The worldwide hysteria over H1N1 influenza, also known as swine flu, pushed millions of people into the dripping blade of the vaccination needle this month.  Reports of sickness and death made the vaccine seem like the great savior. 

Meanwhile, a seemingly unrelated event occurred in Japan that was treated by the worldwide media as a harmless joke, a bit of entertainment, to be met with a smile by people everywhere: On October 22, Microsoft combined with Burger King to unveil the Windows 7 Whopper – seven layers of hamburger patties between two buns.  The beast contains 2,000 calories and more than 150 grams of fat.  CNN broadcasted light-hearted reports of the stunt as Microsoft’s way of gaining favor with the public.  As the reporter prattled on, the camera showed young Japanese customers straining to get what looked like a small building into their mouths.   

What possible links could exist between the H1N1 flu, the vaccine, the hysteria, the media, and the Windows 7 Whopper? you may ask. And what about those heretical scientists and medical doctors, who – backed by all that inconvenient scientific evidence – insist that the vaccine may be more dangerous than illness itself?  Stand by.  We’ll connect the dots as we go. 

Swine Flu:  A Real But Manageable Danger

There’s no question that influenza is a deadly disease.  The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 500,000 people worldwide die each year from the flu.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) puts the number of U.S. flu-related deaths at approximately 36,000.  

Of course, millions more contract the flu.  Virtually all of us have had it, and most of us have had it more than once.  Those who are afflicted typically stay at home, suffer the symptoms, rest in bed, and drink plenty of liquids.  After a few days of rest, perhaps a week, the vast majority of us are back in the pink and working again. 

In fact, if there is a lesson to be learned from our experience with the flu, it is this: People with relatively normal immune systems – in other words, the vast majority of those alive today – are adequately protected against the more extreme dangers from the illness. 

Most people contract the flu during what has become known as “flu season,” meaning the colder months from November to March. 

Flu season is the reverse in the Southern Hemisphere – it occurs from April through August — which is important because countries like Australia have already been through the worst of the season.  The experience of our Southern neighbors can tell us a lot about the relative dangers of swine flu. 

In fact, Australian health officials have reported that the H1N1 experience wasn’t nearly as bad as the standard flu.  When all the statistics are in, Australian health officials predict that the H1N1 flu will be responsible for about 1,000 deaths, which is fewer than the average flu-related mortality of 1,500 to 3,000, according to a report published this week in the November 2009 issue of the The Atlantic Monthly, which is hitting newsstands now. 

This should not come as much of a surprise.  So far, the American and European experience with H1N1 matches the Australian, namely, that the symptoms associated with the swine flu are mild and essentially manageable. 

Nevertheless, Western governments are pushing their citizenry to be inoculated against the virus en masse.  The U.S. CDC estimates that more than 159 million Americans will receive the H1N1 vaccine.  Canada is pushing for universal compliance, meaning all Canadian citizens will be inoculated against the swine flu.  British and European governments are pushing the vaccine on their respective populations, as well. 

But Does The Vaccine Protect?

Those who are most at risk, health officials agree, are the very young, people with heart disease and diabetes, pregnant women, and the elderly.  All of these groups are more vulnerable because of their relatively weak immune systems, which explains part of the emphasis on the flu vaccine.  However, there still remains the middle demographic – all those people between, say, 15 and 64 – who are relatively healthy, strong, and still resistant to disease. 

The argument for promoting – perhaps insisting is a better word – the vaccine in the relatively healthy is that the vaccine is believed to reduce the incidence of the flu.   But is that true?

For decades, researchers assumed that the flu vaccines prevented both the incidence of flu and flu-related deaths in both the young, middle-aged, and elderly.  However, recently researchers have gone back and re-examined the evidence that appeared to support that belief.  Also, new research has emerged that casts light on the old assumptions.  And as one researcher told The New York Times (September 2, 2008), “The whole notion of who needs the vaccine and why is changing before our eyes.”     

A study published in the August 2008 edition of the medical journal, The Lancet, called into question the effectiveness of the vaccines for both the young and healthy, as well as the elderly.  The Lancet paper showed that healthy people tend to be inoculated against the flu, while frail elderly – who are far closer to death — avoid the shots and suffer a higher mortality rate.  But just because more elderly die, and the healthy young survive, does not prove that the vaccines are protective against the flu, the researchers showed.  

In fact, researchers are now concluding that the studies were so poorly designed that they couldn’t possibly reveal whether or not the vaccine was effective at all. 

The 2008 Lancet review followed an earlier study, also published in the Lancet (February 26, 2005), done by Tom Jefferson, M.D. and his colleagues at the Cochrone Collaboration.  Jefferson’s group examined a thousand studies and concentrated on 14 of the very best experiments to discover if there was any proven effectiveness for the flu vaccine.  Dr. Jefferson looked closely at the incidences and death rates for both the young and the elderly, yet neither group showed a health benefit as a consequence of taking the vaccine.

“We recorded no convincing evidence that vaccines can reduce mortality,

[hospital] admissions, serious complications, and community transmission of influenza,” Jefferson told reporters.       

Other evidence is mounting to show that the flu vaccines have little, if any, protective effects.   For example:

  • In 2004, flu vaccine production fell dramatically and millions were unable to be inoculated.  Forty percent fewer people were vaccinated that year against the flu.  Nevertheless, flu-related deaths did not change when compared to previous years.   
  • A mix-up in the types of vaccines administered during the years 1998 and ’99 actually resulted in giving people the wrong vaccinations against the flu.  As the November issue of The Atlantic Monthly reports, no one was inoculated that year.  Yet, flu-related death rates remained unchanged. 
  • More and more elderly are being vaccinated than ever before.  Indeed, the flu-vaccination rate among the elderly has gone from 15 percent to its present high of 65 percent.  Yet, flu-related hospitalizations and mortality rates among the elderly have remained constant, according to a study done by scientist at the University of Alberta, Canada.  In fact, just as many elderly die from the flu today as they did in decades past, despite the higher rates of inoculations. 

In fact, the thinking among scientists who have promoted the flu vaccine is so muddled that few if any of their assumptions stand up to the light of a serious review.  For example, vaccine proponents have long claimed that inoculations reduce mortality rates by 50 percent or greater. 

But when scientists go back and examine all the deaths that can be attributed to the flu, even among the elderly, and then add in all the illnesses that could be exacerbated by the flu – such as pneumonia and heart failure — they find that the flu accounts for about 10 percent of total winter-time deaths, even among the elderly.  So how could a vaccine reduce the death rate by 50 percent if the flu is responsible for only 10 percent of deaths? 

Like so much else associated with the flu vaccines, the argument doesn’t make sense. 

When the Atlantic Monthly reporters asks Dr. Jefferson to assess the flu vaccine studies overall, he told them the following: “Rubbish is not a scientific term, but I think it’s a term that applies.”

Ineffective But Dangerous

In 1976, a massive swine flu outbreak occurred in the U.S. and around the world.  As with today, health officials campaigned for mass inoculations.  In the U.S., 46 million people complied and got the vaccinations.  Unfortunately, many thousands got sick from the vaccine and 4,000 ended up suing the U.S. government for failing to tell people that the vaccines could cause serious side effects, including severe neurological damage.  Among the most common of those side effects was the onset of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a condition that causes brain damage, paralysis, and death. 

The famed U.S. news program, “60 Minutes,” reported that CDC officials knew very well that the vaccines could cause neurological damage.  Yet, those officials failed to share that information with the American public. 

Is this a case of déjà vu?

What’s In This Thing, Anyway?

The vaccine’s ingredients are not the cause for a celebration of confidence, by any stretch of the imagination. 

The H1N1 vaccine contains mercury (thimerosal), formaldehyde, chicken embryos, processed pigskins, and aluminum.  Mercury is among the most toxic substances on earth.  Many reports now link mercury in vaccines to autism and other serious disorders.  Formaldehyde is also highly toxic, as is aluminum, which is associated with both cancer and neurological diseases.    

Some of the vaccines also contain live flu virus, which many people worry will only promote the spread of the illness — thanks to the millions upon millions who will be injected with the illness itself.   

In addition, the vaccine contains substances known as adjuvants, which promote an even greater immune response to the vaccination.  One of those adjuvants is a substance known as squalene, an oil-based chemical that occurs naturally in the body.  However, animal studies are showing that that immune reaction may trigger an array of in unintended consequences, including rheumatoid arthritis and nerve damage. 

And like the 1976 vaccine, this current vaccine has been rushed into production and delivery to an eager public that was primed for the drug by a well-orchestrated media blitz that wrought terror among people young and old.  

Very few people are stopping to ask if this drug is safe, especially for the infants and young children who will be inoculated with it.   

Human Immunity: Weaker Than Ever

The sophistication and effectiveness of the human immune system is beyond human comprehension.  We have survived as a species because our immune systems can recognize every conceivable threat to our health and then mount an effective response that eradicates the illness from the body.   Human beings have yet to encounter a single disease that our immune systems couldn’t eventually figure out and destroy.   That includes every kind of flu ever confronted. 

The problem we face today is that our immune systems are under siege and weaker than they have ever been.   The vast majority of illnesses that afflict us today are inflammatory diseases, meaning that they arise from an immune reaction that is destroying essential tissues.  These inflammatory diseases include the common forms of cancer (including breast, colon, prostate, and lung cancers), heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes (both types 1 and 2), metabolic syndrome, arthritis, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and other autoimmune disorders.

These and other illnesses are skyrocketing because the immune system is forced to confront an enormous and constant onslaught of poisons which we ingest every day. 

Those poisons come from every quarter of our lives – from the air we breathe, the water and other liquids we drink, the products we use on our skin, the clothing we wear, the rooms we sit in, the cars we drive, and most of all, the food we eat. 

Never has the human diet contained so much fat, sugar, processed foods, manmade preservatives, colors, flavors, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, heavy metals, and industrial pollutants than our current food supply provides.  We are literally being fed a daily dose of poisons.  And our immune systems have to recognize and eliminate every single one of them.

Which brings us to the Windows 7 Whopper. 

Is The Whopper Really A Laughing Matter? 

Gluttony has always been considered one of the seven deadly sins, and the Windows 7 Whopper may qualify as gluttony squared.  In any case, no human being was ever designed to eat 7 patties of hamburger meat, covered with condiments, and placed between two processed rolls.  For one thing the mouth just wasn’t designed to fit that much food between our upper and lower teeth.  But let’s consider some of the effects of the sandwich.  

  • The excessive ooze of all that saturated fat will raise blood cholesterol levels, which in turn will trigger a red-hot inflammatory response from the immune system, which will then cause the rapid formation of atherosclerotic plaques in arteries throughout the body, especially those leading to the heart.  
  • The high levels of protein will send homocysteine levels through the roof.  That homocysteine will act like battery acid on the inner lining of the arteries, causing boils to form and leading to increased levels of plaque. 
  • The fat in the hamburger patties and the processed buns will trigger a triglyceride rush that will flood the blood with tiny globules of fat.  That fat will be so dense and so abundant that it will turn the blood white for several hours.  Meantime, capillaries will be clogged with fat and cells will be deprived of oxygen, causing many cells to die or mutate. 
  • Some of those mutant cells very likely will become cancerous.  
  • The fat, triglycerides, and processed calories will all be turned into fat that will be stored on organs and adipose tissues throughout the body, causing weight gain.  In the case of the Window’s Whopper, that weight gain will be rapid and excessive. 
  • Meantime, the immune system will be overrun with all the direct and collateral damage caused by the sudden abundance of saturated fat, triglycerides, and rapidly absorbed carbs that flow from the bun. 

In other words, the Window’s 7 Whopper is a metaphor for all the harm we are doing to ourselves, thanks to the food industry. 

Influenza: Deadlier When Immunity Is Compromised

It’s true that influenza is a deadly disease, especially for those who fall into one or another of the vulnerable groups.  But it is even more threatening when our defenses are weakened.  Today, our defenses are weaker than they have ever been, thanks in large measure to the food and drinks we consume every day. 

The Window’s 7 Whopper comes at a remarkable moment. 

At its most benign, the Whopper reveals pure lack of regard for human health at a time when we face a deadly disease.   We no longer even think of protecting ourselves by boosting our own defenses.  Instead, we have come to rely exclusively on the pharmaceutical industry for our protection.  But that reliance is, in fact, a dark dependency.  Indeed, it is a Faustian bargain. 

Yes, big pharma wants to be your big daddy.  It wants to tell you that if you get the vaccine, all will be well.  You’ll be protected and safe from that really scary disease.  But big daddy has a dark secret.  The vaccine may not work, and for a percentage of vulnerable men, women, and children, it could do a lot more harm than good. 

 

For more on the flu from YouTube, check out the following videos:

Dr. Ron Paul who was interviewd on May 3, 2009 about the current swine flu epidemic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvCVLkBKq1I

See the YouTube video on the 1976 swine flu epidemic and the effects of the vaccines on people.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_9I1L_P370