
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