Sue McIntosh, MD

October 27, 2009

Here in the midst of a governmental and media-declared "emergency," availability of the swine flu vaccine apparently is on the minds of many. The many apparently don’t realize how mild an influenza this epidemic is, nor how the numbers of persons ill or dying from it have been inflated and are not based on laboratory confirmation, nor how toxic the other ingredients of the vaccine can be.

Sherri Tenpenny, DO

October 2009

We’ve all been taught that germs are bad and they are lurking around every corner, waiting to invade defenseless humans. Doctors and the media talk about Swine flu as though getting the flu is an inevitable catastrophe unless, of course, we are injected with the life-saving flu shot. We go to great lengths to combat these potential invaders: frequent hand-washing, learning to cough in our sleeves and grimacing at the thought of eating a morsel retrieved from the floor. Is all this necessary? Or is there a different view?

Sherri Tenpenny, DO

October 4, 2009

Recommendations for vaccinating pregnant women are new

• 2004: The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) of the CDC began recommending vaccination all pregnant women regardless of trimester. Researchers estimated that an average of 1 or 2 hospitalizations could be prevented for every 1,000 pregnant women vaccinated.  REF: MMWR: May 28, 2004 / 53(RR06);1-40.
• 2009: There is insufficient evidence to recommend routine flu shots as the standard of practice for healthy women beginning in early pregnancy.  REF: Skowronski DM, De Serres G. Is routine influenza immunization warranted in early pregnancy? Vaccine. Jul 30;27(35):4754-70. 2009.

Richard Moskowitz, MD

The refusal of significant numbers of parents to vaccinate their children has created a sizable group of people needing very much to be studied, and has raised a number of important public health issues. Foremost among them is the fear that a large reservoir of unvaccinated persons could contribute to epidemic outbreaks that might involve vaccinated individuals as well. Equally pressing are the immediate practical questions of how best to protect the unvaccinated persons from disease, how to prevent such outbreaks if possible, and how to treat them effectively if they do occur. The long-term question which interests me the most is what the general health of this unvaccinated group will be like, and what we can deduce from this data concerning how vaccines really act.