Should everyone get a flu shot? The evidence, looked at with a scientific eye, is shocking. It’s getting really weary seeing how much medicine is run by profit driven drug companies and physicians that do not think, read or investigate for themselves and their patients.
I do not like reading yellow journalistic sensationalistic stuff, and I like writing it even less. But yeeeech!
In an interview published in The Atlantic, Tom Jefferson, head of the Vaccine Field Group at the Cochrane Database Collaboration (the world’s leading producer of evidence-based medical reviews and the go-to place to get the science FACTS RIGHT), voiced SERIOUS reservations about the data supporting influenza vaccine recommendations, stating that “The vast majority of the studies deeply flawed.
Rubbish is not a scientific term, but I think it’s the term that applies.”
Taking a deep look at the evidence raises LOTS of concerns. A 2012 Cochrane review examining the efficacy of pediatric influenza vaccination noted that:
…industry-funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies, independent of methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to [influenza vaccines…
… reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is THIN but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. This is especially true in seniors where the benefits do not bear out with true scientific scrutiny.
YEAH GADS.
FOLLOW THE MONEY! And the laziness!