Swine Flu Vaccine

Photo by samantha celera
(flickr)

There has been a lot of chatter recently on the new H1N1 (Swine) flu vaccines concerning how well they will work, what side effects they might have, and what testing (or lack of) has been done. Much of what I have run across up until now has been speculative and devoid of any real information that would help a parent decide whether to vaccinate their child.

So I thought that I would point out this excellent article by Dr. Sears about the new vaccines -

Four Swine Flu Vaccines Approved by FDA

If you are interested in the topic I highly suggest reading this. Mainstream medicine does a lot of lip service to the concept of informed consent but they tend to provide a one sided version of the facts and the only "informed" decision that is acceptable is the one that they agree with. Dr. Sears provides real information on which to base a decision.

To paraphrase what Dr. Sears is saying, the vaccine manufacturers basically took their existing flu shots and replaced the part that targets the conventional flu virus with one that targets H1N1. So the pros and cons of the components of the shots themselves are the same as the other flu shots.

The main concern with these vaccines is that they have received very little testing so it is not known whether they will be effective in preventing swine flu. Also, if you following the CDC's recommendations and give your child both the regular flu shot and the H1N1 shot they could be receiving up to four shots over a month. Giving a child this many shots flu shots in a short period of time has not much safety testing.

Some types of these shots still contain up to 25 mcg of mercury. If you need two shots of each type and do them at the same time, this could add up to 100 mcg in a 30 day period and, well, haven't we all been down this road before? All I will say is that if you are following the recommendations for your child ask for the versions of the shots that do not contain mercury.