Oh how we've forgotten

I got a little rant in my email box today from a chiropractor. This chiropractic office does good work, has high quality care, and I'm on their list not because I'm a patient but because periodically they help raise money for our local humane society. Our shelter is horribly outdated (a cement block structure built in the 60's more as housing for doomed animals rather than an adoption center) and far too small (do you think the population of Vancouver has increased since the 60's? Yep!) and they need a lot of money to develop a facility that will serve primarily as an adoption center. Hopefully they'll stop being seen as a place of death and more of a place of hope and mercy.

Anyway.

So I got this thing in my email and it ticked me off, as most alarmist mailings do. I'm going to comment (rant back) on some of it.

Quote: Did you know that the flu shot could contain anything from aluminum, formaldehyde, dangerous microorganisms, thimerosal (mercury), ethylene glycol, and other toxic adjuvants? In addition to these substances, the flu vaccine is prepared from the fluids of chicken embryos inoculated with the specific type (s) of influenza virus that supposedly protects against the strains federal health officials believe are most likely to be prevalent during the flu season. The effectiveness in preventing influenza often ranges from 30-40%. Not very encouraging considering the potential health dangers you may be opening yourself up to down the road from the toxic agents in the vaccine.

Why yes, Virginia, I did know that. Much as I dislike the toxic chemicals, how else are we going to formulate these vaccines? The flu vaccine is not alone in this composition, but I'm not going to avoid vaccinnating my children against, for example, chicken pox. This 'innocent' childhood disease nearly killed my sister. It didn't harm me much, but we both have repercussions to look forward to later in life, incredibly painful repercussions from the pox migrating and flaring up, herpes-like, in the nervous system. Shall we try to make a kinder, friendlier vaccine without formaldehyde and mercury? Go for it. Take your time putting together something with chamomile and rum. Oh wait, not rum. That's toxic too. Anyway, please do but until then I'll take the vaccine that we have.

How is the human body supposed to build immunity by being exposed to neurotoxic poisons like mercury, formaldehyde, and DNA from animals?
Actually, it builds its immunity from a crippled or killed virus (hmm, how do we kill or cripple it? Let me guess ...) which the immune system can tackle and 'learn' to destroy. The immune system is remarkable but unfortunately limited. Your immune response--some of which we can feel via fever, sneezing, coughing, etc.--can damage you (through too high of a fever, coughing that breaks ribs or damages the lungs and so forth or through an immune response that attacks your own tissues) even more than the buggy that's bugging you. The way the white blood cells work for their part of immune response (because they don't work alone, they're just a small piece) relies on them identifying and then eating the enemy. But much like orcs, white blood cells aren't too bright and it takes a while for them to figure out something is bad. By then the bug may have overwhelmed you or your own immune response has wiped you down to nothing. I assume as licensed medical types that chiropractors know this, and yet they ask this dumb question. For a vaccine we require: a virus, a means to kill or cripple it so that it won't infect you, and a medium to transport it so that the virus isn't so broken down that it no longer exists in a recognizable form. Most viruses are very fragile and require something vaguely alive and meat-like to keep from breaking down. Hence, the animal parts.

Quote: Mercury is the second most toxic material on the planet. The first is radioactive plutonium. To make thimerosal, they start with elemental mercury. Then, they hop it up 1,000 times by converting it to ethyl mercury. Then, they add aluminum to the vaccine that has a synergistic effect with the mercury, causing it to be 10,000 more toxic than elemental mercury. Mercury is used to sterilize the flu vaccine.

Yay! I would much rather have a sterile vaccine than a non-sterile one. Shall we use something else? I guess we can, and we should explore that, but let's make sure that A. it's effective so I don't get injected with a virus that might kill me and B. it doesn't effect our bodies even worse than the mercury. The trick, too, is that if you use something *less* toxic than you have to either have more of it (which will probably bump it up to the same toxicity and we'll get a bigger shot, yay) or the virus has to be particularly sensitive to the toxin. Let's hope we're not particularly sensitive to the toxin too. And here's the kicker--the virus has to be crippled or killed *but not destroyed*. It must be preserved. Hmm, could this be why they use formadehyde? Genius!

Quote: Consider this insanity; they tell us that it's unsafe to touch, breathe or swallow the mercury from a broken thermometer yet it's perfectly acceptable to inject the same poison directly into your body through the flu shot or other vaccines. In fact, you can't even find mercury based thermometers on the market anymore. Don't worry ˆ Big Pharma knows what's best for you!

Goodness, do they know how much mercury there used to be in a thermometer vs. the microscopic quantity there is in a vaccine? But, it's bad, so while we're at it, let's stop eating fish. Why? Because all the fish on the market today has mercury in it and farm-raised fish, especially ocean-raised, have the highest quantities of mercury. Guess what? Everything you put in your body has toxins in it. Some of them you can control, some you can't. The tiny dose of mercury, formaldehyde and so forth you get in a single vaccine isn't going to measure up to a lifetime of eating fish, and let's not mention smokers. Smokers need not pay any attention to all this nonsense. Because--

Quote: Now let's look at formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is classified as a toxic, colorless, water-soluble gas having a suffocating odor. It's used predominantly in embalming fluid and vaccines as a disinfectant and preservative. There are no long-term safety studies that vaccine manufacturers can draw from to validate the effectiveness of the flu shot. Those that take the shot are the safety studies and only 10% of the side effects associated with vaccines are ever reported to federal agencies. In fact, a simple search on the Internet will lead you to literally thousands of websites and stories that report on vaccine injuries, including the flu shot. What you find will not put you at ease if you've bought into this myth.

Formaldehyde is also in cigarettes. How long do those take to do you in? Seems to me that the exposure to small quantity of formaldehyde in a vaccine pales to a single night spent in a bar, but honestly, I haven't run the numbers. Even so, I myself who hung out with smokers and doesn't mind standing downwind from a smoker am not concerned about exposure to this particular chemical in miniscule doses anymore than I'm concerned about arsenic in bottled water. (What? you say? Heh. And yet I don't see people falling over from drinking Aquafina. Hmm.)

What will also not put you at ease are the deaths from flu. The most vulnerable are the elderly and young children. You have to weigh the risks for yourself. No one has to get the flu shot. If you're a strong, healthy chiropractor you can spout on about how you're never going to get a flu shot, and good for you. You're not vulnerable. You can live a happy, comfortable life with the vaccines you received as a child under your parent's care (*cough* hypocrite!) and not have to worry about a significant threat to your existance. (BTW, Mr. Chiropractor, you better damned well be taking periodic shots for hepatitis because otherwise I don't want you touching me!) But wait, what about the people who are threatened by the flu? I had the flu two years ago. My daughter actually asked my mother at one point if I was going to die. No, of course not, but I was very, very weak. It was the sickest I've been since college when I had the flu and could not stand on my own--I crawled to the bathroom. This time I was bedridden for two weeks and I couldn't do anything significant beyond walking to the bathroom and dressing myself for a month. But I survived. I didn't *need* the flu shot and didn't *need* to expose myself to those chemicals.

Hence the list from hospitals around the nation: If you are immune compromised, if you have a young child in day care, if you are elderly or a health care worker (who can not only get the flu but, while knocked down, get something else in the process from the hospital) then for pity's sake get protection. The flu is not conquered. Antibiotics don't do anything for the viral forms, and let's not get into anti-viral medications if you're paranoid about putting toxic stuff into your body. A single vaccine vs. how many weeks of medication?

Quote: If the public were fully informed and aware of all the ingredients that went into the flu shot, there would be a mass exodus away from it.

That would be a bad thing. If you knew you would be exposed to a deadly disease and the doctor said that the only preventative they had was only 40% effective at best, would you blithely say "Nah, I'll take my chances. Thanks!" Would it matter if the disease killed only rarely these days? What if we called it cancer? We have a high success rate of defeating some forms of cancer, so if it was one of those, would you pass on the vaccine? What if we called the disease herpes--that doesn't kill at all. Would you take a vaccine that was only 40% effective at best?

Some people claim that vaccines may cause autism. The jury is still out (though most are convinced it does not) but still, even if it does, it boils down to this. Honestly weigh the risks. This disease vs. that. This problem vs. another. Life is risk. Once you accept that you can make a rational decision that is inclusive of all options and can place those options in proprotion to what is most important to you.

Just don't forget about the fish, and try to remember what a real risk is vs. a phantom one, lest we forget what flu epidemics do to a society.

Great, now I've just created a downturn in the fish market. (Calling my stock broker...)