Flu Jab

[maggiebee]

Have just received a letter saying I am entitled to a flu jab this year because of my age (sob sob). I keep very good health and am never bothered with colds or flu. What are the pros and cons of having the jab?

[Sqad]

Well I am not one for links but my information came from

http://www.patient.co...uenza-Vaccination.htm

Sorry I thought that you were non clinical...my apologies.

[LazyGun]

Even were thimerosol (or thiomersal) present in the vaccine, it is extremely doubtful that it should form any cause for concern.

Firstly, thimerosol is an organo mercury compound -not elemental mercury.It metabolises in the body to ethylmercury and thiosalicylate. Ethylmercury as an organomercuric compound could be toxic, in a sufficiently high dose, but as Paracelcus noted all those years ago - "the dose makes the poison".

In your typical influenza jab, the amount of thimerosol as a preservative would be present in concentrations of around 0.01%, so in an IM vaccine with a total volume of 0.5ml the amount of ethyl mercury your body is exposed to would be 50 microgrammes. And this vaccine is administered once, maybe twice a year. You will be exposed to much,much, much more ethyl and methyl mercury as a consequence of general living and diet.

As Slaney has pointed out though, thimerosol is or has been phased out, particularly for vaccines aimed at children, on the basis of the precautionary principle.

Someone made the comment that "Big Pharma" makes lots of money from vaccines.They make very much more from selling pills than they do vaccines - vaccines are expensive to test and manufacture. Indeed, a big area of public health concern is the lack of willing manufacturers nowadays.

http://content.health...content/24/3/622.full

[Sqad]

Fine.....2 different points here:

1) Can one be sure that one's vaccine doe s NOT contain mercury as thiomersal?................and the evidence is still confusing.

2) Would small amounts of mercury (if present) be harmful?...still conflicting reports, but i will accept (for the time being) that they wouldn't.

[Ann]

People are lucky getting their flu jabs now - I asked about them today and our surgery is inundated at the moment, and as they are only doing them on Saturdays, the next appointment is towards the end of November - could have the 'flu by then :(

[LazyGun]

The selected influenza vaccines for UK 2012 are Intanza, manufactured by Sanofi, Optaflu, from Novartis, and Fluenz, the nasal spray suspension, from AstraZeneca .

None contain Thimerosol.

I did not mean to confuse the issue. The point I was trying to make was that - even had thimerosal been present, it is in such small quantities that it has no meaningful impact on annual exposure levels, most especially since the clearance rate of ethylmercury in the body is 7-10 days.

[Sqad]

LazyGun...ah! thanks....much clearer now.