Weighing Carefully the Risks of the Swine Flu Vaccination

Swine flu is the latest killer disease du jour for the media. Like SARS before it, we are seeing a rise in coverage of every single person who contracts the disease. This creates a perception that the disease is rampaging throughout the world, killing manby people. In the entire United States, under 8,000 people have sought medical treatment for the swine flu and 522 died. In a nation of three hundred million people, that means that over 99.99% of the people did not contract this virus. By comparison last year, between five and ten million people contracted pneumonia. Between 40-70,000 patients died of this condition. That means that a Charleston sized population dies of pneumonia every year, but the swine flu is a dangerous pandemic.

So why not get the vaccine just to be on the safe side? According to the London Telegraph, (yes we often have to go abroad to get accurate news) the swine flu vaccine could create much more significant health problems. During the swine flu immunization of 1976 in the United States, twenty-five patients died of a crippling neurological disease called Guillain-Barre Syndrome. British medical personnel have been advised to utilize "enhanced surveillance" of vaccinated patients to watch for any signs of the condition. Doctors have not yet established whether or not the vaccine or the actual flu resulted in more cases of the syndrome, causing the leader of one British medical watchdog group to comment "What we've got is a massive guinea pig trial."

Guillain-Barre syndrome does not usually kill, but it is the leading cause of non traumatic paralysis in the world. The immobility generally strikes the legs.

Each individual must weigh the costs and benefits before rushing in to get the vaccine regardless of what the government says. The risks of getting this flu, much less dying from it, are extremely miniscule. One must weigh the slight chance of spending a week recovering from the swine flu (a type of flu no more serious than the regular flu) against the risk of spending a longer time contending with slight possibility of possible paralysis from the aftereffects of the vaccine.

Personally I have never gotten a flu shot and do not intend to this year either. The link to the British story is below.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/6038460/Doctors-told-to-watch-for-Guillain-Barre-syndrome-during-Swine-flu-vaccination-programme.html