Flu Shots: Beneficial?

Being military they try to make it mandatory every year. When I have gotten them in the past, I would get sick. I have managed to go three years now without a flu shot(skipped anthrax too, so far), and haven’t gotten sick beyond a little cold here and there.

I’m wondering if the people saying they never get flu shots have maybe never had a serious case of the flu. I got hit hard two years in a row back around 1990, fever and chills, trashed for about two full weeks each time. Since then I am motivated to put up with the minor discomfort from the shots (deltoid achy for a day), and I have not had the flu again.

I agree with the poster who said it’s nice not to bring the flu home to your kids.

Also, I doubt the thimerosal (mercury) preservative is a serious issue, especially for anyone who eats tuna. Or has amalgam fillings. I get mercury-free shots for my kids, but I have the feeling the mercury-autism connection will eventually be proven to be a mistake. Not that mercury is a good thing, but I think the dose involved is very small.

[quote]MarkT wrote:
I get mercury-free shots for my kids, but I have the feeling the mercury-autism connection will eventually be proven to be a mistake. Not that mercury is a good thing, but I think the dose involved is very small.

[/quote]

[hijack]
My nephew has autism and I think that this mercury and “toxic immunizations” are blown way out of proportion. The last info I saw was the MMR vaccination has approximately 5 micro grams of thimerosal. .000000005 grams. I was never good with numbers, but that doesn’t seem like very much to me.

[quote]MarkT wrote:
Also, I doubt the thimerosal (mercury) preservative is a serious issue, especially for anyone who eats tuna. Or has amalgam fillings. I get mercury-free shots for my kids, but I have the feeling the mercury-autism connection will eventually be proven to be a mistake. Not that mercury is a good thing, but I think the dose involved is very small.
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The problem is that certain people tend to be fast excreters of mercury while others tend to be slow excreters. It is this latter group (and autistic people apparently tend to be very poor excreters of mercury) that is at risk. When it doesn’t get excreted promptly the organic mercury gets into your cells,turns into inorganic mercury and that’s what fucks you up. My point…not everybody gets fucked up by a little bit of mercury, they excrete it. Others aren’t so lucky.

Try this experiment. Go into a hospital and ACCIDENTALLY break a mercury-thermometer or high blood pressure apparatus. Offer to pay for them. Don’t worry. Asking you to pay for the things is going to be the last thing on the Hospital’s mind as they urgently call in an expensive, REALLY expensive hazardous waste disposal company whose workers wear what looks like a space suit…just to mop up a little bit of mercury. Why don’t they just call the janitor to mop it up? Well, it has vapor-pressure. Guess what…so does hard mercury that is “bound up” with silver in your amalgams.

I don’t remember taking them, and I haven’t take them since it became my decision to do so. The people saying that its best to take them if you have kids to take care of are right on the money though.

I myself had a really bad case of the flu that almost made me pass out shaking back in HS,(10th grade)but I got over with some medicine and some sleep so I’m aware of the dangers(I have barely gotten sick since then though.)

Same Doc wrote an article on mercury at Lew Rockwell’s site as well:

Mercury has not been used in immunizations for many years now.

The autism link seems phony as autism is still on the rise among kids that were not exposed to mercury in vaccines.

[quote]boatguy wrote:
Being military they try to make it mandatory every year. When I have gotten them in the past, I would get sick. I have managed to go three years now without a flu shot(skipped anthrax too, so far), and haven’t gotten sick beyond a little cold here and there.[/quote]

Lucky bastard. I’ve had 8 Anthrax pokes so far… my kids will probably have 4 arms. Double squat rack curls, WOOHOO!!

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Mercury has not been used in immunizations for many years now.

The autism link seems phony as autism is still on the rise among kids that were not exposed to mercury in vaccines.[/quote]

I quote the above article:

<<Investigators have shown that there is a direct relationship between increasing doses of mercury in vaccines and autism. In the 1950s, with an immunization schedule limited to four vaccines (against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and smallpox), 1 in 10,000 children developed this disease.

As vaccines for other diseases were added, health care providers began injecting increasingly larger doses of mercury into children. Those born in 1981 were given 135 micrograms of mercury (on average), and one case of autism occurred in every 2,600 children born that year.

With the addition of hepatitis B vaccine (injected on the day of birth) and one for Haemophilus influenzae Type b, providers injected 246 micrograms of mercury into children born in 1996.

Autism occurred in one out of every 350 of these children. Today, providers follow an immunization schedule, prepared by the CDC and approved by the AAP and AAFP, that includes 13 vaccines given, with variable numbers of booster shots, 33 times before a child reaches the age of 2 (when the development of the brain is completed).

Autism now afflicts 1 in 100 boys and 1 in 400 girls, and physicians diagnose 100,000 new cases of this disease every year in the U.S (using diagnostic criteria, in the DSM-IV, that is more restrictive than the previous DSM-IIIR).

Over the last 30 years more than one million children have come down with this disease, and currently one in every 68 families in America has an autistic child.>>

[quote]entheogens wrote:
The problem is that certain people tend to be fast excreters of mercury while others tend to be slow excreters. It is this latter group (and autistic people apparently tend to be very poor excreters of mercury) that is at risk.

When it doesn’t get excreted promptly the organic mercury gets into your cells,turns into inorganic mercury and that’s what fucks you up. My point…not everybody gets fucked up by a little bit of mercury, they excrete it. Others aren’t so lucky.
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Very interesting. Now that I’ve actually read the two articles you posted links to, I’m not so sure about the vaccine / autism link, which I had thought was a crackpot thing. Many thanks for the interesting info.

I’ll pass on that experiment. Droplets of mercury spilled in labs are famously able to hang around unnoticed in dusty drawers for decades, giving off enough vapor to be toxic. I found some in an ancient lab I worked in once.

I’ve never been comforted by the insistence of dentists that amalgams don’t emit mercury, maybe because the mercury atoms are more strongly bound to the amalgam than they are to liquid mercury. It smells of major CYA.

Again, thanks for the eye-opening articles. I’m not convinced, but I’ll no longer dismiss the issues.

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Mercury has not been used in immunizations for many years now.

The autism link seems phony as autism is still on the rise among kids that were not exposed to mercury in vaccines.[/quote]

I will also admit that I know a lot less about the vaccine issue than dental amalgams. However, it occurs to me that if what you are saying is indeed true, one could argue that the spectrum of what is considered autism has broadened over the years and the number of school psychologists who could make that diagnosis has increased as well.

That MAY explained the growing rise in autism and remember nobody is saying that mercury in vaccines is the only factor causing autism.

In the dark ages when I was going to school, I was never tested for autism. My oldest daughter (16 now) wasn’t. However, my two youngest were. My point is that there could have been MORE people with autism when I was going to school, but because there weren’t armies of school psychologists armed with the wider definiton of autism that there is now, less kids were diagnosed with it.

<<Vaccine manufacturers have started removing thimerosal from vaccines. And for the first time since the state began keeping records on this disease, California has had a decrease, of 6 percent, in the annual number of children over the age of 3 who have been diagnosed with autism.

This occurred in children born in 2000, when the phase-out of thimerosal in vaccines began. Iowa has passed a law banning thimerosal in that state, and California has done the same thing for pregnant women and children under 3 (the bill awaits the governor�??s signature).

But pharmaceutical companies still add thimerosal in their Flu vaccines; and pediatricians are vaccinating children with their remaining supply of thimerosal-containing vaccines, which the FDA has chosen not to recall.>>

So, has thimerosal been banned on a Federal level or is this a state by state thing? The above confuses me. On the one hand it mentions the FDA and on the other it mentions certain states banning it.

[quote]entheogens wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Mercury has not been used in immunizations for many years now.

The autism link seems phony as autism is still on the rise among kids that were not exposed to mercury in vaccines.

I will also admit that I know a lot less about the vaccine issue than dental amalgams. However, it occurs to me that if what you are saying is indeed true, one could argue that the spectrum of what is considered autism has broadened over the years and the number of school psychologists who could make that diagnosis has increased as well.

That MAY explained the growing rise in autism and remember nobody is saying that mercury in vaccines is the only factor causing autism.

In the dark ages when I was going to school, I was never tested for autism. My oldest daughter (16 now) wasn’t. However, my two youngest were. My point is that there could have been MORE people with autism when I was going to school, but because there weren’t armies of school psychologists armed with the wider definiton of autism that there is now, less kids were diagnosed with it.

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I think this is a big reason for the increase in autism. I have two friends with sons that have aspereger’s/autism. In the old days they just would have been considered strange kids.

I am not sure if it was banned but the CDC recommended it stop being used and the drug manufacturers phased it out.

According to what I have read in a number of places statistical analysis of autism rates in America and Europe before and after the use of thimerosal indicates there is no relationship.

my dad had a kidney transplant and its very dangerous for him to get anything like the flu so I definitely get it and always will.

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Mercury has not been used in immunizations for many years now.

The autism link seems phony as autism is still on the rise among kids that were not exposed to mercury in vaccines.[/quote]

They still use the Thimerasol in the flu shots, although they do offer a version without it. Childhood vaccines have been largely free from the preservative for almost 8 years now, while autism continues to rise (mainly due to a broader classification system).

The Mercury-Autism link has been so thoroughly blown out of the water thats its amazing ANYONE besides Jenny McCarthy still thinks its an issue.

www.ScienceBasedMedicine.com has many articles/links on the issue if you are so inclined to read about the science behind it.

The autism brigade has now moved on to the “aluminum” and other “toxins” in the vaccines now that mercury(thimerasol) has been totally debunked.

Lets not confuse causation with correlation. There are any number of things that have increased at the same time autism rates were on the rise. There are more cars on the road than back then too. More people are wearing Croc shoes nowadays. Means nothing.I do believe the general consensus is that its mainly an increase in the diagnosis of the disorder now, instead of an actual rise. Again, sciencebasedmedicine.com is a great resource for information on that issue.

Having said that, we are talking about adults receiving a flu shot here. The flu shot does not give you the flu, you may have been getting the flu at the same time you got the shot and thus the shot did nothing. This happens every now and then. The flu shot contains a killed version of the virus, so it cant give you the flu. The spray on the other hand is a weakened form. The flu shot does not start working for about 10-14 days after you get it.

The flu shot is a “best guess” as to what flu might be coming around the bend this season. It also does not protect against the “stomach flu” (throwing up all night) it only protects against the flu that affects your respiratory system(aches, fever, chill, heavy coughing).

The flu shot works on the large scale though. In general it provides an 80% protection from getting the flu, not bad. There are individual stories of it not working or “giving me the flu” but thats not the case statistically. Also, anyone allergic to eggs should not get the shot.