To Your Health
October, 2009 (Vol. 03, Issue 10) |
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Minor side effects can include but are not limited to soreness, redness or swelling at the injection site, low-grade fever and other aches and pains.
More severe, life-threatening complications have proven to be rare, but the danger still exists that someone can suffer severe effects from this alleged beneficial vaccine. The most common dangerous side effect is an allergic reaction. Since the vaccine is grown in eggs, it is more dangerous for those who have had an allergic reaction to other vaccines in the past. These reactions can include breathing problems, hoarseness or wheezing, hives, paleness, weakness, and a fast heartbeat or dizziness. The CDC has recognized the danger and recommends that those who have had an allergic reaction to a vaccine in the past not get the flu shot before speaking with their health care professional.
An even more serious side effect is Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS). This is a disease in which the body damages its own nerve cells, resulting in muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis. While most people eventually recover, some have permanent nerve damage and 5 percent to 6 percent of those who develop GBS will die. The CDC would remind you that only six of every 1 million people injected with the flu shot will develop GBS. That's small comfort if you're one of the six, of course.
Is Getting a Flu Shot Worth It? You Decide
After careful consideration of the risks associated with the vaccine, it's wise to weigh those risks against those of the flu. The CDC talks about the benefits of being vaccinated, but are those benefits backed up with the facts? The flu vaccine is always changing because the flu strains change from one year to the next. (The swine flu is once such variation.) The manufacturers of the vaccine take a shot in the dark and hope they'll hit the right strain each year, but the fact is the flu shot is only 70 percent to 90 percent effective.
Dean Eurich, a clinical epidemiologist and professor at the school of public health at the University of Alberta, recently considered the data and reported that over the past 20 years in the United States, vaccination rates among the elderly have increased from 15 percent to 65 percent, but hospital admissions and death rates from all causes have not declined proportionately. "Only about 10 percent of winter-time deaths in the United States are attributable to influenza, thus to suggest that the vaccine can reduce 50 percent of deaths from all causes is implausible in our opinion," Eurich said.
A further study by Sumit Majumdar, MD, reached the same conclusion. According to his research, after considering all the facts and taking into account immunizations, socioeconomic status, sex, history of smoking and the severity of the flu, the actual benefit of the flu shot is "reduced to a statistically non-significant level of 19%."
A recent article published in the Lancet medical journal suggests the flu vaccine is having little or no effect on the number of elderly people developing pneumonia each year, and a recent study led by Michael Jackson, MD, of the Seattle-based Group Health Center for Health Studies, that compared 1,173 pneumonia patients between the ages of 65 and 94 who had been vaccinated with 2,346 people who hadn't, determined that the risk of contracting the lung disease wasn't reduced by the shot.
