Get Your Flu Shot Today! Or, Maybe Not . . .

The sign outside my local drug store says to get my flu shot today. But, though the media and the government keep telling you to get the flu shot, . . .

the highly respected Cochrane Collaboration found that “[e]vidence from systematic reviews shows that vaccines have little or no effect on the effects measured” (BMJ 2006;333:912). That is, they don’t actually work.

So, flu vaccines don’t helped prevent the flu. But that still leaves the constant claim that the flu vaccine protects seniors from serious complications from the flu that can lead to death? But this claim, too, fails to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Canadian research has found that, when subjected to proper analysis, the claimed protection against risk of death in the elderly drops to statistically insignificant levels (Am J Respir Care Med 2008 ;178: 527-533).

And for people with respiratory infections, the great immune herb Echinacea, either alone or with the flu vaccine, works better than the flu vaccine alone (Altern Med Rev 2012;17:36-41).

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