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

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.

We are exposed to astounding amounts of pollution. Over 80,000 chemicals have been introduced into our society since 1900, and only 550 have been tested for safety. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), about 2.5 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released yearly by large industrial facilities. And 6 million pounds of mercury are poured into our air every year.

In fact, a recent government survey — “The National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals” issued in July 2005 — found an average of 148 chemicals in our bodies. And those were only the ones for which they tested . . . The Environmental Working Group examined the umbilical cord blood of children just as they emerged from the womb. They found 287 industrial chemicals, including pesticides, phthalates, dioxins, flame-retardants, Teflon, and toxic metals like mercury. — Dr Mark Hyman

Highschool chemistry 101: chemical A mixed with chemical B results in X; chemical B mixed with chemical C results in Y; and chemical C mixed with chemical A results in Z. Most chemicals are reactive — when mixed with one or more other chemicals they result in new substances with different properties.

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.

Lily was three-and-a-half years old when we adopted her from China. She had lived her first two-and-a-half years presumably with her birth family and then another year in the orphanage.

All we had for medical records was a final check-up: Lily was in good health, ideal weight, no signs of developmental delay. There were no records of early illnesses, nor of any vaccinations, but it seemed likely that she  breastfed as a baby and that her year in a poor, overcrowded orphanage had exposed her to some of the common childhood diseases.

Soon after getting home we took Lily to see the local pediatrician, a good friend of ours, Dr. O. As first time parents, we’d spent the months leading up to the adoption reading and thinking through the various issues that face all parents, including vaccinations, which we had decided against.

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.

I do not believe that vaccinations cause autism. I do believe that autism, along with a host of other modern illnesses, including diabetes, asthma, auto-immune dysfunction, and cancer, can result from exposure to some mix of the 100,000 synthetic chemicals that have been released into the environment in the past 70 years.

Dr. Harvey Karp spells out the growing danger from just one group of chemicals, a “ubiquitous family of hormone twisting compounds, known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)“:

These substances are the focus of intense scrutiny because: 1) they’re found in every home in America 2) they’re increasingly linked to human disease 3) our exposure to them has risen in parallel with the surge in autism diagnoses and 4) they may theoretically affect the developing fetal brain.

In recent years, research has mounted against a virtual police lineup of EDCs, like BPA (in food cans, hard plastic water bottles), phthlates (in soft plastics, cosmetics) and fire retardants (in sofas, computers, flame-resistant clothing). Multiple animal and human studies have linked EDC exposure (during or after fetal development) with a host of hormone-related disorders, like low sperm count, cancer (breast, ovarian, prostate, testicular), congenital malformation of the genitals and even obesity.