Last week a friend of mine encouraged me with the zeal of an evangelist to get a shot as soon as the vaccine was available. She told me that there are churches encouraging their congregation to get the vaccine and perhaps our church should do the same thing. After all it is the responsible thing for community leaders to do.
This morning I received an email from another friend that discussed the dangers of the vaccine and warned me not to get it or at least consider the risk of the vaccine.
Today the Globe and Mail ran an article saying “fewer Canadians are interested in getting the H1N1 flu shot”. I’m still sitting on the fence on this one. Maybe it is Canadian to be skeptical of hype. All the hype around this flu and the vaccine concerns me as much as getting the flu.
While I am sure the risk is real – we’ve all seen the news clips and read the horror stories – I also wonder how severe the risk is.
According to an article I read on CBCNews.ca,
GlaxoSmithKline, which is under contract to produce 50 million vaccine doses for Canada, released the initial results of its first trial on the inoculation on Monday, based on tests on 130 healthy German volunteers aged 18 to 60.
The trial was designed to test the safety and effectiveness of the company’s swine flu vaccine, which includes an adjuvant to boost strength and stretch supplies of the serum.
More than 98 per cent of subjects who received a first dose of 5.25 micrograms of vaccine and the company’s AS03 adjuvant showed signs of protection three weeks later, compared with 95 per cent of those who received the vaccine without the adjuvant, the company said. But the study did not look at the dose GSK is using in the Canadian vaccine, namely 3.75 micrograms plus adjuvant.
A statement from GSK said the formulation tested was “comparable to the expected final formulation of the adjuvanted vaccine.”
The company will also need to produce safety and effectiveness data for the smaller dose, said Dr. Allison McGeer, an influenza expert at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital.
It is the adjuvant that worries many people as well as bad memories of past vaccines like last year’s flu shot that targeted the wrong strain of flu or more extreme the 1976 swine flu vaccine that led to an autoimmune disease that caused paralysis and death in some recipients.
It’s a tough call. Do I want to be a human guinea pig? Is this vaccine all government hype? And where does GlaxSmithKline fit into this question? Clearly the profit they will make on this vaccine will be huge. How does that impact their credibility?
I’d love to hear what others are thinking. I need to make a decision soon.
