H1N1 Influenza Responsum – Thoughts on a “Pandemic”
By Claus Hancke, M.D.
Regarding the threatening or present H1N1 influenza pandemic, I must call for sober-mindedness.
It is a pandemic – which only means that the disease is highly contagious, and that it is spread throughout the World. It does not mean that everyone will die from it.
The word "pandemic" says NOTHING about how dangerous the disease is.
The H1N1 influenza has calmly spread during the past six months, and globally it has not even closely reached the casualty numbers seen with an ordinary, seasonal flu.
Thus we are dealing with a flu of reasonable progress and of relatively low mortality. On average, we are speaking of three days of moderate fever.
The low mortality is probably due to the illness hitting young and middle-aged people. Elderly people are struck to a much milder degree, as they are likely to have developed some immunity from the last time they either had or were exposed to this flu in the pandemic of the late 1950s.
To restrain this influenza, the World's nations have ordered huge quantities of vaccine, and it is claimed that for logistical reasons it has been necessary to preserve this vaccine with Thimerosal, which is 58% mercury. Mercury is the most potent neurotoxin known (among non-radioactive substances) and it stays in the body for 20-30 years. Therefore, humans and animals easily accumulate neurotoxic amounts of this harmful substance. The mercury content of the vaccine totally changes the indication, since this major side effect now has to be taken into consideration.
One should never give a treatment that is worse than the illness. Preventive measures should be taken but only when the side effects are more than counterbalanced by the preventive benefits.
As a doctor, I have to look at vaccination as disease prevention for individuals, not as absence prevention within a “societal production machine.” I therefore cannot give an opinion on the socioeconomic consequences of avoidance of vaccination, or what is known as “herd immunity.”
A theoretical danger with H1N1 is that the virus mutates or combines with H3N2 or H5N1. But if this happens we are dealing with a new virus, and the existing vaccine would probably have no effect.
The really serious danger about this soap opera is that the World's populations have been frightened and intimidated beyond any reasonable measure. This campaign of fear is actually life threatening when used on a relatively mild disease because it makes the World's population become deaf to a pandemic of a lethal virus when it arrives.
The World Health Organization has gambled with World health by untimely shouting "wolf."
Lyngby, Denmark, September 1, 2009, Claus Hancke, M.D.