Health Spectator

The U.S. government’s purchase of H1N1 vaccines cost taxpayers $1.6 billion, according to figures reported recently by the Washington Post. Despite the relatively mild effect of the actual swine flu pandemic, the panic by U.S. health officials resulted in big profits for Big Pharma, with a resulting glut of flu vaccine that is now being given away by public health clinics.

According to the Post, as many as 72 million doses of swine flu vaccine are now considered surplus and may end up being discarded.

Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that about one in four Americans were vaccinated against H1N1. Among healthcare workers, the H1N1 vaccination figure was slightly higher—about 37 percent—but well below the record 62 percent of healthcare workers vaccinated against seasonal flu during the 2009-2010 season.

Given that 62 percent compliance is the highest ever seen among healthcare workers, it is clear that this group does not believe strongly in the benefits of flu vaccination. Clearly, no one has easier access to vaccination than they. Indeed, the 62 percent figure is no doubt slightly inflated by the forced vaccination of healthcare workers in New York State in 2009. Even so, a 62-percent vaccination rate indicates considerable apathy—if not downright aversion—towards vaccination on the part of healthcare workers, given that the CDC recommends that all healthcare workers be vaccinated against the flu each year.

The 37-percent figure of healthcare workers who took the H1N1 vaccine shows even less belief in the safety and efficacy of that vaccine compared to the seasonal flu vaccine. The irony is that the vaccination rate for children against H1N1 was the same 37 percent, indicating that children in effect ended up being the guinea pigs for the H1N1 flu vaccine.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are typically over 30 million cases of seasonal flu annually in the US. US government figures put the infection rate for the H1N1 virus at approximately 62 million people. Of those, about 12,000 died—far fewer than the 36,000 the CDC says die from seasonal flu each year. (Other CDC figures show that just between January 1 and April 18 of 2009, more than 13,000 people died of complications from seasonal flu, making it a bigger killer for the year than H1N1.)

Approximately 72 million to 81 million people in the U.S. are believed to have been vaccinated against H1N1 as of February 2010.

Johnson & Johnson announced yesterday that it was recalling Tylenol, Motrin, and St. Joseph’s aspirin as well as other over-the-counter drugs because they emit a moldy smell that has sickened some users. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has criticized the New Brunswick, NJ-based company and sent it a warning letter for not taking faster action, as the problem first occurred in early 2008 and recurred less than a month ago, but little has been done by the firm to address the issue.

The New Brunswick, NJ manufacturer has agreed to stop shipping products while it investigates the problem, which apparently has been traced to a chemical used to treat wooden shipping pallets. The Associated Press is reporting that the FDA traced the problem to a facility in Las Piedras, Puerto Rico.

Products affected include both regular and extra-strength Tylenol, children’s Tylenol, eight-hour Tylenol, Tylenol arthritis, Tylenol PM, children’s Motrin, Motrin IB, Benadryl Rolaids, Simply Sleep, and St. Joseph’s aspirin. Consumers can find out exactly which batches have been recalled by going to the McNeil website. (McNeil is the division of Johnson and Johnson responsible for these products.)

These problems come not long after an FDA advisory panel recommended removing acetaminophen-containing narcotic drugs from the market last summer because of the potential harm to the livers of patients caused by acetaminophen. Acetaminophen is the active ingredient in Tylenol. That same panel recommended lowering the largest dose of acetaminophen or Tylenol from 500 mg to 325 mg.

To date, no further action has been taken and Extra Strength Tylenol—available over the counter in any drugstore—still contains 500mg of acetaminophen.

The Taiwan News is reporting that a gynecologist identified only as Dr. Liu plans to sue the Centers for Disease Control in Taiwan over the death of his seven-year-old son in the wake of an H1N1 vaccination the child was given at school on November 19.

The case has been made public by Chang Yao-tsung, an opposition Democratic Progressive Party member of the Taichung City Council, speaking on behalf of the child’s parents.

The report says the child had no previous history of medical problems. Like many cases linked by parents to vaccinations, this one began with almost immediate symptoms. The child began suffering with red blotches on the soles of his feet the day following the vaccination. A private clinic diagnosed the condition as either an allergy or a reaction to the shot. Over the following two weeks, despite treatment with medications, the blotches spread over the child’s entire body. The frantic parents moved him from hospital to hospital, demanding ever more expensive treatments and tests. Some doctors said that the child’s immune system was not functioning properly. Despite all efforts, the child died yesterday, December 21. The official diagnosis was sepsis, commonly known as blood poisoning.

We cite the following directly from the Taiwan News:

A total of almost 4.8 million people had been vaccinated so far, according to CDC statistics.

Including the boy, a total of four deaths were recorded following inoculation, including men aged 82 and 50 respectively who had difficult health histories, and a high school student, reports said.

Five pregnant women were reported with problems ranging from miscarriage to a stillborn infant.

Of… 331 lighter cases, 43 percent were dizzy after being inoculated, 20 percent registered a fever, 18 percent felt ill, 17 percent had a headache and 11 percent vomited, according to CDC data.

The CDC denies that the boy’s sickness and death had anything to do with the H1N1 vaccination.

Even as a feeding frenzy surrounds the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, New Yorkers were confronted with the news that Wall Street banking firms Goldman Sachs and Citibank were given 200 doses of swine flu vaccine—the same quantity given to Lenox Hill Hospital.

Goldman and Citibank were not the only corporations given doses of the vaccine, and any companies receiving the vaccine had to have their own medical personnel in place. Also, the understanding was that the vaccinations would be given only to employees in the highest-risk groups, which includes pregnant women, children, and those with chronic diseases such as asthma.

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is widely credited with the apparent gaffe, sources say the CDC gave the vaccine doses to the state, which dispensed them to hospitals, doctors, and corporations.

The video below from NBC’s Today show, summarizes the whole issue quite well, we think. For a more humorous approach to the subject, check out the Saturday Night Live clip below that.

In case you haven’t heard, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has pending legislation mandating that non-health professionals (commonly read as police) can enter homes and force vaccination of children against the will of both the children and their parents if the governor or state health department have declared a state of medical emergency, as would occur in an H1N1 outbreak with resulting compulsory swine flu vaccinations.

The video below features a Fox newscast announcing this statute with analysis provided by Judge Andrew Napolitano, the Fox judicial consultant. That video was recorded after the bill—then Senate Bill 2028—passed the Massachusetts House of Representatives. (The bill had passed the Senate unanimously.)

For those who are opposed to compulsory vaccination, the story is pretty scary. Although adults are not subject to the same compulsory vaccination as children, they are subject to compulsory quarantine. Initially, the bill provided that the compulsory vaccination and quarantine could be performed without a warrant, and transgressors were subject to $1,000 per day in fines and up to 30 days in jail. The bill has since undergone revision as House Resolution 4271 and the warrantless provisions appear to have been removed. The law apparently still does not require that the compulsory vaccinations be given to children by healthcare professionals.

Senate Bill 2028 has become HR 4271

HR 4271 has been passed by the Massachusetts House and has gone back to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. Governor Deval Patrick has already said he will sign it.

Below the Fox newscast (which is now a bit out of date in terms of the provisions of HR 4271) we have posted an older video by way of background. Why post an even older video? Because we thought you might like to see the attitude of the legislator interviewed in this piece and understand the evolution of this particular bill. It gives an answer, we think, to a question we saw posted on another website: “Which is stronger, herd immunity or herd mentality?” (Definitely herd mentality.)

And last, but not least, we’ve posted a video recorded by Barbara Loe Fisher, who is president of the National Vaccine Information Center. This video was recorded in April, but most of the information it provides is not time-sensitive. Fisher discusses the lack of liability and other issues involved in the planned school-based vaccination programs.

Fox news broadcast after Massachusetts bill passes House

Broadcast after Senate Bill 2028 passed Massachusetts Senate

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of National Vaccine Information Center, discusses swine flu vaccination issues

The things they try to slip past you. We were catching up on our reading in the general press, in particular reading a piece in the New York Times about New York state requiring its health care workers to get both seasonal and swine flu vaccines, which has the unions of the health workers up in arms. And there it was, in the Times:

Immunologists generally agree that real protection against any disease requires vaccination rates over 90 percent. But because rumors always circulate and many people fear needles, voluntary acceptance never gets that high.

Nice try, NYT. “Real protection against any disease requires vaccination rates over 90 percent”? (Italics mine.) Does that mean real protection as opposed to the illusory protection we get from vaccines otherwise?

Obviously our NYT reporters are confusing issues here. They refer, we think, to so-called “herd immunity,” which, the story goes, requires over 90 percent vaccination rates to protect the remaining 10 per cent or fewer who are unvaccinated from being exposed to the disease. In other words, if you don’t get vaccinated and over 90 percent of the total population does, your chance of getting the disease drops to a rate comparable to that for people who did get vaccinated. That’s assuming, of course, that the vaccine really works and people really do derive immunity from it, both increasingly dubious assumptions these days.

That, apparently, is what the New York Times considers “real protection.” But, as the main thrust of the Times story clearly demonstrates, 58% of health care workers across the country disagree with that analysis and choose not to get vaccinated against the flu—H1N1 or otherwise.

Editor’s note: Today through Sunday (October 2-4) is the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination, held at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Reston, Virginia. For more information, consult the National Vaccine Information Center Website.

Frankly, we weren’t scheduled to post this until tomorrow, but in light of yesterday’s announcement of the $2.3 billion settlement between Pfizer and the U.S. Department of Justice, it just seemed too a propos to postpone.

Our thanks to Eleni Prokopeas for having posted this video on her site, Green Diva Mom, thereby bringing it to our attention. We liked it enough that we thought you would enjoy seeing it here.

Bill Maher does one of his send-ups—and this time, the patient is Big Pharma.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that it had reached the largest settlement ever with a pharmaceutical manufacturer as Pfizer pled guilty to felony charges of fraudulent promotion of pharmaceuticals.

According to a DOJ press release, the company will pay a criminal fine of $1.195 billion, the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States for any matter. Pharmacia & Upjohn (subsidiaries of Pfizer) will also forfeit $105 million, for a total criminal resolution of $1.3 billion. The companies were misbranding Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead. Bextra is an anti-inflammatory drug that Pfizer pulled from the market in 2005.

Misbranding in this case refers to the practice of recommending a drug for a purpose that has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The company also settled civil suits with the DOJ for violation of the False Claims Act as a result of illegally promoting four drugs—Bextra; Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug; Zyvox, an antibiotic; and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug—and causing false claims to be submitted to government health care programs for uses that were not medically accepted by the FDA and therefore not covered by those programs. The civil settlement also resolves allegations that Pfizer paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe these and other drugs. The federal share of the civil settlement is $668,514,830 and the state Medicaid share of the civil settlement is $331,485,170.

The DOJ further stated that this is the largest civil fraud settlement in history against a pharmaceutical company.

“This historic settlement will return nearly $1 billion to Medicare, Medicaid, and other government insurance programs, securing their future for the Americans who depend on these programs,” said Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services. “The Department of Health and Human Services will continue to seek opportunities to work with its government partners to prosecute fraud wherever we can find it. But we will also look for new ways to prevent fraud before it happens. Health care is too important to let a single dollar go to waste.”

“Illegal conduct and fraud by pharmaceutical companies puts the public health at risk, corrupts medical decisions by health care providers, and costs the government billions of dollars,” said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division. “This civil settlement and plea agreement by Pfizer represent yet another example of what penalties will be faced when a pharmaceutical company puts profits ahead of patient welfare.”

Are you enraged by any of this? If so, leave your comments below.

If you don’t see a comment box at the bottom of this posting, click on the red “leave a comment” text in the grey text box that marks the end of each posting. That will open the comment area for you.

We’ve said before that while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other sources refuse to acknowledge vaccines as a cause of autism, the anecdotal evidence alone can be overwhelming. And that’s before we even get to those few studies that actually have addressed the issue.

Green Diva Mom Eleni Prokopeas

Here is the story of a mother of three whose second child became autistic after receiving his vaccinations at the age of two. It began with a high fever the night of the vaccination and went down hill from there. But despite her doctors’s inability to help her son, Eleni Prokopeas developed her own 10-step protocol to overcome autism. By the age of six, her son was functioning normally again.

Click here to hear Eleni Prokopeas tell the whole story while you browse our site. She tells how the autism came about, then about her efforts—ultimately successful—to cure it. (The audio file will open in another tab or browser. Return to this tab or browser and you can continue browsing the site while you listen.)

You can find out more about Eleni Prokopeas and her 10-step protocol for cure here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The 1976 swine flu epidemic and consequences