Every year this
condition claims
many thousands
of victims across
the world—more
than 36,000 in the U.S. alone,
according to current figures.
This makes the flu a disease
that claims about three times
as many American lives each
year than the recent Ebol
epidemic in all of West Afric
So it’s a serious matter wh
the media, health insuran
companies, and the Wor
Health Organization all call f
the seasonal flu vaccinatio
“Getting vaccinated each ye
is the best protection.” Th
the official stance of the C
(Centers for Disease Cont
and Prevention). It’s advice th
most doctors pass on to th
patients—indeed, about h
of America heeds the advic
despite possible side effec
including headaches, so
throats, as well as muscle a
limb pain. The flu vaccinati
would be a real success sto
for the health and well-bei
of people—were it not for t
fact something is conceal
from patients:It’s quite possi
that flu vaccines don’t work at
In reality, there are a numb
of critical investigations th
raise doubts about the offic
guidelines on flu vaccination
The Cochrane Collaborati
reviewed 36 individual studi
as part of a meta-analysis a
discovered that the annual
vaccine had no proven eff
on serious complicationson the number of influenza-
related hospital admissions.
Professor Gerd Antes of the
Albert Ludwigs University of
Freiburg has also questioned
the effectiveness of influenza
vaccination: “Previous clinicalHOW DANGEROUS IS THE
FLU REALLY?
HOW ARE FLU DEATHS
COUNTED?
“The fi gures are not actually based
on documented fl u deaths,” reveals
science writer Frank Wittig. In reality
they are derived from estimates. In
order to arrive at a number, “The
summer deaths are subtracted from
the more numerous winter deaths,
and what’s left over is called excess
mortality,” according to Wittig’s
description of the process. Although
this death rate is not directly on the
same level as fl u deaths, it serves as
the basis for estimating the so-called
infl uenza-associated excess mortality.
Incidentally, up until the present day,
the only exception to employing this
estimation method occurred in 2009,
when swine fl u was spreading at an
alarming rate and authorities were
obliged to report the deaths.CDC downgraded the vaccine
recommendation for children to
6 months. Their reasoning: There
have also been many cases of fl u
in children under the age of 18—
but there are no exact statistics
on infants. Cochrane also found
it strange that of the 51 studies
on fl u infections in children they
collected, only two of them were
concerned with infants.
And the studies could
not prove the vaccine’s
efficacy. In addition,
there had only been
one study dealing with
the safety of vaccines:
It was over 30 years
old and only studied
35 infants.i
“Generally, the benefi t
of infl uenza vaccination
has been signifi cantly
overestimated.”
WOLFGANG BECKER-BRÜSER,
PHYSICIAN AND PHARMACIST