As the H1N1 vaccine was rushed into service we were repeatedly assured that it had been adequately tested. In fact, H1N1 vaccine was so similar to previous flu vaccines that the experts were confident it would be every bit as safe and effective. Now we learn:

Researchers from the University of Missouri have uncovered evidence that taking over-the-counter pain relievers, like aspirin and Tylenol, can reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine because they inhibit the normal function of enzymes that help regulate the immune system. —Scientificblogging

This has always been the problem with testing vaccines and other pharmaceuticals: they can not possibly test for all the variations that any population presents. Much as researchers try to account for differences in lifestyle and diet, humans are too complex with too many constantly shifting variables to be able to say that a specific chemical reaction in Joe will perfectly replicate in Mary.

So now, after millions of people have already been vaccinated, we find that it may not have helped any of those taking aspirin, Tylenol and other common pain relievers, which, in over-dosed America, amounts to just about everyone.

“If you’re taking aspirin regularly, which many people do for cardiovascular treatment, or acetaminophen (Tylenol) for pain and fever and get a flu shot, there is a good chance that you won’t have a good antibody response,” said Charles Brown, associate professor of veterinary pathobiology in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine.

“These drugs block the enzyme COX-1, which works in tissues throughout the body. We have found that if you block COX-1, you might be decreasing the amount of antibodies your body is producing, and you need high amounts of antibodies to be protected.”

The only real testing of this and any other vaccine is in live populations. Give it to the people and see what happens.

If that’s the medicine folks want, go for it. Just don’t force anyone to participate.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

The controversy surrounding the new recommendations on the use of mammography casts a dubious light on America’s attempts to reform healthcare. Though everyone agrees that we must reduce costs, we seem unable to address the fact that the high-tech, chemo-industrial practices that define American medicine are unsustainably expensive and unavoidably harmful.

The panel basically said that for women below the age of fifty, regular mammographies do not provide enough benefit to outweigh the risks involved. They made clear that they were not talking about women who were deemed to be at high-risk for the disease, and they strongly advised that such women continue with regular screening, along with all women over the age of fifty.

But for those who are not high-risk and are now asymptomatic — most women — they found that screening detected one aggressive cancer for every 1,900 women tested, while some 190 (10%) would receive false positives. Those women would undergo biopsies and some undetermined number would go on to receive cancer treatment that they never really needed.

During the 14th century the bubonic plague struck with devastating results, wiping out half of the population of Europe and much of Asia. Called the Black Death, it was caused by an infectious bacterium which was spread by flea-infested rats.

I can remember as a child watching a movie about that time and being struck by one scene in particular: a big man, all dressed in black, drives a cart from house to house, picking up the dead and carrying them off for burial. I remember thinking, “How is he getting away with this?” Here is an incredibly bad bug, killing one out of every two people, and this guy is going into infected households, and handling infected bodies, and somehow still managing to put in a sixteen hour day!

Since the fourteenth century, we have learned a lot about bubonic plague. We fully understand the bug that causes it: what it looks like, how it lives, how it travels, how it affects the human body, and how to kill it, which we have proven successful at doing. Yet we know little about the man driving that cart and how and why he lived on. While we have conscientiously studied the half of Europe that died we have ignored the half that survived.

This season of flu pandemic has taken the always heated vaccine argument and intensified it several-fold. Any online article for or against vaccination typically engenders dozens if not hundreds of comments. I’ve engaged in many such conversations — taking the anti-vax position — and have come to conclude that arguing with proponents of vaccination (and the whole “better living through pharmaceuticals” crowd) is like arguing with religious fundamentalists.

Their chief point is that mainstream American medicine is “science-based,” while the anti-vaxers are a rabble of anti-scientific fools, hysterical housewives, and idiot celebrities seeking publicity. They thrust all dissenters into the same camp as global warming deniers and anti-evolution creationists. The science is in, they say, the evidence indisputable, and anyone who disagrees or merely questions should be rounded up and shot full of the latest miracle medicine before they spread their vile condition to others.

No disagreement permitted. No thinking required, except by certified authorities, and no dissension among them from the One True Medicine. Those who express doubts are social pariahs guilty of the most horrible sins.

Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has made the interview rounds recently talking about the H1N1 (swine) flu vaccine. On PBS’s News Hour, he stressed the importance of making the vaccine available soon since the H1N1 flu is already spreading. He ominously added that a recent outbreak at WSU had sickened 2000 students.

The doctor didn’t include any details of that outbreak but we can safely assume that if there had been any deaths or serious complications he would have told us. In fact, as the Seattle Times reports: “Most suffered only mild illnesses, but two non-students — an adult and a teen — were briefly hospitalized.”

According to Dr. Fauci, they plan to spend $2 billion on the H1N1 vaccine. They will be recommending it for college students since several of the deaths from the spring outbreak of H1N1 were from that demographic. Fauci implied that it was bad luck for the WSU students that the flu hit before the vaccine was ready.

But they didn’t need it! A group of 2000 contacted the flu and recovered easily and without complications. For far less money than we’re spending on a vaccine we could send a team of medical researchers to conduct interviews of the school population, looking into diet, lifestyle, stressors, environmental conditions, and responses to the flu outbreak to draw out any differences between those who never got sick, those who got sick and easily recovered, and those who developed more serious complications.

As he retired from office, Dwight Eisenhower imparted a scary warning about the “military-industrial complex”: an insidious merging of America’s security apparatus with private and corporate profiteers that gobbles up vast national resources while spewing waste and destruction in its wake. Though there’s long been much nodding in agreement with Ike’s assessment, nothing has slowed the growth or dimmed the power of the military-industrial complex.

In 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on cancer,” promising a cure within the decade. Nixon totally misunderstood the “enemy” and committed the nation to an endless war of attrition and frustration. Even worse, he committed vast amounts of wealth to the funding of the “medical-industrial complex” that, like its military counterpart, drains the public treasury while providing a too often unhealthy medical product.

These mammoth conglomerates share a number of traits:

All healthcare practices, techniques, treatments, devices, and medications can be placed on a spectrum ranging from softest to hardest.

At the softcare end of the spectrum we find such approaches as massage, herbalism, diet, yoga, and emotional counseling, as well as broader social factors, such as public sanitation, sufficient access to pre-industrial food, and income equality.

At the hardcare end of the spectrum we find surgeries, most prescription drugs, acute and traumatic injury care, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, organ transplants, vaccinations, and extreme psychiatric practices, such as electroshock.

The basic premise of commonhealth is that to the extent that an individual, community or nation has over-committed to hardcare approaches, its heathcare expenses rise precipitously, fewer community members have secure access to regular care, and overall outcomes — as measured in such areas as infant mortality, life expectancy, and iatrogenic illness — worsen.

Conversely, when we commit time, money, energy, and attention to softcare approaches, expenses fall, everybody has secure access to quality care, and medical outcomes improve.

An ideal medical system would affirm the importance of both approaches and would utilize mostly softcare, while resorting to hardcare practices only when necessary.

“We will never solve our problems using the same kind of thinking
that caused them in the first place.” —Albert Einstein

The healthcare debate of the past few years must have Einstein nodding sagely from the grave. For all the volumes that have been written, for all the legislative starts and stops, for all the heated discussions of experts and pundits, little has been said about the medical thinking that underlies our current healthcare crisis. We have fixated on the secondary concerns of administrative bureaucracies and payment systems, when we should be exploring long-overdue changes in societal attitudes, lifestyles, and healing practices.

American medicine grew out of and remains mired in the Industrial Age. The “kind of thinking” that characterizes an industrializing society is reflected throughout our current healthcare system:

• the turning of “healthcare” into a mass-produced consumer item;
• the imbalanced relationship between so many doctors and their patients;
• the overuse and abuse of invasive drugs and surgeries;
• the shifting of power and prestige from general practitioners to high-paid specialists;
• the discounting of mental, emotional, and nutritional causes of illness;
• the over-medicalizing of the should-be sacred events of birth and death;
• the granting of ultimate authority to distant, profit-driven bureaucrats;
• the fundamental dis-ease of the modern hospital;
• and the continuing failure to see polluted air, water, and soil as vital public health issues

Imagine that you are the mother of two children, the youngest a three-year old boy. Both pregnancies were healthy, the deliveries relatively smooth.

As with your first child, you’ve been totally involved in your three-year old’s life since birth. He’s with you always. You could stare into his eyes for hours. Though he looks very much like his sibling, you could list a hundred ways in which he’s different, unique, one-of-a-kind.

You frequently find yourself saying, “He’s the happiest person I’ve ever known.”

Three days after his third birthday he got round 4 of his DPT. Within minutes of receiving the shot, he began a high-pitched shrieking, like you’ve never heard before. It went on for nearly two hours. He was also running a fever. He was utterly inconsolable.

Eventually, he slept. But when he woke up the next day he was different. He wouldn’t make eye contact. He wasn’t talking. He definitely wasn’t happy.

Thus began his slow slide into what would eventually be diagnosed as autism.

Something’s wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries. —Dr Christopher Murray, head of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington

It’s getting to be old news, but a recent study has further clarified the dismal performance of the US healthcare system. In the past twenty years, the US has fallen from 11th to 42nd place in life expectancy. Nations doing better than America include all of Europe, Japan, Singapore, and Jordan.

Researchers cite two main factors: the ridiculous costs of health insurance, and the trend toward obesity in America, especially among the poor.

Neither of these factors will ever improve as long as we continue down the hardcare path. Indeed, both factors would be immediately improved by a shift to a single-payer system that stresses prevention and softcare.