The Flu got a Flu got a ...

Dr. Rodney Sherman, an oncologist on the Upper East Side of Manhattan who has 350 chronically ill patients in need of protection against the flu, is giving up on the United States government.

After weeks of trying to get answers as to whether he is in line to get vaccine - and calm his patients' fears - he has decided to take matters into his own hands.

This morning, he is flying to Canada, hoping to buy vaccine, even though he does not know if any will be available.

It is a measure of how desperate private doctors in New York have become. While hospitals, clinics and nursing homes have all been surveyed by the state to determine what they need, private doctors say they have felt ignored.

William Van Slyke, a deputy commissioner of the New York State Health Department, said that while New York's 70,000 private physicians have not been asked what they need, officials at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta are checking with the two major manufacturers to determine who did not receive vaccine.

As the flu season draws nearer, Dr. Sherman said, that explanation offers little comfort.

Dr. Svetlana Kogan, who runs a practice in Queens and treats 500 people who need the vaccine, agrees. She has no vaccine and cannot even get a shot for a patient who suffering from a deficient white blood cell count and is terribly at risk because of a ravaged immune system.

"There is a daily newsletter," she said, to alert doctors where the remaining vaccine is going. "But it doesn't make it easy for a private solo practice like this one because we are kind of out of the loop."

She said she was considering banding together with a group of other private doctors and going to Canada.

Like the rest of the country, New York doctors are trying to make the best of a difficult situation, but they say they face some unique challenges. The city has large numbers of chronically ill patients who come from around the world to receive care from top-notch private physicians. Even the way New Yorkers live, one on top of the other, adds a degree of risk.

Despite repeated assurances from public officials that there will be enough vaccine for everyone who needs it, not one doctor interviewed believed that would be the case.

Dr. Stephen Baum, chairman of the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center and an infectious disease specialist, said, "I think it is reasonable to say that, by and large, the people who get it will need it, but not everyone who needs it will get it."

He said that given the shortage, there were often no good choices as to who gets vaccine and who does not, but he understood the concern of the doctors.

"The physicians in private practice do not have adequate supplies of influenza vaccine on hand and do not have likelihood of getting it," he said.

Americans who travel to Canada for the vaccine are likely to find themselves competing for a small supply. Canada has no shortage of the vaccine because it did not rely on Chiron, the company whose vaccine was contaminated, but any excess supply would cover only a fraction of the United States shortfall.

In the provinces of Alberta and Ontario, pharmacists have been warned not to sell any of the public supply of the flu vaccine to non-Canadians. But pharmacies are free to sell additional flu shots they have bought privately from their own suppliers. The shots are being sold for $8 to $40.

In the small Saskatchewan town of Estevan, just nine miles of the North Dakota border, more than 100 Americans arrived at Henders Drug for flu shots on Tuesday, said the store's pharmacist and co-owner, Larry Preddy.

"The Americans have run into an unfortunate situation that was out of their control," said Mr. Preddy, who planned to offer the shots every Tuesday and Thursday to anyone who showed up until the end of November, or as long as his supplies lasted. "The flu virus certainly doesn't discriminate and I don't think we should either."

The Canadian government announced that it could send as many as one million flu shots from its excess public supply to the United States, but only after Canadian needs are guaranteed. "If we can share it in a way that doesn't jeopardize the safety and supply for Canadians, we would do so," said the health minister, Ujjal Dosanjh.

In Atlanta, Dr. Mitchell Cohen, director of the Coordinating Center for Infectious Diseases at the C.D.C., said he was optimistic that the 20 million doses that scheduled to be shipped out in the next six to eight weeks would meet the needs of those most at risk. The federal government is talking to the manufacturers and will determine the number of doses New York and other states received or did not receive. The C.D.C. will use that data to help determine how much of the remaining vaccine to send to each state, but it will then be up to local officials to decide how the supply is distributed, Dr. Cohen said.

He said the C.D.C. hoped to notify states how much they would be sent within the next week or two.

Those most at risk of having serious complications if they do not get flu shots are children younger than 2, adults older than 65 and the chronically ill. This third group is varied, from people with severe respiratory illnesses to cancer patients to those with H.I.V. Doctors across the city said there did not seem to be any prioritizing to get vaccine to the sickest people in those categories.

Dr. Sherman said he had many patients whose immune systems had been battered by chemotherapy and were too sick to stand in long lines in the slim hope of getting a shot. He has called around the city, asking colleagues for spare vaccine, as well as asking city and state health officials for help, all to no avail.

In fact, he said the city directed him to call the state, which he did, only to be directed back to the city.

Many doctors said they had taken extra precautions this year because of problems in recent years, but, in the end, getting the vaccine was largely a matter of luck.

There are two main suppliers of vaccine in the United States. One of them, Chiron, did not distribute any vaccine because its supply, made at a British factory, was contaminated, leaving doctors across the country with only about half of the 100 million doses they were expecting.

Dr. Jeffrey B. Greene, a professor of clinical medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, runs a private practice with roughly 600 H.I.V. and AIDS patients in need of the vaccine and considers himself one of the lucky few to get doses because he ordered a year in advance and in bulk. Roughly half of the city's H.I.V. and AIDS patients are treated by private physicians, he said, so doctors have the unenviable task of doing triage to determine who gets what little vaccine remains.

"I had doctors from all over the city asking if I could send them some vaccine," said Dr. Greene, who did not receive his entire shipment. He could send them none.

Dr. Ronald Primas, an internist in Manhattan, has also been besieged by calls. "C.E.O.'s are calling in and asking for shots," he said. But, unlike his patients, once the C.E.O.'s are denied, they stop calling. "We don't get a call back from them so I am sure they are getting the shots somewhere else," he said.

Many doctors said they were recommending that patients who desperately need flu shots go to an emergency room, something hospitals fear because their own supplies are limited, if they have any at all.

For patients, all of this is maddening, to say the least. Elinor Brecher's struggle to find vaccine for her sick father, Walter, is common.

Mr. Brecher, 90, a retired theater owner whose family once owned the Apollo in Harlem, lives on the Upper East Side, wears a pacemaker and receives dialysis three days a week. He is on the higher end of the risk scale, and doctors have told her that he would die if he got sick, but all attempts to find a dose of the vaccine have proved futile.

"It is frightening and infuriating," Ms. Brecher said, adding that she would continue her search. "I have to wonder when and where the prioritizing will start, and how old, sick people who are not so fortunate as to have good doctors and caring children will be able to find it."

Nonetheless, the vaccine has made it to some unusual quarters. Vice President Dick Cheney got one, according to aides, citing his history of heart problems, as did the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, a heart surgeon who is considered healthy. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says that it has received 1,100 doses of flu vaccine for the high-risk prison inmates, including several on death row who fall into the category of chronically ill, over 65, immune deficient or pregnant.

"Any inmate in our system is our responsibility," said the department's spokeswoman, Michelle Lyons, noting that in the close quarters of a prison, sickness can spread fast.

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Title	FLU VACCINE SCANDAL AND FLU SCANDAL EXPLODING
Release Date	2004-10-12
Time	08:37:00
Comment
Article Text
MONDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2004. BANNED CONTAMINATED CHIRON FLU VACCINE IS LOOSE IN THE US. THE CDC MUST ANSWER QUESTIONS NOW. FOR EXAMPLE, DON'T ITS OWN BOTTOM-LINE STATISTICS PROVE THAT THE FLU IS KILLING VERY, VERY FEW PEOPLE??? MY ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION IS YES. THE CDC IS IS FLOATING FALSE PROPAGANDA ABOUT FLU DEATHS, IS CONCEALING THE TRUTH. WE ARE LIVING IN THE MIDDLE OF A LIE. THE CDC IS FABRICATING AND SPINNING ITS OWN DATA TO CONVINCE US THAT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE (ABOUT 36,000) ARE DYING FROM THE FLU EVERY YEAR IN THE US. WHEN ITS OWN POSTED DATA (UNDER ALL THE LIES) SHOWS THAT FLU IS ABOUT AS DEADLY AS ACCIDENTS INVOLVING TOASTERS FALLING ON PEOPLE FROM APARTMENT WINDOWS. NOTE: ALL DAY TODAY, BEFORE MY APPEARANCE TONIGHT ON COAST TO AM with George Noory, I'll be adding to the end of this article, giving you up-to-the-minute news on the breaking madness re FLU and FLU VACCINE...keep checking back for updates.... This isn’t big, it’s huge. (NOTE: I WILL BE ON COAST TO COAST AM WITH GEORGE NOORY TONIGHT FOR A FEW MINUTES IN THE FIRST HOUR....TALKING ABOUT CHIRON BANNED FLU VACCINE loose in the US...and CDC lies. John Keller may have just solved several big mysteries vis-à-vis flu stats. WHY DOES THE CDC SAY, OVER AND OVER, THAT 36,000 PEOPLE IN THE US DIE EVERY YEAR FROM THE FLU? WHY DOES THE CDC LUMP TOGETHER FLU AND PNEUMONIA WHEN ISSUING DEATH REPORTS? WHY DO LOTS OF PEOPLE SAY THEY KNOW OF NO ONE WHO HAS DIED OF THE FLU? Does the CDC admit, on its own site, that the REAL numbers of flu deaths, in recent years, are UNDER 800 PER YEAR? UNDER 1000 (TOTAL) FOR TWO YEARS? Mr. Keller, an independent researcher, has issued a report…I have excerpted a key paragraph below, which gives directions on finding the truth at the bottom of the CDC well. I have been trying to follow those directions…so far I’m lost in space…I need help from readers. Please try it yourself and report back to me. I have already emailed Mr. Keller and another friend for assistance. So far, my impression is, it’s me. I’m just not finding what is there. I don’t know. But I’m LOOKING, LOOKING, LOOKING. Help… [Update: I've gotten help from three independent sources.] Again, this could be bigger than big. Here is Keller’s excerpt: Now, let's dig into the more detailed reports. The "Deaths: Final Data for 2001" (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_03.pdf ) report is an 8MB PDF. Skip it unless you want all the charts detailing deaths by race, age, and ethnicity. The 2002 preliminary report contains the interesting parts of the 2001 final report, as well as data from 2002. The second search result for J10 (the mortality code for flu) brings us to page 16 of 48, which contains the breakout of flu and pneumonia. Total flu deaths for 2002: 753. Pneumonia accounted for the other 65,231 deaths. Scrolling to the right are the numbers for 2001. Again, total flu deaths were under one thousand, coming in at 257. That's right, less than a thousand people died of the flu in 2001 and 2002, according to the CDC's own numbers. End of excerpt. THIS MAY BE THE BIGGEST MEDICAL STORY TO COME DOWN THE PIPELINE IN YEARS. UPDATE: I'm getting confirmations on Mr. Keller's discovery. I will be adding to this article through the day, prior to my brief appearance on Coast to Coast AM tonight....and I'll be weaving in other material on the flu scam. Keep checking back. For example: OCTOBER 11, 2004. Researcher Patricia Doyle has uncovered a very disturbing paragraph at the end of a Reuters article dated October 6: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] was working to find out where vaccines had already been shipped to providers such as clinics, drug stores and employers.” The paragraph is, of course, about the explosively widening Chiron flu vaccine scandal. In previous stories, I’ve discussed the fact that this vaccine, just banned as UNSAFE and CONTAMINATED, was already shipped, in huge quantities, from England to the US, where it has been sitting in distributors’ warehouses. I warned that there was a very good chance vaccine had already been shipped out the doors. The CDC KNOWS THIS IS TRUE. Because the hunt is on. Clinics, drug stores, employers. The vials of vaccine have escaped quarantine. US health authorities are downplaying the situation. They claim, without a flutter of an eyelid, that it is standard practice for vaccine makers to ship doses for sale and distribution BEFORE THESE MANUFACTURERS DO THEIR FINAL SAFETY TESTS. As of this morning, Oct. 11, no major media outlet I can find has sounded an alarm. Why not? I’ll tell you. Because the CDC has not told them to. It is the CDC that is holding back. You know: “We must avoid panic.” You can be SURE that, if the CDC and its parent, the US Dept. of Health and Human Services, an agency of the executive branch of the US federal government, had issued press releases, the major media would be all over this. So it is those agencies of the government that are CULPABLE. How many people in the US have already received contaminated flu shots manufactured by Chiron? JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com Now start putting all this together. If the CDC has been lying for years about the real numbers of deaths from the flu in the US---if the true numbers are much, much lower than advertised broadly, then why all the fear-mongering about the dangers of the flu? They want to sell vaccine. They want to sell vaccine. So what does it appear they have ended up with? Very few actual deaths from the flu. And a contaminated and very dangerous vaccine which is being sold out the doors in the US...a wildcat vaccine...and no accountability. Add to this the hysterical propaganda about the possible arrival of The Big One, a global flu pandemic, based on no evidence at all, and you have a monumental crime in progress, right before your eyes. Yesterday, on C-SPAN, I watched a few minutes of a brief Congressional hearing on the "flu-vaccine shortage" in the US. The drug-company reps basically said that the only way to guarantee the vaccine makers a good season every season for selling flu vaccine is to UP THE DEMAND. And that means young children, who are still "not getting the shots in great enough numbers." It's nothing less than a RICO crime. Keep checking back today... JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE: October 11, 2004, 12:10PM, Pacific Time. The first confirmation on the Keller report has come in, from John Cullison. He has checked part of Keller’s work and finds identical low, low numbers on actual flu deaths. He offers the following path to take, using the CDC link Keller offered (above). As I suspected---since I am basically a writer with a typewriter who woke up one day with a computer---the technical details of the search are way over my head: Hi, You need to download the PDF (create a link to it on a page, and then right click the link; then select Save Target As..., assuming you're using Internet Explorer), and then open it in Adobe Acrobat Reader (rather than reading it via Internet Explorer's Acrobat plug-in), and then you'll be able to search the document for "J10". (In Acrobat Reader, use the Edit->Find command, and once you've found "J10" the first, time, use F3 to find subsequent "J10"'s.) I've already done the work, however, so here's what you need to do. Go to page 31. That page is printed in landscape mode, so that the table can fit the page. There, sixth line from the bottom, is the "Influenza and pneumonia (J10-J18)" listing, and below that are sub-listings for "Influenza (J10-J11)" and "Pneumonia (J12-J18)". Sure enough, under the first column of data, "All Ages", the influenza line shows a whopping 257, while the pneumonia line shows 61,777, for a total of 62,034. Almost 2/3 of the influenza deaths were of people over 74 years old. Go to page 35. The table layout is either identical or very similar, but it lists death rates per 100,000. As you can infer from the fifth line from the bottom of the table, death from influenza is a one-in-a-million event. Following those pages are breakouts for various races, various age groups (i.e. infant-related), etc. On page 104, you can find the following data: "The large decrease in Influenza (ICD-10 codes J10-J11) deaths from 2000 to 2001 is largely due to a change in the coding rules, which resulted in deaths that would have previously been assigned to Influenza, instead were assigned to Pneumonia in 2001." Of course, what exactly this means is not stated. Was the CDC misreporting pneumonia deaths as flu deaths previously, thereby generating excess alarm about the relative danger of influenza? =-John-= JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE Oct.11, 2004, 12:25PM, Pacific Time: More from John Cullison that confirms the Keller report on ACTUAL very low CDC stats for flu deaths in the US: I've found the preliminary data for 2002. It's at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_13.pdf. It's in THIS document that Keller's instructions make sense. Sure enough, on page 16, Influenza (J10-J11) is listed as 753, and Pneumonia (J12-J18) accounts for the other 65,231 cases. =-John-= JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE: October 11, 2004, 12:30PM, Pacific Time: Here is another source, Martin Maloney, who has tracked the CDC page address cited by Keller. He offers his succinct confirmatory finding: Perhaps this is what you are looking for. Near the bottom of page 31 of that PDF document, you will find, under the heading: Table 10. Number of deaths from 113 selected causes by age: United States, 2001 - Con. //snip// Influenza and pneumonia (J10-J18) ................................. 62,034 Influenza (J10-J11) ......................................................... 257 Pneumonia (J12-J18) ..................................................... 61,777 Martin A question is raised here. If table 10 is assembled BY AGE, are the figures cited here for all ages, or only for a restricted range of ages? Hopefully, more later on this. JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE: OCTOBER 11, 2004, 1:30pm, Pacific Time. Martin Maloney replies to my question about whether the stats he just cited on flu deaths were for all ages or a restricted age group: "Go to the top of the table, and you will see that age ranges are listed by column. The first column is "All ages" -- that is the column in which the cited figures appear." JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE: OCT. 11, 1:55PM. In John Keller's original report, which I excerpted above this morning, he gives a web page where the CDC discusses various types of pneumonia. www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/submenus/sub_pneumonia.htm Keller points out that, on this page, there is no discussion of the FLU as a precursor to pneumonia. I have checked this page, and Keller is right. This is important, because the CDC could try to defend itself for lumping together pneumonia and flu in death stats by saying, "Well, as we all know, the flu brings on pneumonia, and whether a person dies from flu or flu/pneumonia, the basic cause (flu) could be the same in many, many cases." There is no conventional basis for this assumption, and therefore the CDC has no leg to stand on for this deceptive lumping of death stats under the category "flu/pneumonia." As you can see from reading this far in today's post, it is exactly that lumping together that makes the flu seem rather dangerous. JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE, OCTOBER 11, 2:10PM, Pacific Time. John Cullison has now posted a very important article on flu deaths stats. It attempts to make your search easier. www.curezone.com/forums/m.asp?f=74&i=576 JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE---BACKGROUNDER---OCTOBER 11, 2004, 2:40PM, Pacific Time. BOSTON (CBS.MW) -- British regulators' sudden move to shut down Chiron's flu shot manufacturing operations sent the company's shares tumbling, while fanning fears the United States could be vulnerable to an influenza epidemic. Chiron (CHIR: news, chart, profile) rocked investors Tuesday when the company said it will not be able to release any of its Fluvirin vaccine because the British government has suspended the manufacturing license at its Liverpool plant for at least three months. The plant is Chiron's only flu-shot manufacturing facility. The suspension only prohibits Chiron from making Fluvirin at Liverpool, and does not affect the production of other products there, the company said. In addition, the British government also is preventing manufactured doses of the vaccine to be shipped to the United States. Shares of the vaccine developer closed down 16.38 percent to $37.98 Tuesday. Chiron had halted trading of its shares until about 12.15 p.m. Eastern and was down by more than a third at one point after trading resumed. Chiron is one of only two major suppliers of seasonal flu vaccine to the U.S. market. The Emeryville, Calif.-based biotechnology firm planned to supply 46 million to 48 million doses of the vaccine for the 2004-05 flu season, which begins in October. The other major supplier, Sanofi-Aventis (SNY: news, chart, profile), is reportedly on track to supply 50 million doses. Chiron's flu vaccine is only approved for use in adults. Pediatric flu shots are supplied by Aventis, according to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. "We profoundly regret we will be unable to meet public health needs," said Chiron Chief Executive Howard Pien in a conference call with investors midday Tuesday. "The suspension ... has the practical effect of wiping out our ability to supply," he added. According to Chiron management, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA, Britain's equivalent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, yanked the company's license to manufacture the vaccine at its Liverpool plant at midnight Eastern time Tuesday, citing concerns about the process. Chiron already had announced it was delaying shipments of the vaccine after discovering some batches of the vaccine made at the plant had been contaminated. The company is also a major supplier of the flu vaccine to the British government. The MHRA's move came just as Chiron was doing final testing on this season's supply. According to Chiron, practically all of the 48 million doses slated for the United States had already been manufactured when the MHRA pulled the plug. Pien said that the move was "unexpected," maintaining that the flu shots had passed internal corporate inspection without a problem last week, an inspection process that the FDA appeared to be "fairly comfortable with." "As of last week, we expected to be on track to have delivery of Fluvirin by early October," Pien elaborated on the U.S. shipments. "You should now assume that the entirety of the 2004-05 flu season is gone." The executive said that the existing supply of flu shots at the Liverpool plant will be destroyed unless MHRA changes its decision in the next few days. He added that Chiron will begin discussions with that agency Wednesday. Because it takes more than five months to manufacture the vaccine, Pien indicated that there is no way the company can manufacture more of the shots to meet its U.S. obligations. Chiron also issued new 2004 financial estimates. The company said that due to the loss of its primary product for the year, Chiron now expects to post net earnings of between 35 cents and 45 cents per share for 2004. The company previously forecast earnings of $1.50 to $1.60 a share for the year. Chiron is one of the world's leading manufacturers of flu vaccines. The company is a major supplier of flu shots to the United States, as well as Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom. It said in August it was delaying U.S. shipments for several weeks after it was discovered that a small number of batches made at its Liverpool plant had been contaminated due to human error. Chiron executives testified before Congress last week that they anticipated no further delays in the shipments. Sanofi-Aventis is the other major flu vaccine supplier to the United States. The company said Monday that it had already shipped 30 million doses ahead of schedule to U.S. distributors. See related story. Niche biotechnology concern MedImmune (MEDI: news, chart, profile) also makes a spray-mist version of the vaccine, called FluMist. But that product has not been approved for use in children under age 5 and adults over 50, who combined make up the vast bulk of flu shot recipients. MedImmune's chief executive told CBS MarketWatch in early September that his company had no plans to ramp up additional production of FluMist to fill any market void created by Chiron's delays. MedImmune had planned to only make about 2 million doses of FluMist for the 2004-05 flu season. U.S.-traded shares of Sanofi-Aventis rose 0.98 percent to $37.14. Its Aventis (AVE: news, chart, profile) subsidiary, of which 5 percent of its shares are publicly traded, was up 1.39 percent to $86. MedImmune jumped 5.79 percent to $25.78. During a second press conference Tuesday, Chiron executives also emphasized that the company is still seeking to be a major vaccine supplier for the 2005-06 season. The company said that it is working diligently with U.S. and foreign regulators to help work out any outstanding issues to be able to begin the lengthy manufacturing process next spring. "What we're worried about is our ability to live up to the public trust... as a reliable supplier of the vaccine," lamented Pien. He added that the company is also on track with a previously planned $100 million capital investment in its vaccine-making operations, which include construction and upgrades. End of CBS piece. Since that piece appeared, the CDC has admitted (though the admission has not received wide press attention) that perhaps 6 million doses of the vaccine had already been shipped into the US, before the ban was laid on. Perhaps more. Chiron's flu vaccine is contaminated with the serratia bacteria. The doses already in the US are outside the regulatory arm of the FDA and outside the control of Chiron. Therefore, as demand increases for the vaccine and the public becomes predictably hysterical (announce a shortage, make people drool for your product), these stocks of vaccine, sitting in US distributors' warehouses, are almost certainly going out the door into the black market. Who knows how much is being sold in the US and other countries. To make things worse, about a million doses were shipped from Chiron in England this past July. People may have already been shot up with them... JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE, OCTOBER 11, 2004, 3:15PM, Pacific Time. Yet another reader has made the trek to the CDC site pages and has found a 2003 report about flu for the year 2001: nvsr52 03.pdf (7.4 MB) pg 44 influenza and pneumonia deaths (j10-j18) 62,034 influenza (j10-11) 257 pneumonia (J12-18) 61,777 JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE, OCTOBER 11, 4:50pm, PACIFIC TIME. Another backgrounder on flu vaccine. Boom. It turns out that a great deal of the flu vaccine made by Chiron in England---the vaccine just declared contaminated and unfit for use and dangerous---IS ALREADY IN THE US. It was shipped here prior to the ban. It’s sitting in US distributor warehouses, “outside the direct control of the company or US [FDA] regulators,” according to SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle’s online outlet. So which flu vaccine are people in the US going to be getting this fall and winter?? The vials of Chiron vaccine in the US are under the quarantine imposed by the company after it learned that all 48 million of its 2004 flu-vaccine doses were banned by British regulators…but that quarantine does not mean the vials will just sit there in US warehouses. Oh no. It means that eager greedheads can start putting it on the market. Because the selling price will skyrocket in a very heavy demand situation. Chiron vaccine could be going out the door as we speak. It’s open season on people who want flu vaccine. And as you’ll see in the SFGate article excerpted below, there is a curious word being used to describe FDA action on these US-warehoused flu vaccine doses: the word is RELEASED. Huh? RELEASED? No explanation is spelled out. Here ‘s the excerpt: The Chronicle has learned that vaccine shipped across the Atlantic has been sitting since August in the warehouses of American drug distributors, under a Chiron-imposed "quarantine,'' but outside the direct control of the company or U.S. regulators. Now, Chiron's entire production of at least 48 million doses of flu vaccine has been rendered useless after British regulators abruptly suspended the license of the Emeryville-based company's Liverpool factory Tuesday, cutting the U.S. supply of flu shots in half. In this case, Chiron employed the little-known quarantine process under which drugmakers can ship products to distributors before final safety tests are completed. Norman Baylor, deputy director for the FDA's vaccine unit, said it was not unusual for manufacturers to ship vaccine under quarantine. The quarantine is lifted by the manufacturer when the company's final tests confirm that the product is safe and the distributor is free to sell it. "I think the system works,'' Baylor said in an interview in September shortly after Chiron's contamination problem first surfaced. "The system did what it was supposed to do.'' Baylor also confirmed that 27 bulk lots -- nearly half of the 60 produced by the Chiron plant -- had been "released" by the FDA prior to the company's discovery that some finished product was contaminated. The actual number of doses that can be produced from each lot varies. Although the federal agency does not conduct tests on the final product, companies are liable for the safety of their medicines and have powerful incentive to test them thoroughly before releasing them from quarantine, Baylor explained. Chiron shipped its first million doses of vaccine to distributors in late July, trumpeting its first-to-market achievement in a July 23 press release. At that time, the company explained that "in the coming days," it would "complete its internal release procedures, allowing distributors to begin shipping vaccines to customers.'' Any optimism at Chiron evaporated with Tuesday's ruling. "We consider the Fluvirin season to be over, for all intents and purposes,'' Chiron spokesman John Gallagher said Wednesday. He also confirmed that the initial crisis had been triggered when tests detected serratia bacteria in a small number of lots. Serratia bacteria are often implicated in episodes of hospital-acquired infection and can be deadly in the bloodstream. The company has yet to reveal when it discovered the contaminated lots, but having found a problem, Chiron never lifted its quarantine. Although no Chiron vaccine was shipped to clinics, some drug industry experts acknowledge that its presence at multiple U.S. distributor warehouses poses a potential security problem. "Because of the shortage, the spot market for flu vaccines is going to go through the roof,'' said David Webster, a health care consultant in Lehigh Valley, Penn. "Any time there is an extremely valuable commodity, the potential exists that it will work its way on to the black market. It is a legitimate cause for concern.'' End of SF Gate article JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com UPDATE: OCTOBER 11, 2004, 9:20PM. PACIFIC TIME. I have had several people contact me who are trying to justify the CDC reporting system on flu and pneumonia. They basically claim that, since the flu "so often leads to pneumonia," especially the oh so deadly viral type of pneumonia (they stress this), it makes sense for the CDC to lump flu and pneumonia deaths together. I offer this tidbit from WebMD about viral penumonia: "Viral pneumonia is pneumonia caused by a virus. About half of all people with pneumonia have viral pneumonia. Viral pneumonia is usually less serious than bacterial pneumonia and can take from 2 to 4 weeks to recover "Viral pneumonia is usually less serious [than bacterial pneumonia].. A stay in the hospital is rarely needed." Yes, I realize that the elderly, already drugged to the eyeballs, and suffering from multiple problems, can die of almost anything added to their already heavy burden, but this does NOT justify concluding that they are dying from the flu progressing into viral pneumonia on some seamless course in a vacuum. So far I have found no authoritative death stats in the US from viral pneumonia, where the virus has definitely been IDed (NOT eyeballed)and where the titer of that virus has been determined to be high. I'm sticking to my story. The CDC is fronting for a lie. JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

http://www.lewrockwell.com/keller/keller20.html

by John Keller

I always know when it's flu season. First, the media begins its usual role as hysterical government press secretary, uncritically trumpeting the same cooked numbers about the coming flu epidemic. The steady drone of recent broadcasts, including one on NBC's Today Show (10/6/04), warn that the flu kills about 36,000 people every year in the United States. The broadcasts usually cite the CDC as the source of this huge number. This is borne out by the main CDC page, with its immediate link to flu information and statistics. It's a crock, a lie, and a sham; a conspiracy to generate fear and stampede people to use a vaccine of questionable effectiveness to the benefit of pro-immunization bureaucrats, and big pharma. Sounds harsh, but follow the math and the money.

A cursory glance at the most recent (2001) death statistics from the Data Highlights page posted on the CDC site, shows that Influenza and Pneumonia (International Cause of Death numbers J10 and J18) killed 62,034 people. Quick mental subtraction would tell you that just over half were killed by the flu, versus pneumonia, if the 36,000 number is correct. So far, the size of the flu epidemic seems plausible. Here's the link to the National Vital Statistics System page within the CDC site that has the Data Highlights and Full Reports.

This is important, because the Data Highlights page is just that, a single page highlight of all the various mortality stats gathered by the CDC. Now, let's dig into the more detailed reports. The "Deaths: Final Data for 2001" report is an 8MB PDF. Skip it unless you want all the charts detailing deaths by race, age, and ethnicity. The 2002 preliminary report contains the interesting parts of the 2001 final report, as well as data from 2002. The second search result for J10 (the mortality code for flu) brings us to page 16 of 48, which contains the breakout of flu and pneumonia. Total flu deaths for 2002: 753. Pneumonia accounted for the other 65,231 deaths. Scrolling to the right are the numbers for 2001. Again, total flu deaths were under one thousand, coming in at 257. That's right, less than a thousand people died of the flu in 2001 and 2002, according to the CDC's own numbers.

Searching around on the CDC website reveals several more pages that call into question the 36,000 deaths per year number. For example, this page dedicated to the 2003-04 season states that "152 influenza-associated deaths among children" occurred during the 2003-04 flu season, but carefully avoids answering its own question about the total number of dead in the 2003-2004 season. Instead, it goes on in serious sounding quais-scientific statistico blather: "During the 2003-04 season, the percentage of P & I-associated deaths was higher than the epidemic threshold for 9 consecutive weeks." Again, lumping pneumonia and flu deaths together, even though the CDC does not recognize the flu as one of the many causes of pneumonia.

Finally, the CDC's own "Flu Pandemics" page puts deaths in the United States from the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919 at 500,000, Asian Flu pandemic of 1957-58 at 70,000, and the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968-69 at 34,000. These are the three 20th century pandemics, and two of them killed close to what the CDC is now calling average. What's going on here?

How is it that the CDC could be off by two orders of magnitude between their own official mortality stats, and the press kit number of 36,000 deaths per year. Could it be that the CDC is somehow misleading the public about the relative dangers of the flu?

Here is a link to the CDC-AMA sponsored National Influenza Vaccination Summit for 2004. This is an invitation only conference hosted by the CDC and the American Medical Association. Luckily for the public, the speaker list, agenda, and presentations are posted online. The attendees list of this CDC-AMA sponsored event reads like a lobbying group for flu immunization. Of the 97 attendees, vaccine manufacturers CHIRON (10), Aventis-Pasteur (10), Medimmune (5), and Baxter Vaccines (4) were a full 29 strong. Medical Conglomerates Kaiser Permanente (6) and McKesson (3) rounded out the big corporate influence cabal. The CDC sent 39 attendees and the AMA (proper, not members) had 4. The remainder of the attendees were a mix of state and local health departments (e.g. Rhode Island Medical Society), smaller pharma companies (e.g. Solvay Pharmaceuticals), and pro-immunization organizations (e.g. Sabin Vaccine Institute).

And did these learned scholars of immunology, virology, and general public health debate the merits of vaccinating against a virus that kills less than 1,000 people in most years? Perhaps they were celebrating the fact that only a few hundred died from the flu, thanks to their vaccines? Not exactly. The manufacture, distribution, and administration of flu vaccine is a cash cow, worth several hundred million dollars a year. Here's a quote from CHIRON CORP's 2003 Annual Report: "Sales of our flu vaccines were $332.4 million, $90.0 million and $74.7 million in 2003, 2002 and 2001, respectively." Those numbers represent just the manufacture of flu vaccine, from one company, not including any of the profits from the distribution, or administration of the vaccine.

Buried in the speakers presentations from the conference are some interesting stats. It turns out that 147 children under 18 died of the flu in the 2003–04 season. Of those, 101 reported whether or not the child received the flu vaccine. Of those, 22 had received at least one flu shot, and 4 had received multiple flu shots. That puts the percentage of immunized children that died at just under 22% of all children (page 10 of 23, Cochi Presentation.) Further in the report we learn that the CDC's own studies show they believe the flu vaccine to be only 16%-63% effective against the flu, while a French report shows 61% effectiveness against influenza-like-illness (without confirming that it's actually the flu). According to a Harvard study, (Nowak presentation, page 26), only 22% of parents of children 6–23 months had them immunized, and only 30% of children under 18 were immunized. Now, I'm no Dr. John Lott when it comes to statistics, but if the ratio of immunized to non-immunized children in the total population (22%–30%) is nearly identical to the immunized to non-immunized ratio of children in an admittedly small sample of children that died (22%), the case could be made that the flu vaccine is largely worthless.

In other words, the best case these needle-happy pro-flu vaccinators can mount shows that their immunization program would work, maybe, just over half the time, but some simple number crunching of our own shows that its probably much less than that. The coup de grace' comes from one of the CDC's own, Glen Nowak, PhD., in a presentation titled Planning for the 2004-5 Vaccination Season: A Communication Situation Analysis" the good doctor lays out a media manipulation campaign that would make Goebbels proud. Pages 27 on detail a literal "7 Step Recipe" that the CDC will use, in conjunction with the virus makers, to "(Frame)... the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as very severe, more severe than last or past years, deadly)".

To summarize thus far:

The flu kills fewer than 1,000 people on average, not 36,000

Flu Vaccine is of highly dubious effectiveness

The CDC and Vaccine Manufacturers are in closed door sessions with the primary stated purpose of boosting vaccination numbers by spreading fear

At this point, some may think, "Hey, it might be worth getting, just as a preventative measure. Sort of like throwing a little salt over your shoulder, what can it hurt?" Plenty. The good Dr. Donald Miller, cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle, recently did an article about the dangers of mercury in vaccines and amalgam fillings. The CDC has a position on Thimerosal (methyl mercury based preservative) in flu vaccines posted to its website. Without admitting that Thimerosal might be responsible for the epidemics of autism, Alzheimer's, and ADD in this country, the CDC gives us a sop about taking it out or removing it. Reading the fine print, however, tells us: "the majority of influenza vaccines distributed in the United States currently contain Thimerosal as a preservative." Furthermore, in a bit of regulatory trickery, the FDA is letting smaller amounts go undisclosed : "..some contain only trace amounts of Thimerosal and are considered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be preservative-free." In other words, even if you ask to see the vaccine label, check for Thimerosal, and get a warm fuzzy feeling about the shot being labeled "Thimerosal free," thanks to the FDA's accommodation of drug manufacturers, it could still contain mercury.

When the major manufacturers of flu vaccine get together with the CDC in a closed door summit with the sole purpose of figuring out how to stick 185 million doses of a questionable vaccine into a population in which less than 1,000 people a year die, what should we call it? Yes, Virginia, it is a conspiracy. Luckily the conspirators are foolish enough to believe that their website is safely hidden amidst all the chaff of the Internet, or else, are so brazen in their contempt for the general population that they think we can't do a little math and conclude "The vaccine doesn't work, and the flu is a flim-flam!"

Eventually, there will be another pandemic of the flu, and thousands will die. The CDC should concentrate on finding ways to lower the spread, working alternatives to vaccines, and ways to minimizing the severity of the flu, rather than pumping out fake numbers, creating an aura of fear and hysteria, and shilling for profits to huge pharma companies.

October 9, 2004

John Keller [send him mail] owns a Technology Consulting and a Real Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

John Keller Archives

Claire,

Not thinking straight when I forwarded the Chiron news.

Never had a flu shot in my 59 years of life. 12, 000 mg of Vit C is the best anti flu meds. OR a good three hour enema of garlic powder or oil, aloe vera, cholorophyll and distilled water SHOULD finish off any viruses lurking in your colon. One could become gassy from the above---but that is clearly better than debilitating influenza, not to mention (as you counselled ) the horrific side effects which could be ALZHEIMER or MS or cancer. God knows what!

In 1993, when I was finally correctly diagnosed with mercury/aluminum/copper poisoning--I attended a lecture in Washington DC for MCS--multiple chemical sensitivity. I was so shocked to find out that in each US home there are at least 70 toxic chemicals present in deodorants, cleaners, dry cleaned clothes, detergents, insect repellents, prescription meds, etc... Am sure there is more chemicals now in 2004.

The article below certainly exposes the dangers of annual flu vaccines!

Do you have wholistic articles regarding polio and small pox vaccines? .

Salamat po
Firefly

============================================================

Lilia

I have a comment on this flu vaccine scare which might interest your
readers.

First, vaccines carry their own serious dangers and anyone considering
having one should do their research carefully. Here's a taster of some
of the info out there (below).

Second, for people genuinely at risk if they catch flu (like older
people prone to bronchitis, or weak chesty infants, or people whose
immune system is compromised), please consider going to a homeopath and
asking for a dose of Influenzinum 200C (alternatively, order it
yourself from a homeopathic pharmacy, but please do not overdose by
taking more than the doses I mention here). The regimen often used is
that you take one pill at the start of the flu season and one two weeks
later. From anecdotal evidence among homeopaths and patients, this
system seems to work extremely well, has been used without problems for
many years, and carries none of the risks of vaccines. Some homeopaths
favour the remedy Oscillococcinum instead, which is widely used in
France and also has an excellent reputation.

best wishes, claire
***

http://www.wddty.co.uk/archive/e-news%20No%2009%20-
%2031%20Oct%202002.html
THE FLU VACCINE: A shot in the dark

With the colder weather coming in, some of our readers are wondering if
its time to have that flu vaccine. It's something that is usually
pushed by the government and by the family doctor around this time of
year as a good thing. But is it?

New evidence released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in
America suggests that attempts to protect our elderly against flu is a
little like catching smoke in a sieve.

The problem is simple enough. We can only respond to the flu virus that
has been, which is never like the next one that we are trying to
protect against.

Not surprisingly, the vaccine is by definition ineffective. Worse, it
comes with its own host of side effects, which, as listed by the CDC,
include fever, fatigue, muscle aches and headache. That's right, the
same symptoms as flu.

Like all vaccines, they sort of work some of the time with some
people. The CDC reckons that the vaccine can protect around 30 per
cent of elderly people in nursing homes, although other studies have
been less generous, and have suggested protection can be as low as
zero.

Presumably, the numbers of people who are not stricken by flu gauges
vaccine effectiveness, but could this be down to other factors? For
example, could it be that those who do not fall victim have a higher
nutritional status than those who do? And does this give a better clue
to preventative medicine based on sound nutritional principles that
could be encouraged by governments and doctors. Just a thought.

�q For more information on flu vaccines, read The Vaccination Bible.
Order your copy by visiting our website http://www.wddty.co.uk
***

http://www.mercola.com/2000/nov/26/flu_shots.htm
Health newsletter editor Chet Day explains why he never gets flu shots.
Quote: "First off, I don't think toxic chemicals and virus strains
grown on living [animal] tissue belong in the human body, even when
they're packaged in sterile glass vials....

"Do you want any of the following vaccine constituents in YOUR
bloodstream?
*    Ethylene glycol (antifreeze)
*    Phenol, also known as carbolic acid (this is used as a disinfectant,
dye)
*    Formaldehyde, a known cancer-causing agent
* Aluminum, which is associated with Alzheimer's disease and seizures
and also cancer producing in laboratory mice (it is used as an additive
to promote antibody response)
*    Thimerosal (a mercury disinfectant/preservative) can result in brain
injury and autoimmune disease
*    Neomycin and Streptomycin (used as antibiotics) have caused allergic
reaction in some people.

"Vaccines are also grown and strained through animal or human tissue
like monkey kidney tissue, chicken embryo, embryonic guinea pig cells,
calf serum, and human diploid cells (the dissected organs of aborted
human fetuses as in the case of rubella, hepatitis A, and chickenpox
vaccines)."

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

Chet Day is right on target here. He is one of the few newsletter
writers that I am in virtual 100% agreement with.

I have heard some authors state that there is a direct correlation of
the number of flu shots one has and the incidence of Alzheimer's. This
would be due to the aluminum and mercury that is put in every flu shot.

I could not agree more with his recommendations. I am fond of providing
the following answer to people who ask me if they should get a flu
shot.

I tell them "Only if they want to get the flu".

I am glad to see Chet has gone for five years without missing two
consecutive days of work. In the last 20 years though, I have not
missed one day of work due to an illness. Now my diet and lifestyle
program has NOT always been perfect, far from it. But for the most part
I am following an optimized program.

The only miracle here though is that God has given us such wonderful
bodies that if even come close to following an optimal diet, exercise
and rest, we will have a high likelihood of immunity from illness.
***