# 4171
One of the reasons I don’t try to take on every conspiracy nut or anti-vaccine crank on the internet is that there are simply too many of them. I’d have no time for anything else in my life.
After all, once you start . . . where do you stop?
Besides, the small but erudite readership of this blog hardly needs a daily reality check from me. And those netizens who might benefit are unlikely to wander this way.
So . . . I try to concentrate on providing good information, and not so much shooting down the bad.
But sometimes I come across something so egregious, so outlandish, that I simply can’t stand it. I have to say something.
Today is one of those days.
My RSS reader – which is keyed to phrases like `pneumonia’, and `influenza’ and `vaccine’ pulled up a blog post that supposedly proves that influenza vaccines are worthless . . . and that scientists have known that for 90 years.
I’m not going to give this website a link. They get far too much traffic as it is. If you want to read it, Google `Influenza Vaccine to be Worthless as Early as 1918’.
The basis for this assertion comes from a January 24th, 1920 NYTs article that plainly states that the `influenza vaccines’ used during the 1918 pandemic were worthless in preventing influenza . . . but did help prevent pneumonia.
The website simply puts this 90-year-old article up, without comment (other than the provocative headline). The lack of context or commentary are, at best, a sin of omission.
First, an excerpt from the NYTs article, then a little dissection.
Proof positive that the influenza vaccine is a failure. Right?
Not even close (but of course, you know that).
The `influenza vaccine’ used in 1918 wasn’t an influenza vaccine at all. At the time of that pandemic, and the writing of this NYTs article, scientists didn’t even understand that influenza was caused by a virus.
Up until the early 1930s, scientists thought influenza was caused by a bacteria; Hemophilus influenzae. A gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium first described in 1892 by Richard Pfeiffer during an influenza pandemic.
Given the level of scientific advancement, the mistake was understandable. Bacteria, being much larger than viruses, were possible to detect with early light-microscopes. And many flu victims developed secondary bacterial pneumonias, presenting with their lungs filled with bacteria laced pus.
And so the `composite vaccine’ made from the germs believed to be responsible for colds, influenza, and pneumonia was nothing more than a very crude, scattergun approach bacterial pneumonia vaccine.
Just because they called it an `influenza vaccine’ 90 years ago doesn’t make it so. And so there should be no expectation of that sort of vaccine inhibiting the influenza virus.
Damning today’s influenza vaccine based on this 90 year old news story is about as cynical and disingenuous as it comes.
It wasn’t until 1931 that viral growth of the influenza virus was demonstrated in chicken eggs, and not until the early 1940s that the first inactivated influenza vaccine was developed and used by the US Military.
In other words, the first true influenza vaccine wasn’t even developed until 20 years after this NYTs article appeared. And in the 70 years since then, many advances in the science and technology have occurred.
But of course, to some people, the truth is secondary . . . assuming it matters at all. To offer this 90 year-old article as `proof’ of anything shows how far some people will go to push an agenda.
Sadly, arguments such as this one – as worthless as they may be – will probably convince some people to avoid taking the influenza vaccine.
