Calling Big Pharma’s Bluff – Swine Flu Misfires in the UK
By John Stone
There was a remarkable moment in the unfolding swine flu saga on UK television on Tuesday morning. Following the publication of a systematic review of the safety of anti-virals such as Tamiflu and Relenza for children which came to the view that they were contra-indicated for the under-12s (HERE) TV interviewer Andrew Castle presented health minister Andy Burnham with the case of his own his own daughter, Georgina. Georgina, who suffers from asthma, had been prescribed Tamiflu without seeing doctor on suspicion that she had swine flu, and was subsequently taken to hospital with respiratory collapse. The interview also highlighted the fact that in many cases if you are presently suspected of having swine flu you will not be seen by a doctor for fear of contagion, and will be interviewed by people with no medical training – often in their teens (HERE)– before being handed out anti-viral drugs. Despite the publication of the new study the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, is sticking to his guns that Tamiflu should be given to children on the basis that the new study was based on the treatment of conventional flu not swine flu (See YouTube). Castle also pointed out that other adolescents at his daughter’s school had suffered ill-effects from the drug.
It should be stated categorically, whatever people in the United States believe about our National Health Service in the UK, that these events are completely without precedent in its history. By now we are having deaths of people who have been prevented from seeing doctors and given wrong diagnoses as a result of the scare Mother Dies of Meningitis After Swine Flu Diagnosis, Girl Dies of Meningitis after Swine Flu Diagnosis ). Many children are suffering the vile and unnecessary side-effects of Tamiflu. We have thousands of people bunking off work on suspicion of having the illness (Swine Flu Skivers Cost Firms More than Virus), and a doctor wrote to me last week complaining that the numbers were being artificially inflated:
'I have been doing locums in lots of different practices . In some Primary Care Trusts, they are remunerating GPs for their extra swine flu work by looking at how many consultations are logged as 'swine flu', so I have been told to enter any cold, upper-respiratory tract infection , fever etc as swine flu, and some GPs are going back in their patients records since the swine flu started and re-labelling the reason for the consultation. Is it any wonder there are so many cases?'
But what is very interesting about all this is that although many people have been scared by all the hype (which has been led by the World Health Organization and by the UK government) they are also beginning to learn the lesson and have become profoundly cynical about what is going on - more people joke about it than are scared, but they are also beginning to be very fed up. It is instructive to look at the posts under the Daily Mail report of the Castle interview: most posters think the whole thing has been got up by the pharmaceutical industry and the government to sell their products: they are also vastly apprehensive about the forthcoming universal vaccination campaign with vaccines which they know have not been properly tested (Children Given Untested Swine Flu Vaccine).
The unprecedented nature of the proposed arrangements seems to have led the Department of Health to fabricate the claim that there was a similar mass vaccination against smallpox in 1964 (HERE ) (the last numerically significant smallpox vaccinations in the UK seem to have taken place in 1960 and 62, involving less than 700,000 people in total (HERE ).
Whatever, the origins of the virus the cynical view of much of the public is perhaps no better than our governments and the pharmaceutical industry deserve. Despite our overloaded vaccine schedules - in the UK we have 25 vaccines by 13 months (Immunisation Schedule) – the pharmaceutical industry is still placing its major hopes for expansion in the area of vaccines in the next decade (Pharma 2020 Vision , Doubling Vaccine Sales by 2013 , Kids Vaccine Market Set to Quadruple ). In the circumstances it is an interesting question how this could possibly be accomplished without a series of gigantic, global health-scares? All we can say is - if this is the case - that in the UK at the moment it appears not to be working, and if we are visited by more dangerous viruses in future people may not see the pharmaceutical industry and the government as their protectors.
John Stone is UK Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
i will not be having the injection and i certainly wont be letting my 3 children aged 3,4 and 7 until i know it is safe but then what or who are we supposed to believe .....??? what do i do as a parent wanting to protect my kidz
Posted by: claire laidler | August 20, 2009 at 06:59 PM
Panel of pharmaceutical experts try to distance themselves from the fiasco:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/16/swine-flu-tamiflu-helpline-paracetamol
Father of girl who died of tonsillitis calls for swine flu helplines to be scrapped:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206908/Swine-flu-diagnosis-phone-scrapped-says-father-daughter-died-tonsillitis.html
Posted by: John Stone | August 17, 2009 at 04:59 AM
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/339/jul15_4/b2897#218551
Posted by: JenB | August 16, 2009 at 09:26 PM
The Perils of Swine Flu
http://www.bmj. com/cgi/eletters /339/jul15_ 4/b2897#218551
Interesting response in the (now too often dreary) BMJ!
Posted by: Aasa | August 16, 2009 at 07:52 PM
John tireless effort is so appreciated.
Learning that the neurologists are concerned only adds to my deeply rooted fears. Thanks for all you do.
Posted by: kathleen | August 16, 2009 at 05:22 PM
Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists over 25 deaths in America
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206807/Swine-flu-jab-link-killer-nerve-disease-Leaked-letter-reveals-concern-neurologists-25-deaths-America.html
Posted by: john | August 16, 2009 at 04:47 PM
Superb, informative article. Thank you.
Good nutrition is the best physician and the safest, cheapest medicine.
The UK government has been forced to accept legal liability for the swine flu vaccine amid concerns it could trigger life-threatening side-effects among the population at large. Ministers have taken on all the risk for the 60 million doses they have ordered from GlaxoSmithKline and the Baxter group, after both firms said they would refuse to produce it unless legally protected. A swine flu vaccine produced in America during the last recorded outbreak of the virus in 1976 was linked to a rise in Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralysing muscular disorder.
Read article on the Scotland on Sunday website (Scotland/UK)
The following comment, with which I completely agree, is from the Dr Rath Foundation website, from page http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/Newsletter/archive/newsletter_2009_08_aug_14.html
Comment: A win-win for the business with disease: drug companies make massive profits from the artificial swine flu epidemic and UK taxpayers foot the bill for the life-threatening side-effects suffered by patients as a result of being vaccinated. UK taxpayers can be forgiven for wondering whether this arrangement has anything to do with the fact that Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, is a member of UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s so-called “Business Council.”
Posted by: Margaret Wilde | August 15, 2009 at 01:28 PM
What happened to freedom of speech? Should my views be scuppered by you?????????????
[Editor's note: your comments weren't scuppered Carol. Every comment is moderated and takes time to appear on the blog.]
Posted by: carol jewell | August 15, 2009 at 11:06 AM
Like many of us I believe we have much to worry about on the health front. And I also worry that we are perpetually being told how our health service "is the envy of the world" I trained as a nurse and believe there is not a scrap of truth in the well trotted out propagandist statement. Have we ever stopped to think, and haven't we, from personal experience and what we read in the press, something to think about about how our hospitals / clinics/ GP's surgeries are being run?
Could it be we are forever being told a pack of lies. One stark piece of truthful data, is that GERMANY, FRANCE, RUSSIA have health care systems that would put Britain to shame. Nor do they bleed the tax payer to death to pay for it???
Do we need to waken up? Why can't we question more about what is going on in the name of health..................where does that £100 BILLION really go?
Non-invasive treatments which have a higher than average number of cured patients are routinely used in these European countries............believe it or not, our medical establishment decided to ban them on our behalf. These systems are A1 in detecting any pathogenic organism (germ)in the body.
If we were more in touch with facts, we would know, more people die of undetected (germs)
infections, than any other factor.
Time to have an inquest.......I would say so!
Carol Jewell
Posted by: carol jewell | August 15, 2009 at 10:36 AM
Thank you, John. The swine flu scare is a pretty deadly gravy train.
Posted by: Gatogorra | August 14, 2009 at 11:45 PM
Slightly off topic (then again, maybe not), but have you guys read this?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32418446/ns/health-infectious_diseases/
"Nigeria and most other poor nations use an oral polio vaccine because it's cheaper, easier, and protects entire communities. But it's made from a live polio virus which carries a small risk of causing polio. In even rarer instances, the virus in the vaccine can mutate into a deadlier version that ignites new outbreaks.
A virologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says genetic analysis proves such mutated viruses have caused at least seven separate outbreaks in Nigeria."
But wait! Vaccines are safe!
Nothing to see here, move along. This article is obviously an anti-vaccine play to prevent people from getting life-saving vaccines! (/sarcasm)
Posted by: Craig Willoughby | August 14, 2009 at 04:26 PM
As an addendum to my previous note, I just came across this disturbing information from Germany - thank God there are physicians who can see past their next flu-shot payment...
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2009/08/07/swine-flu-health-expert-warning/does-virus-vaccine-increase-risk-of-cancer.html
Posted by: Jack Hep | August 14, 2009 at 01:51 PM
Poor China, did you hear that heavy lead has damaged children, and they are moving them away from smelting plants. China did not learn the hard lessons that the western world went through with Love Canal, and industry poisoning our air and water.
BUT who would of thought the medical industry would turn out to be worse than any of those old industris that use to dump. Don't matter where you live now, here they come to shot it into our very veins.
Posted by: Benedetta Stilwell | August 14, 2009 at 01:28 PM
Interesting and timely research paper from Henegan et al, having searched through over a thousand papers on antivirals Tamiflu and Relenza they could only find SEVEN studies meeting their criteria and only ONE of those of high enough scientific quality to assure against bias. None of them amounted to squat in terms of demonstrating safety or efficacy of antivirals, ONE was unpublished and from GSK, THREE were published without peer review!
Nevertheless the research group decided in effect (who wouldn't) that Tamiflu and Relenza were without adequate scientific merit, and possibly unsafe, which (after the enormous iniquitous sales of those two products heading for end of shelf life - one of my patient's package of Tamiflu obtained from a "specified pharmacy" was dated 2004 she said, and after taking two tablets she said she thought she was going to die so took no more) nicely prepares entry for the only other option Government declares exists (ignoring Vitamin D, A, C etc.)- swine flu vaccines; who cares that it will be inadequately tested, rushed to market, and one is a GSK product - whose Relenza was effectively slated by Henegan et al so slide another GSK product under the public nose, and the other Baxter International's - the company infamous for contaminating its products with deadly cocktails (the haemophiliacs' nightmare scenario that realised many many deaths, and the 2009 Czech avian flu "boosted" seasonal flu vaccine nightmare which, but for the scientific and common sense of its scientist, might have distributed Baxter's deadly flu vaccine around Europe and beyond).
The two companies will laugh all the way to their banks, along with the bankers who already distributed billions of taxpayer funds to themselves, authorised by shameless and incredibly unscrupulous Government and its "health advisors" whose only plausible assurances are that big pharma will gain from the next seasonal flu - of whatever strain - as a "swine flu" vaccine is rolled out "in anticipation" without ANY guarantee what strain the inevitable winter "flu" bug will turn out to be.....the only guarantee of protection seems to be that from legal action Governments provide to the big pharma vaccinators and themselves.
Posted by: Jack Hep | August 14, 2009 at 12:36 PM
I just noticed that amongst the many links on tis article I did not put one to the Daily Mail report of the Andrew Castle incident with readers responses. Here it is:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205705/GMTV-host-Andrew-Castle-berates-minister-lost-daughter-swine-flu-danger-drug.html
I notice that another Mail story with similar comments has been removed from the web this morning.
Posted by: John Stone | August 14, 2009 at 08:41 AM
In order to sufficiently 'scare' the public into mass vaccine, they must (mis)diagnose every condition as swine flu, thereby assuring sales of the upcoming vaccine. Then, after its release, all cases in UNvaccinated individuals will be attributed to swine flu, while those vaccinated will be attributed to something else. This is the same technique they used to demonstrate the "effectiveness" of the polio vaccine. Any vaccinated individual who contracted polio post-vaccination was assured they couldn't have polio because the vaccine works, don't ya know?
Posted by: Zed | August 14, 2009 at 07:08 AM
The date in which swine flu vaccines will be given to high risk groups is coming ever closer.
In the biggest vaccination programme in over 40 years will you have a swine flu vaccine if offered?
Please vote here
Swine Flu Vaccine
.
or
.
http://www.swineflubritain.co.uk/#/vaccine/4535175275
Posted by: Swine Flu | August 14, 2009 at 06:59 AM
Blatant greed in big business flourishes despite warnings, I wonder what we shall see in the coming months,it leaves a huge knot in my stomach to think of the human cost.
Posted by: Alli Edwards | August 14, 2009 at 03:18 AM
Superbly put together,sad world we live in and you see it more and more each day in the Departments of Ill-Health all around the world.
Angus
Posted by: Angus Files | August 14, 2009 at 02:50 AM