Mocksoup Graves

Baxter: Product contained live bird flu virus | Canada | News | Toronto Sun

Emphasis mine.

This is a pretty large error.

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Mocksoup Graves

And there really isn't a whole lot more information on this. In the article before the 'experimental' part wasn't spelled out. This isn't really anything that should be left to chance. These are people's LIVES that are supposed to be saved.

Apparently Baxter has had some issues with recalls before.

Baxter Issues Urgent Nationwide Voluntary Recall of Heparin 1,000 Units/ML 10 and 30mL Multi-Dose Vials
Baxter Recalls More Heparin Products // Pharmalot
Heparin Recall: Baxter named in contaminated saline syringe lawsuit | Beasley Allen (contaminated syringe here)
New York Baxter Dialysis Recall Lawyers - Medical Malpractice Attorneys Manhattan - Wingate, Russotti & Shapiro
Yep. Many problems with contamination... and yet they are still vaccine makers.

Harvey Swenson

It's a pretty bad situation and fortunately it was caught before it was released. I'd dread the headlines if it had gone further.

I'd guess their first response was to keep it as quiet as possible and now they're in panic mode.

Shiva Shiskabob

oh goddamit.

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Jahar Aabye

Experimental in this case almost certainly means used on non-human (and likely non-primate) animals. To that extent, the system worked. The problem with the vaccine was caught during experiments.

Also, it is not immediately apparent from the article that this is the routine seasonal flu shot. It makes it sound as though they were testing a new formulation for a flu vaccine.

Chance Abattoir

Flu vaccines shouldn't be given to people with mental problems. I don't think anyone on this board has anything to worry about.

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Mocksoup Graves

Didja catch the part where the company has a bit of a problem with contamination? And that people have died because of it? And that this is the same company that makes the flu vaccines?

These are the people that you are trusting with your health. These mistakes aren't supposed to happen.

Mocksoup Graves

Also, when this was first reported experimental was not in the article. Infact, the Toronto Sun pulled the article for a bit and this one was put up.

Not that I would ever infer that anyone would be slightly dishonest if it meant saving the public from a panicked state.

Jahar Aabye

Well, I am not a journalist and have very little experience in journalism, but I do know that occasionally breaking news stories are edited as more facts are reported. For example, you might run to the presses with news that appears to be about the widely available routine flu vaccination, and then further investigation reveals that it is an experimental strain that got contaminated and killed several lab animals.

Is it a serious concern? Hell yes. I would especially like to know how the hell H5N1 got comingled with normal human influenza virus. While viruses cannot directly laterally transfer genetic material the way bacteria can (thank G_d), there would still be a very dangerous possibility of the easily transmissible human influenza virus picking up a couple of key gene sequences from the H5N1 strain in vivo.

I was simply pointing out that this story, while disturbing, is not quite the same as implied in the title. Most notably, that the routine flu vaccine supply does not appear to have been tainted. This is fairly important, since influenza kills over 30,000 people each year in the US.



For the record, I have had my flu shot....I'd missed it in the past few years, but got it in when I was briefly hospitalized for seizure monitoring.

Mocksoup Graves

My family and I got the flu. We felt like crap for about a week. We had to be vigilant against dehydration, medication overdose, and be on the look out for febrile seizures. If there was wheezing, we got out the nebulizer and used atrovent and albuterol or Xeponex. The doctor prescribed codiene cough syrup. We are fine. No risk of contamination there.

(and we all have asthma, and I have other health problems and are in 'high risk' categories)


I can understand using the vaccines for more serious illnesses, but using it for something so simple seems to go against our bodies ability to fight things off naturally.

And you don't die from the Flu. You die from complications from the flu. Dehydration, Pneumonia, bronchitis. Things that you get treated for. And getting the shot isn't a guarantee you won't get it. It is a crap shoot if they even get the right virus in the cocktail.

What happened to just treating things when you got sick? Why not put more R & D into that?

I have spent a great deal of my life in the hospital, compared to most people. People die. I am going to die, my husband is going to die, my children are going to die. Someday.


So the side effects are.. flu like symptoms.

Now, tbh this doesn't really affect me. I can't get vaccines anymore, and obviously I am biased against frivolous ones because of my own reactions and time spent in the hospital because of them.


Out of our population of 300 million people, .00012% dies from Influenza. And for that we want 98% herd immunity. That puts it into a bit better perspective. While each one of those deaths were someone's father, child, mother, sister or brother... it is a rare thing indeed.

Jahar Aabye

Mock,

People do die from the flu. Over 30,000 people die from the flu every year. And this:

...is....I don't really know what the word is....

You don't die from HIV/AIDS either, but from opportune infections that result. You don't die from epilepsy, you can just die from asphyxiation during Status Epilepticus. You don't die from diarrhea, you just die from dehydration caused by diarrhea (and yes, coronavirus-induced diarrhea kills many children in developing nations). Hell, nobody dies from cocaine overdoses by this standard, they die from heart failure or CVA!

Hell, in the end the cause of death for just about everything is "heart failure." That doesn't mean that the condition that triggered it didn't cause it.

I really don't think that you understand how callous you sound when you say that nobody dies from a disease that kills over 30,000 people in the US every year. Many of them are the very young and the very old.


It has been shown to statistically lower the risk. There's no way to guarantee that I won't die if I get in an auto accident even if I wear a seatbelt. Plenty of people die in auto accidents who wore their seatbelts. But statistically speaking, I do have a much better chance of surviving an auto accident if I am wearing a seatbelt. So I wear my seatbelt.


Because it's a virus. Treating viral infections is very difficult. You cannot use antibiotics to treat a virus. There are antiviral drugs out there, but they are not always effective, and they are almost always more expensive than a vaccine. Furthermore, there is a much smaller supply of them. Of course, if the drug companies really wanted to make money, they could stop producing the cheap vaccine, let more people get sick, and then sell them expensive antivirals.

And again, waiting until someone gets sick is a much greater risk, especially for the elderly patients who are at the greatest risk of dying from the flu. You're basically putting Charles Darwin in the driver's seat when you do that. Your body, your choice, but when I personally had to go over our policies for vaccinating patients in long term care facilities, when real lives were at stake and it wasn't just as easy as writing a blithe opinion on an internet message board, my goal was to look at what option would result in the fewest patients dying, and the statistics were pretty clear that vaccination was the best way to acheive that goal.



Well, there are a couple of things here that are just wrong. For starters, a disease that kills 30,000 people a year, yeah, it's probably worth getting something close to herd immunity, although it's not going to be close to 98% of the general population. Vaccinating everyone in a nursing home and everyone who works in a nursing home, on the other hand, has been statistically shown to save lives. The raw data shows that when you vaccinate certain populations who are at the greatest risk, fewer people die.

But if you want to look at it as a percentage of the population as a whole, it might be worth remembering that not everyone who gets the flu dies, but there's still things like lost productivity, not being able to go to work or to school. There are a lot of people in this country who cannot afford to miss a week of work or it could have potentially dire consequences.

However, the main concern with the flu is that the regular old influenza kills over 30,000 Americans each year. We get all bent out of shape over the possibility of Avian Flu, which could, potentially, kills tens of thousands of people, but we ignore this virus that already kills tens of thousands of people.


Meanwhile, you're ignoring my point that the title of this thread is incredibly misleading. The routine flu shot was not contaminated with anything. An experiment flu vaccine given only to animals was contaminated. A few laboratory animals died. Meanwhile a potential scare over the safety of the flu vaccine could result in a lot of people not getting vaccinated. And we know that this result would result in thousands more deaths.

What part of "this disease kills over 30,000 Americans each year" makes it sound like it is no big deal?

Jahar Aabye

Some light reading:

On the problem of having enough vaccine but not enough people getting it:

Influenza vaccine supply: building long-term susta...[Vaccine. 2008] - PubMed Result


And here are two studies that assessed the number of deaths due to influenza in the US.

This one found that the number was 23,710 deaths per year, and notes that this is significantly lower than many other estimates:

Revised estimates of influenza-associated excess m...[Emerg Themes Epidemiol. 2008] - PubMed Result


Here's another study that found that influenza may account for 41,400 deaths per year:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16319291?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez. Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.P ubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=5&log$=relatedarticles& logdbfrom=pubmed


So perhaps the total number is somewhere in between 23,000 and 41,000. That's a decent number of deaths.


Here's a Spanish study that looked at the benefit of flu vaccinations in elderly patients with heart disease, a group that is especially at risk of dying:

Effects of annual influenza vaccination on winter ...[Eur Heart J. 2009] - PubMed Result

They found that vaccinations reduced deaths by 37%, and estimated that one death was prevented for every 122 vaccinations. Again, these are the people most likely to die from the disease, so this is not necessarily applicable to the general population. Still, it shows that flu vaccines really do save lives.


Here's a study that looked at the effect of repeated annual vaccinations in elderly persons. It found that a death was prevented for every 302 vaccinations, with vaccination rates ranging from 64%-74%. Note that this value is certainly less impressive than the previous one, but this was looking at a large elderly population, and not simply those with specific comorbidities that made them even more vulnerable.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15523069?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez. Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.P ubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=3&log$=relatedarticles& logdbfrom=pubmed


These are just a few articles, and I have tried to make sure that they are ones where the full text is available for free.

Please understand that while you may not like the idea of a flu vaccine, your decision to take a newspaper story out of context as "vindication" (thread tag) for your views on the subject is every bit as irresponsible as saying "hey, I drove home while completely drunk without a scratch on my car, breathalyzers are for pussies."




Edited to Add: The last PubMed link doesn't seem to be formatting properly for some reason, so here is a direct link to the full article in the Journal of the American Medical Association:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/292/17/2089


Edited One Last Time: I had copied the link to one of the studies about total deaths twice, sorry

Mocksoup Graves

bump, necropost.

Colette Meiji

I got a flu shot this year. I started a new job and thought it would look bad if I got sick.

Everyone in my family got sick (maybe flu, dont know) except me.

So .. I think it was worth it.

Mocksoup Graves

This is the last post that I will be making her on the topic of vaccinations, or other infectious diseases on SLU. I ask that you all stay vigilant, and please stay healthy and safe. I hope that you all take an interest in how you are taking care to spread illness related to hand washing, and self quarantine and social situations. No one has more vested interest in your health and that of your loved ones, than you.

Arilynn

Why necropost this now? If you are suggesting the current swine flu, with its mixed genome, is a product of technological contamination, I think you should provide some support to it. Without it, it is just baseless speculation at a time when concerns are already high, and that seems irresponsible to me.

And I understand being concerned when a vax company does have a contamination problem, but the thread title is misleading. It wasn't the seasonal flu shot or a routine shot that was contaminated; it was an experimental product used for research and given to animals.

Siggy

Avian flu, pig flu, fucking mad cow...

I'm running out of things I can eat Fuck it - seal blubber it is!

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