Episode 55 – Is Flu Shot As Ineffective As Nasal Mist?
Transcription
Dr. Chad Edwards: This is Dr. Chad Edwards, and you are listening to Podcast 55
of, Against the Grain.
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Welcome to ‘Against the Grain podcast’ with Dr. Chad Edwards, where he
challenges the status quo when it comes to medicine. We get into hot topics in the
medical field with real stories, from real patients to help you on your way to a healthy
lifestyle. Get ready because we’re about to go, go, go– against the grain.
Marshall Morris: Hello, hello. This is the super tall Marshall Morris, and I am here
joined today with Dr. Chad Edwards, who believes that at least, 80% of medical
recommendations are complete crap, technically speaking here. Dr. Edwards, his
credentials are just incredible. He served in the US Army, he is the author of
Revolutionize Your Health With Customized Supplements. He’s the founder of
revolutionhealth.org, Board Certified Family Physician. Dr. Edwards, welcome to the
podcast episode today.
Dr. Edwards: Thanks. It’s great to be here.
Marshall: Yes.
Dr. Edwards: How are you doing today?
Marshall: I shamelessly – this is my confession. It’s like a confessional.
Dr. Edwards: Okay.
Marshall: My mom was Catholic, but this is kind of like, let’s take two minutes, and
this is the nutrition confessional.
Dr. Edwards: Okay.
Marshall: I’ve had two cups of coffee and two Monsters today. How do I get off that?
Dr. Edwards: Well, first, bless you, my child.
[laughter]
Dr. Edwards: Well, the first thing to do is to just stop, just don’t do that.
Marshall: Just don’t do that.
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Dr. Edwards: Right.
Marshall: Fair enough. For all the listeners out they’re probably asking, “Energy
drinks or coffee is one better or worse than the other?”
Dr. Edwards: Well, you got to figure the amount of sugar in a lot of the energy
drinks. I’m not a fan of a lot of artificial sweeteners. I would honestly rather have for
average – otherwise healthy physiology. I would rather have sugar than a lot of the
artificial sweetener crap. We will have a podcast- We should do that soon, have one
of those soon. Maybe I’ll go plan that this weekend and be ready for one of the
upcoming ones.
I would eliminate those things, get to look at what else is in there. As far as straight
up plain coffee, and not looking at dairy sensitivity or sugar or things like that, there’s
actually some benefit. If you listen to Dave Asbury’s stuff, he talks about– he’s the
Bulletproof Executive, great stuff he’s got a great podcast. He talks about life hacks
and things like that and he’s got some really good stuff out there. He talks about
some of the micro-toxins, some fungus stuff in coffee and the way it’s grown and
handled. He’s got some stuff that- I don’t know if this is a shameless plug. I’ve never
talked with Dave I get nothing from this–
[laughter]
Dr. Edwards: — but I believe in what he’s doing and he’s got some good clean stuff,
and he sells a good, high-quality coffee, and you could consider something like that
without all those micro-toxins. Definitely, something to look at and he’s much more of
an expert on the coffee realm than I am. Then the energy drink piece, again
watching all the artificial junk that comes in a lot of them, I would rather have the
sugar than a lot of the year artificial stuff. But you have to look at how much sugar is
in them, and some of those things are jam-packed. You might as well just open your
mouth and pour the sugar in. It’s crazy how much stuff that- I’m not saying that I
never drink them, but it’s got an insane amount of sugar Tulsa prolotherapy.
Marshall: Don’t make a habit of it.
Dr. Edwards: It’s not that you drink some of those, it’s that you had a total of four of
them. Especially like a monster, you get those big ones, and some of those things
are like, fifty-five- gallon drum, they are gigantic. It’s an enormous amount of stuff in
there.
Marshall: It’s a lot.
Dr. Edwards: If you look at the labels, and you’ve got to be careful looking at those
labels, and you see, “Oh, there’s only 13 grams of sugar in one serving.”
Marshall: In in one serving and mostly more than one serving.
Dr. Edwards: Right, and some of those things are probably like 12 servings.
Marshall: Oh gosh.
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[laughter]
Dr. Edwards: You can feed a small town in Ethiopia [laughs].
Marshall: This will be ongoing therapy between you and I. Not to derail us too
much, but let’s see if you can bring it around to today’s hot topics.
Dr. Edwards: Yes, in the interim, you mentioned 80% of medical recommendations
being crap. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about
one of these. I just came across the teletype this week that the Advisory Committee
on Immunization Practices, ACIP, recommended that the flu nasal spray not to be
used for the upcoming flu season Tulsa prolotherapy. To put that in perspective, for the last several
years we’ve had two options, and we won’t go into the differences between the two
options, but you’ve got the flu shot which is an Inactivated Influenza Virus, IIV. Then
you have the nasal flu mist that you spray up your nose, so there’s no shot, but it’s a
attenuated live virus.
Marshall: What is attenuated?
Dr. Edwards: That means it’s altered slightly so that it’s typically not pathogenic,
also doesn’t cause disease, doesn’t cause the flu but it certainly elicits an immune
response, and a lot of people would say, “I got the flu shot, and it worked, I got the
flu,” It can happen. In fact, earlier on, we had a podcast on the flu, and I don’t mean
to rehearse that, but I do want to talk about some of the implications of this
recommendation. As I read this, I was like, “I wonder why they said that; not to use it
for 2016/2017.” I was just like, “Why?” When I read the paper on it, and this is a
quote, “New data show that the nasal mist has been ineffective for the last three
influenza seasons, so, 2013 to 2016.” It’s been ineffective for those last seasons,
and so they’ve said, “Well we don’t recommend it because it doesn’t work.” Well, that
was really interesting to me because the flu shot doesn’t work either. Some people
may say, “What?” What are you saying? I wanted to just run through some of the
history of the flu shot– .
Marshall: Sure.
Dr. Edwards: — and I don’t remember how much of this we did before, you can
certainly go back and listen to it, but I’m just going to kind of list out some of this stuff
as far as the history of the flu shot.
In 1947, this was shortly after the flu shot became available, they found that the
incidence of disease flu was no different in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals,
that started in 1947. In 1957, the vaccine had no appreciable effect on the trend of
the Asian flu pandemic. By the early 1960s, routine influenza vaccination was
generally adopted as a policy with very little supporting evidence Tulsa prolotherapy.
In 1964, the Chief Epidemiologist at the CDC, his name was Alexander Langmuir, L-
A-N- G-M- U-I- R, he was the Chief Epidemiologist, Physician, MD and an MPH;
Master’s in Public Health- “Reluctantly concluded that there is little progress to be
reported,” and referring as to the making progress on reducing the mortality in
reducing the incidence of flu.” It went on to say that, “The severity of the epidemic of
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1962 to 1963 demonstrates the failure to achieve effective control of excess
mortality.” We’re talking down in the 1960s.
In 1964, his paper question whether the widespread immunization practice should
be continued without better evidence to justify the major costs to the general public.
In 1968, the CDC performed its first randomized plus double-blind trial and quote,
“Despite extensive use of influenza vaccines, attainment of improved morbidity-
mortality has never been demonstrated.” That was in 1968 by a study done by the
CDC.
In 1976, swine flu appeared for the first time as a potential pandemic. They feared
that it was going to be this big pandemic, and it was going to kill a bunch of people,
like what we saw in the 19-teens. What they found was lower levels than expected
of the flu, but there was an epidemic of paralytic Guillain-Barré syndrome in
recipients of vaccine, which led to the program’s cancellation. They quit using the
vaccine temporarily because of this epidemic of Guillain-Barré. Guillain-Barré, for
those of the listeners that don’t know, is like, when you are getting an immunization
you are trying to load your immune system and build antibodies so that you can
fight a potential infection. The way our immune system works, it’s like– I think about
getting an APB out for red Nissan pickups. Your immune system is going to develop
an antibody to all red Nissan pickups. But there’re old red Nissan pickups, and
there’s new red Nissan pickups, and you can have some cross-reactivity, what we
call molecular mimicry. Basically, Guillain-Barré is kind of an autoimmune disorder
where you get the immunization, and your body develops antibodies against itself,
kind of attacks itself, and it causes paralysis Tulsa prolotherapy.
Usually, that’s temporary, but it’s quite called an ascending paralysis. It starts low, in
your feet, and it works its way up. It can be severe as to require ventilation, so
intubate it and be on a ventilator. The incidence of that continues. Current estimates
are that it’s one in a million, two in a million, not very common. But when you
consider the number of flu vaccines and factors, roughly 171 million influenza
vaccines that are projected to be given-
Marshall: 171 million?
Dr. Edwards: Right, we’re looking at just under 200 cases, but between 200 to 350
cases of potentially fatal Guillain-Barré because of the flu. According to the data has
never been shown to be effective. In the 1976, they saw this epidemic of this stuff,
and this is one of the potential harms of the flu shot. In 1977 an analysis was
conducted by the CDC which concluded that influenza control had been generally
ineffective and that statistically valid community trials were needed, in 1977. Again,
we’re 30 years into this, and we’re still not seeing improvement.
In 1995, we’re in the 90s, FDA acknowledged the ongoing paucity of randomized
trials and warned about a series of methodological flaws in many existing flu vaccine
studies. We’re just not getting good data, and we’re not getting good results on the
flu shot. In 2000, into the 2000s, in the new millennium, CDC performed a placebo
control trial and found that vaccination, when compared to placebo, may not provide
overall economic benefit in most years. CDC, in the 2000s, not seeing anything yet.
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In 2004 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended annual flu
immunization, and I just put that in as another milestone. Then in 2012, the
systematic review concluded recommendation to vaccinate the elderly was made
without data for vaccine efficacy or effectiveness. In other words, we’re making
recommendations, “Go get your flu shot,” based on no scientific data. We probably
need to take a break and then we come back we’ll summarize a lot of this stuff and
why I think this is another one of the many loads of crap that we’re fed.
Marshall: We’re getting into it. It’s a little bit of a holy war against immunization.
Dr. Edwards: I’ll talk about that after the break too.
Marshall: All right.
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Marshall: All right. We are back, and we’re talking about the flu shot immunization
and everything that that entails. You started off talking about the nasal spray; the
recommendation that the past three seasons, the nasal spray has been proven
ineffective.
Dr. Edwards: Right.
Marshall: Then, in the first half of the podcast we were talking about the history of
the flu shot and the studies associated with it and how they were documenting that
there has been no progress using the flu shot-
Dr. Edwards: That’s correct.
Marshall: -in decreased mortality rate or infection. Get us into why is this such a big
deal or why is this happening?
Dr. Edwards: Well, that’s a good question and what you alluded to one thing right
before the break about immunization practice in general. Let me differentiate. There
are some immunizations that I am extremely in favor of. For example, I work in the
emergency room, and I see patients that get bitten by a dog. A patient the other day
got bit by a bat, the mammal that flies and can’t see in the middle of the dark, a bat.
Marshall: Blind as a bat.
Dr. Edwards: Exactly. I was deployed with the military to Honduras in 2014, and we
had one of our service members that got bit by a local dog. What happens with
them, if you have not been vaccinated against rabies prophylactically, you’re
required to get rabies immune globulin. This immune globulin against rabies and you
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have to actually inject it, like if you get bit on the hand or on the arm, you have to
inject it all around that area.
Marshall: Is it like with a shot or it’s a liquid.
Dr. Edwards: Yes, it’s an injection, and you have to infiltrate into the wound as
much as possible. Then you get the rest of it like a shot in the hip. That’s no joke. I
had a patient, both the one that got bit by a bat and another one that got bit by a
stray dog, it was a pit bull; this was in the emergency room. This dog, pit bull, came
out of the woods literally, mangy, nasty-looking, all that kind of good stuff. The guy
saw the dog, turned to look the other way and then when he turned to look the other
way, the dog bit him in the back of the leg and then just ran back off into the woods.
You don’t have access to the animal; you can’t test the animal and there was a lady
that got bit by a bat in her hand. Neither one of these patients had insurance and
that rabies immune globulin was around $24,000 to give them.
We’re sitting here. It’s very frustrating because we have to make medical decisions
not based on cost in the emergency room and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re
going to do whatever is in the best interest of that patient. Now, there’s a piece of
that, that there’s never, at least not in a hundred years, been a documented case of
a dog giving a human rabies. It’s this relatively low risk of the person having a true
contact, now bat higher risk, but then if somebody told me, “This patient doesn’t
have insurance,” am I going to give this patient $24,000 rabies immune globulin
knowing that this is relatively low risk? The reason that without question I pulled the
trigger on that and say, “Yes, we’re going to do it,” it’s because if you miss it, it’s
fatal. By the time you get symptoms, you’re pretty much going to die.
Marshall: I feel like we need to do an entire episode on physicians having to make
decisions based on insurance, you know what I mean?
Dr. Edwards: Yes, absolutely.
Marshall: Because I think that’s such a mental– It’s stressful. I would imagine, and
so I feel like we could get into that on one of the episodes.
Dr. Edwards: Yes, it’s not an easy decision. I’ve had to consciously make that
decision and I just– The nurses were standing there talking to me, and I said, “Okay,
guys. Do we make decisions? Do we discuss the cost with any other therapy with
any of our other patients?” They were like, “No,” and I said, “Then we’re not having
that discussion on this one.” We’re going to do what’s in the best interest of the
patient. We’re not going to worry about the cost because if we miss it on this guy,
he’s dead.” If he was exposed and we don’t treat him, he’s dead so what’s your life
worth? Even if you are on welfare and have to come up with $24,000 or something,
whatever it is, if you don’t have $24,000 and don’t have a way to get $24,000 what
you going to do? But what’s your life worth? That’s the decision that we have to
make, and I’m going to embrace that. It is what it is.
The reason that I bring that up is because if you had the rabies immunization, then–
For example, since I was with Special Operations, we had an extensive list of
immunizations that we had to get. One of them was the rabies vaccine series. I’m
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actually very glad that I got that one because if I got bit by a dog in Honduras or like
this guy, then I go to the emergency room, and they say, “Okay, you’ve had a rabies
immunization. Let’s give you your booster.” They give me a rabies immunization,
and I walk out the door. That’s it. The difference is one person has to pay $24,000,
or the insurance has to pay $24,000 for rabies immunoglobulin, and they also get
the immunization versus me, I just have to get an update to my immunization.
Marshall: Sure.
Dr. Edwards: The cost difference is dramatic. I do travel and some with the military
and some civilian, and those kinds of things. I’ve done mission trips, and I love going
to Honduras. There’s always the potential of exposure like that, and if I’m in a third
world country, and get bit by a rabid dog, what am I going to do?
Marshall: Now how does that compare to the exposure to the flu then?
Dr. Edwards: While there are fatalities to the flu virus, I’m not going to underplay
that. You’re talking about what are the chances of dying from the flu if you get the
flu. I’ve never in my medical practice period, I have never seen anyone die from the
flu. We know it happens, I’m not underplaying that. But we’ve seen lots of people
with flu, you feel awful, you feel horrible. When you look at the numbers most of the
time, you recover from it, and you go back to doing your thing Tulsa prolotherapy.
[coughs] When you contrast that with rabies if you get rabies, and you’re getting
symptoms, you’re dead. It’s 100% fatal at that point. When you’re balancing, this one
you get sick and feel awful, risk of dying is relatively low. This one you get it, and
you die. When you look at risks and benefits, then that’s a no-brainer to me. With
rabies, relatively low incidents. In other words, how many people get bit by stray
dogs. That doesn’t happen very often. Not that you can 100% control for that, but
you can reduce your risk. With flu, it just is what it is. You can lock yourself in your
house and not see anybody, but nobody does that except for hermits. You can’t
control how you get the flu. You can certainly do things like wash your hands and
protect your mouth when you cough, and not be around other people when you’re
coughing and sneezing and those kinds of things, but you can’t a 100% control for
that. The issue is, if you get rabies, you’re dead. If you get flu, you’re probably not.
It’s a risk-benefit thing.
The second thing is when you look at certain immunizations, they are extremely
powerful. With smallpox, arguably the first vaccine that prevents you from getting
smallpox. In fact, we’ve effectively eradicated smallpox disease through vaccination
principles. The World Health Organization declared it eradicated, although we still
have some in the labs, but that vaccine works. You get the rabies vaccine, that
vaccine works. The flu shot doesn’t work. That’s from the CDC, that’s from the FDA,
that’s from all of these different organizations and people since its inception in the
1940’s. When you look at the most recent systematic reviews, there’s not significant
evidence that it works. Some will say the flu shot absolutely works; now there’s a
difference between effectiveness and efficacy.
Marshall: What’s the difference?
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Dr. Edwards: Efficacy means that when I give you an immunization, that your body
develops antibodies against that antigen. The antigen is what would cause the
disease or at least associate it with. If you get the flu shot, it is efficacious. It does
cause your body to make antibodies against it. The problem is that it is not effective.
It is not been shown to be effective in reducing the incidents of the flu, and that has
been in study after study. There are some studies that will show it but like this one,
let me go back one page. Like the one that says in 1995 when the FDA
acknowledged the ongoing paucity of randomized trials and warned about serious
methodological flaws in many existing flu vaccine studies.
When you read the Cochrane reviews in 2010 to 2012 on the flu shot, they talked
directly about the funding, the influence of the industry, who paid for the study, how
did they conduct the study and the results that they got. But when you look at it
objectively, there is clearly a bias in the studies that are conducted on the flu shot.
When you remove that bias, there’s not good evidence that it works.
Marshall: I feel like the overwhelming message that I’m still receiving is, “Go get
your flu shot,” more than, “Don’t go get a flu shot or get the nasal spray?” Why are
we still seeing or hearing that then?
Dr. Edwards: I think there’s a couple of things. Number one, I think there’s the
possibility, and again I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I think there’s the possibility
of lobbying with governmental influence. You get the ASIP is a panel, and I believe
there were sixteen members; fourteen that voted in favor of making this
recommendation to not use the nasal spray, and then two that did not vote again,
one abstained, and one had some other issue, may’ve been conflict of interest or
something like that. But there’s the potential for influence on these panel members,
and I’m not saying that they were influenced, I don’t know that, but there’s always
that question. Is the pharmaceutical industry or the manufacturers these flu shots
influencing these physicians? Most physicians would say, “No, I’m not influenced by
that,” and study after study shows that it does make a difference. It does change the
physician’s mindset about prescribing habits.
Marshall: When you talk about influence, what kind of magnitude, you said a 171
million.
Dr. Edwards: Million.
Marshall: Vaccinations or-
Dr. Edwards: That’s what they anticipated for the coming year.
Marshall: Yes, 171 million times– how much is the average flu shot or nasal spray?
Dr. Edwards: I don’t know what the cost is. Most places you can probably get it for
15 bucks or something like that.
Marshall: Okay.
Dr. Edwards: You’re probably talking $4, $5, maybe a couple of dollars for the
actual cost of the vaccine it’s-
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Marshall: Cost of it if four or five dollars but they’re charging fifteen dollars a pop.
That’s a billion dollars.
Dr. Edwards: Yes.
Marshall: That’s a billion dollar season thing. That’s pretty significant.
Dr. Edwards: Exactly, and that raises the next piece which is why would they make
the recommendation to stop the nose spray but they’ve never made a
recommendation to not use the flu shot? Interestingly in their recommendation they
talk about this very thing that the nose spray only accounts for 8% of the 171 to 176
million doses of influenza protection for the next year. They’re looking at the data,
and they are saying, “If this doesn’t work,” and I’m not saying that they consciously
thought this but, “This doesn’t work, and if you just don’t look at the other stuff then it
won’t come to light.” But to get a piece of that is that looking at efficacy versus
effectiveness.
If you go to revolutionizehealth.org and search in the search bar on the website for
flu, one of them is like all you need to know about the flu shot. I post in that article;
there’s a portion of package insert from one of the flu shots called fluvial. In it, it says
exactly that, “The recommendations for this shot are based on efficacy, and it has
not been proven to prevent flu.” Says it right there on the handout. It goes back to
efficacy versus effectiveness, and so you have to be very careful about interpreting
the data. They’re talking about the ability of the body to make antibodies, or they are
talking about preventing flu. I would argue that no one cares if you have antibodies if
it doesn’t prevent the flu. When you look at the epidemiological data for the last 50
years, where’s the evidence that it makes a difference?
The Cochrane reviews don’t show it. Statistically or historically, it doesn’t show it.
We’ve got something that hasn’t been shown to be effective, and now they are
coming out and saying, “Don’t use the nose spray because it doesn’t work but these
others do but are they looking at efficacy or effectiveness?” I didn’t get a chance to
read those actual reports myself.
Marshall: This is serious.
Dr. Edwards: I agree
Marshall: This is serious. Coming full circle, the nasal spray, finally, has been
recommended that it is not working, let’s cancel that, it’s not been shown to be
effective. But when you look at the data, none of it’s been shown to be effective.
Dr. Edwards: Correct.
Marshall: This is a big deal and for all the listeners out there in terms of next steps
form, you can read more about everything that you need to know about the flu,
revolutionhealth.org. What would you say for this upcoming season? In terms of
whether they’re deciding to get the flu shot or not?
Dr. Edwards: You got to remember that many people don’t have a choice. If you
work in a hospital, they almost threaten your life with, “You have to get the flu shot.”
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Again, it’s barbaric tactics based on no sound evidence, and some people say that
in fact, I’ve heard this, that you got to get your flu shot so that you don’t transmit it to
your patients. That was actually studied, and it was shown that it doesn’t work. Yet
we had these recommendations.
What do I recommend, I’ve got a couple of posts on the website where I talk about
what to do to prevent the flu itself, and what can you do to treat the flu itself. But
then I also talk about what do you do if you have to get the flu shot and how to
manage that. We’ll have those as podcasts coming up soon. We’re not quite in the
flu season, but as we get closer, we’ll start having more stuff about them.
Marshall: Dr. Edwards, thank you so much for sharing this today. The grass is
green, the sky is blue, studies show the flu shot doesn’t work.
Dr. Edwards: [laughs] That’s right. And you have to pay your taxes.
Marshall: And you have to pay your taxes. Thank you so much.
Dr. Edwards: Thanks.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to this week’s podcast with Dr. Chad Edwards.
Tune in next week, where we’ll be going, Against the Grain.
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