Fueling The Super Flu

MOO! Oh wait, I mean OINK! Oops, still not right, maybe QUACK? The scientific community constantly floods the news with every sign of the next plague. In the 90’s Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad cow) was reported to be popping up with a new case every couple of weeks. More recently the hospitalizing effects of swine flu and isolated international cases of bird flu are causing more people than ever to make trips to the local health clinics. Immunizations are what they flock to receive. Immunizations are marketed to most as a “cure,” or panacea for common infections and viruses. Today’s vaccinations give people a false sense of security. One author even adamantly persists, in “Vaccinate before the next pandemic?,” that pre-pandemic immunization with a cocktail of likely strains could be a cheap, practical and equitable way to protect people against the flu. I, however, politely disagree and do not believe that immunization should become so generic. If vaccination becomes too widespread, and is used to prevent every small epidemic, then the human immune system will become too reliant on medicine. By resorting to a cocktail vaccination method people are leaving themselves vulnerable against multi-drug resistant strains, weakening their immune systems, and relying on science to foresee unpredictable flu variations.

Klaus Stöhr builds a very convincing argument encouraging people to push vaccinate in his article, “Vaccinate before the next pandemic?”. Every time there is an epidemic, medical response is typically too slow in delivering relief. By the time anti-viruses can be isolated and produced in the quantities needed the disease has already run its course. Also the cost of mass-producing vaccines has been lowered tremendously in the past decade allowing even developing countries to possibly protect their people if a vaccine was offered. If an effective immunization cocktail were created it could easily be distributed to the public at an effective rate and significantly lower initial infection. In Stöhr’s research he cites that even if only 20% of the population was pre-vaccinated it could drastically affect the infection rate and the ability of the disease to spread over great distances. He also reports these cocktails have been effectively tested on pregnant women in Europe, which disproves the claims of vaccination causing health problems after injection, and shows they’re safe. Stöhr builds a convincing argument, but there are some issues he does not account for in his article.

While much of the above information is true it is unfair to leave out some important facts about the diseases cocktail vaccines are not protecting against. Many viral strains evolve extremely rapidly. A good example of this is the seasonal flu which many people get a shot against each year or every few years. Lately there have been an unprecedented number of cases shedding light on the existence of Multi-Drug Resistant viruses. These antigens have evolved somehow to resist a number of vaccines, many times requiring the strongest or last defense vaccines to terminate infection. Vaccines have created these drugs, over generations, by allowing the fastest mutating and most resistant strains to survive. The natural selection process of immune systems that are treated with powerful vaccines end up culturing the next seasons flu. With each new flu season a new, stronger, vaccine has to be manufactured. This in many ways has only made the flu stronger. Many of the conventional vaccines and antibiotics used only 10 years ago wouldn’t even reduce the fever of a strain of today’s flu. Just because it is “cheap” or can be distributed across the globe more equally does not mean the cocktail method is a good idea. The 5 -7 drugs combined in the cocktail could cause resistance and almost eliminate the future generations of flu virus or it could cause immunity for the flu virus to 5 -7 more medications, leaving a super flu plaguing Earth. Plagues don’t actually develop that quickly, but super-bugs are becoming a real problem. Long-term effects cannot be guaranteed when testing the cocktail vaccination method. Much of what is known about immunizations and microbiology as a whole has only come out in the last 20 years.

The research of one doctor, Randall Neustaedter, during this 20 year period is beginning to shed light on the negative effects of immunization on children. Neustaeder’s research has shown significant correlation between immunization and delayed immune response in infants. In his research he has found that babies show greater resistance to infection before being exposed to the two month age immunizations. Once children are inoculated they show increased infection rates and slower white-blood cell response when a pathogen enters the body. This type of effect disproves Stöhr’s claims about vaccinations being perfectly safe, enough testing has not been completed. Another piece of evidence can be found when looking at the infection rate of children 20 years ago compared to now. Before many of today’s vaccines were being pushed on infants, the infants of two decades ago show much lower infection rates. These infants of another generation did not have the exposure to the chemical inhibitors that today’s youth’s immune systems are fighting. All of these “safe” solutions scientists have to try and prevent the next epidemics are slowly draining the health of the one response drug that humans don’t pay for, white blood cells.

With the current reliability of the human immune system hanging on to the hopes for a panacea, future epidemics seem inevitable. Bird flu is one of the best examples of a known deadly threat looming in the horizon. Most great plagues come from the flu strain of another species. Normally the flu of a bird could not infect the immune system of a human, but sometimes the flu of a bird can replicate incidentally with that of a pig. If this happens then people become in closer contact with the virus and, through recombination, get infected. This causes bird flu in people, and kills millions. Even though a lot of this process requires infinite luck and chance, it has happened before. In the research article, “1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics”, by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention this process of “luck” is documented in the 20th century. The Spanish Flu of 1918 is connected to an avian variety, which again reformed as a lethal strain in 1968. How could a cocktail of vaccines, based off human flu genomes, possibly protect against a hybrid flu full of genomes rearranged from a bird? The answer is, they can’t. Flu hybidizations are unpredictable and the only way to really prepare for them is by keeping high sanitation standards. If our immune systems are so doped up preparing for a pre-determined strain of known flu strains, then an unexpected strain could cause serious problems.

I am a supporter of many types of immunizations. Some of the work that scientists have done is directly responsible for the existence of the human race today. With the new knowledge that is being gained about Drug-Resistant viruses and super-bugs though, I find it difficult to support the concept of pre-immunization. When the speed at which diseases today can mutate is compounded with the lowering effectiveness of immune systems there has to be a safer way to protect people. The push for new, more powerful, drugs is only making the immune system of future generations weaker. Instead of advocating new cocktails or powerful drugs perhaps there should be some research put into enhancing the immune system naturally. The immune system went thousands of years without being beaten by any virus, making it’s reign over five hundred times that of any man made drug.