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Immunity to Infection
Part 4: Our immune systems also need midday sunlight (or vitamin D)
Have you ever wondered why we get flu in the winter, but not in the summer? Or why the common cold is called a 'cold'? The answer to both questions is the same: it's because we tend to get both diseases when there is little sunlight.
The flu virus is with us all year round. Yet, in spite of people crowding together in the streets, factories, offices, on buses, trains, airplanes, cruise ships, and in nursing homes and hospitals, an outbreak of flu in the summer months is so rare that it makes the news.[i] Influenza is a disease of winter.[ii] Furthermore, flu epidemics happen at the same time at the same latitude around the world, both north and south of the equator.[iii] And the reason for this is that we don't get as much sunshine in the winter as we do in summer.
If you think about it, it should be obvious that the flu and cold season is the same as the vitamin D deficiency season. Activated vitamin D, a steroid hormone, has profound effects on human immunity: it dramatically stimulates the expression of potent anti-microbial peptides, which exist in neutrophils, monocytes, natural killer cells, and in epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract where they play a major role in protecting the lung from infection; our body's innate immunity, especially the production of natural antibiotics called antimicrobial peptides, also goes up and down every year with your vitamin D levels. Volunteers inoculated with live attenuated influenza virus are more likely to develop fever in the winter; and vitamin D deficiency predisposes children to respiratory infections.[iv]
Flu vaccines don't work
In Britain, every winter, the over-65s, diabetics and those with other serious diseases among us will also be exhorted to visit their local doctor for their seasonal flu jab, because the World Health Organization (WHO) has claimed that flu vaccinations 'reduce the risk of serious complications or of death by 70 to 85%' in these groups. That claim is based on just one study which turns out to be wrong. A review of all of the studies has discovered that the flu vaccine is ineffective. Like just about every other 'health' intervention, this is expensive and doesn't work. One of the problems is that flu viruses have a nasty habit of mutating such that the flu vaccine given this year will be made from last year's flu virus, and won't work against this year's virus.
A recent study in the British journal, Lancet, concluded, 'In elderly individuals living in the community, [influenza] vaccines were not significantly effective against influenza, influenza-like illness, or pneumonia'.[v] The authors concluded that the overall effect of flu shots is 'modest' at best. The word 'modest' is a medical term that means 'not much use'.
The Canadians experimented with a flu vaccination programme which was universally free to those vaccinated, although it cost Ontario taxpayers more than C$200 million. It began in 2000. A study published in 2006, after the experiment had been running for 5 years, suggested that it appeared to have done nothing to cut the spread of influenza.[vi] Research by the University of Ottawa, published in the journal, Vaccine, concluded that not only did the per-capita flu rates in the province not fall since the programme was introduced, the average monthly numbers of flu cases actually went up. Dianne Groll, the University of Ottawa professor who led the study, said 'there has been a lot of money spent. The program was designed to reduce the incidence of flu, and this hasn't yet happened.'
Another large combined study from Italy and the USA found that flu vaccines offer no protection for the elderly. Researchers compared monthly death rates from 1970-2001, and found no change in the mortality rate of seniors, even though the over-65s have been specifically targeted for flu vaccines for nearly 20 years.[vii]
The flu vaccine's ineffectiveness also extends to younger people. Another study found that two-thirds of adults below the age of 65 still had influenza later in the season, as did a group of children over 6 years of age.[viii]
But why do the medical profession think it would be effective? Twenty years ago, Edwin Kilbourne, the grandfather of American influenza specialists, had found that 'The effect of current vaccination programs on morbidity is insignificant, and that on mortality marginal'.[ix]
Do you remember 'bird flu'? The H5N1 virus has killed a frightening 153 people out of some two billion or so in the Far East over the last 3 years. But Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer of health told us in 2006 that 750,000 Britons could die of it. And there is no flu vaccine that will stop it. Despite these facts, governments all over the world stockpiled all the Tamiflu they could get hold of, even though Roche, the company that makes Tamiflu, admits in the small print that the drug is useless against bird flu. Our government bought 14.6 million doses of the useless drug and the US government settled for 20 million doses. The Canadian health minister observed, sensibly, that it is pointless to buy a vaccine for a disease that couldn't be passed amongst humans — but the Canadian government bought lots of it anyway.
There is a downside to Tamiflu: It can cause a delirium in a vaccinated person such that they will self-harm; other serious side effects include anaphylactic shock, nausea, vomiting, bronchitis, insomnia, vertigo and skin reactions.[x]
The truth is that there is no vaccine against the H5N1 bird flu virus; however with an adequate supply of vitamin D, you can forget about bird flu and your immune system being damaged by unnatural flu jabs.
Incidentally, I get out in the sun every opportunity I get during the summer, and spend a lot of the winter off the coast of Africa, for more sun in the winter. I don't think I have ever had flu (and I have certainly never had a flu jab), and I can't remember the last time I had a cold or other infection.
The point is, of course, that our immune systems are far superior to artificial drugs – if we look after them correctly.
References
[i]. Kohn MA, et al. Three summertime outbreaks of influenza type A. J Infect Dis 1995; 172: 246-249.
[ii]. Curwen M. Excess winter mortality in England and Wales with special reference to the effects of temperature and influenza. In: Charlton J, Murphy M, eds. The Health of Adult Britain 1841-1994. London: The Stationery Office, 1997, pp. 205-216.
[iii]. Hope-Simpson RE. The role of season in the epidemiology of influenza. J Hyg 1981; 86: 35-47.
[iv]. Cannell JJ, Vieth R, Umhau JC, et al. Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. Epidemiol Infect 2006; 134: 1129-40.
[v]. Jefferson T, Rivetti D, Rivetti A, et al. Efficacy and effectiveness of influenza vaccines in elderly people: a systematic review. Lancet 2005; 366: 1165-74.
[vi]. Groll DL, Thomson DJ. Incidence of influenza in Ontario following the Universal Influenza Immunization Campaign. Vaccine 2006; 24: 5245-50.
[vii]. Rizzoa C, Viboud C, Montomoli E, et al. Influenza-related mortality in the Italian elderly: No decline associated with increasing vaccination coverage. Vaccine 2006; 24: 6468-6475.
[viii]. Jefferson T. Influenza vaccination: policy versus evidence. BMJ 2006; 333: 912-5.
[ix]. Kilbourne E. Influenza. 1987, Plenum Press, New York, p. 291.
[x]. www.fda.gov/cder/foi/label/2006/021246s021lbl.pdf
Latest update 1 August 2008
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