Influenza is America’s #1 Killer:  Flu Vaccine Found Least Effective for those Counting on it Most
by Mark V. Wiley

You think the flu is harmless? You’re wrong. Influenza killed nearly 60,000 Americans in just 3 months in 1996. That’s an increase of 66% over 1995’s fatalities.

And those 60,000 dead Americans are just the tip of the iceberg. Because every year, 15 million people worldwide die of this disease.

Over 5 million of those victims are children 12 and under—making it the single biggest killer of that age group. And nearly 9 million more are people over 65. Allow me to put all that into perspective...

AIDS is considered by many to be the grimmest epidemic facing the world today. Yet this disease kills nearly 10 times more people than AIDS does in any given year. In fact, influenza kills more people than AIDS, lung cancer, and heart disease combined!

And here’s a sobering thought: Every year you have a 50-50 chance of contracting this disease. In fact, you’ve probably had it before. Even many times before. Perhaps you even suffered from it last winter. And if you’re reading this letter, you obviously survived.

Whether you know it or not, more than 25% of the world’s population gets hit with the flu virus every year—that’s about 1.5 billion people! Granted, most of those 1.5 billion will get better. That much you probably expected. But more than 15 million people will not. In fact, many of them are dead within a week of first falling ill.

The Chilling Truth About the World’s Deadliest Disease
There are literally hundreds of thousands of different viral strains—each mutating and multiplying into killer bugs, some as quickly as once every 20 minutes!

That fact is chilling enough. And of course, the loss of life is the real tragedy. Among those who survive, the flu epidemic makes enough of the U.S. workforce sick each year to drain more than US$10 billion in lost wages and production from the U.S. economy! And that’s just the loss here in the U.S.

Not to mention the money Americans spend trying to beat the sniffling, sneezing, aching, wheezing, feverish symptoms of the disease—over US$2 billion every year. That’s many times more than the entire economies of some Third World nations! No wonder there are over 100 different brands of flu medicine.

Right now, all the over-the-counter flu drugs are pretty much the same. Drugs like Sudafed and Alka-Seltzer. Tylenol. Robitussin. Actifed. Dristan. Contac and TheraFlu. Dimetapp. Nyquil. These are all blockbuster drugs. Financial cash cows for some very lucky drug companies.

But not one of them actually prevents the flu. They all just treat symptoms.

At this point, let me take a stab at what you might be thinking...

You might say to yourself, “Well, current flu vaccinations do that already.” But here’s the hitch. The fact is, only 2% of the U.S. population takes advantage of flu shots. Even when the shots are given away for free! Why?

Well—even if you discount the fact that many people simply hate going to the doctor’s, and that many more would rather get sick than get a shot—even then, you have to consider that most people don’t give the flu epidemic a thought until the disease is already at their doorsteps...

Like when fellow workers start falling ill. When your kids are sent home early from school, sniffling. And by that time, going to get the shot is just too little, too late.

Besides, today’s vaccination shots don’t offer much defense against the flu. It can take more than 2 weeks for the vaccine to fully travel to the lungs—where the virus enters the blood stream—by which time you’re already bed-ridden and miserable.

Vaccines are 30% Ineffective
Dr. Richard Judelsohn, Associate Chairman of the New York State Immunization Advisory Council, recently made a shocking announcement that went largely unnoticed by the press and public health officials. According to Dr. Judelsohn, who also serves as Medical Director of the Erie County (NY) Department of Health, 30% of those vaccinated against the flu or pneumonia get no protection whatsoever from the vaccine.

The news gets worse. Among the elderly or those suffering from health conditions that weaken the immune system, the flu vaccine may be useless up to 50% of the time. Just two years ago, in the winter of 1998, deaths in the United States from pneumonia and influenza rose so high that the World Health Association officially declared an epidemic. Clearly, we cannot afford to place our trust in vaccines that are only effective half the time

Critics of the influenza vaccine have argued that because it is produced using the previous year’s flu strains, it offers limited protection against the many new strains that appear each year. But Dr. Judelsohn’s findings are actually referring to a completely different phenomenon. His research shows that 30-to-50% of those vaccinated are left unprotected because their immune systems simply fail to respond to the vaccine.

Moreover, if for whatever reason your immune system is weak or unresponsive, it may not react to the vaccine at all—failing to produce any antibodies to guard against the virus. When a live strain of the virus comes along, you remain unprotected and vulnerable and can easily be infected. It is as if you were never vaccinated at all.

If the immune system is too weak to form antibodies in response to a vaccine, you can imagine how inadequate it is to defend you against infection by the real thing. The irony is that people who are most at risk from flu and pneumonia—the elderly, the chronically ill, and the immune-impaired—are those who get the least protection from vaccine programs.

There’s no way to completely protect yourself from the viruses that cause colds and flu. At the height of the season, you are probably exposed to them every single day. So the question is: will your immune system pin that virus to the mat in an hour or two (before you feel a single symptom or have a chance to pass the bug on to someone else) or will it take 5 days… or 4 weeks?

Compounding the problem of declining immunity, the bugs themselves appear to be getting stronger and stronger. While the “common cold” used to take 7 to 10 days to run its course, physicians are now reporting widespread outbreaks of “super colds” that last three, four, or even six weeks. Rates of influenza in the U.S. are rising at alarming levels. And, perhaps most frightening, the prevalence of untreatable, drug-resistant bacteria is on the rise, thanks to decades of antibiotic overuse.

Diseases that we thought were beat long ago, such as tuberculosis, are now once again on the rise. Despite billions invested in research and development, pharmaceutical companies have been unable to produce new antibiotics fast enough to beat the rapid appearance of deadly drug-resistant bugs.

That’s Where Nature Comes In…
Whether or not you and your doctor opt for a flu vaccine this year, there is another strategy that can help bolster your immune system and heighten your natural immunity against colds, flu, and other infectious bugs this winter.

That¹s Where Nature Comes InŠ

In the midst of this burgeoning health crisis, two natural substances have emerged that may be nature¹s most potent remedies and our last hope against the tide of drug-resistant bugs.

The first is Transfer Factor, a component of colostrum that supplies the same immune-regulating compounds that first stimulate a newborn baby's immune system. Colostrum, or mother's first milk, contains the genetic and biological components that "teach" a baby's fledgling immune system how to recognize and defeat viruses, bacteria, and other invaders. How better to "re-educate" a weak or aging immune system than to return it to nature's original teacher?

Transfer Factor has been identified as the key immune-boosting ingredient of colostrum. Using a carefully controlled process, Transfer Factor is extracted from the colostrum of organically raised cows that have recently given birth. The result is a safe and effective source of the beneficial nutrients that match those found in the "first milk" of human mothers.

The second is olive leaf extract, which has been in use for 150 years as a natural way to promote immunity and to fight infection. More recently, the extract (which has been studied extensively by the Upjohn Company) has been found to be an effective natural immune booster against dozens of strains of bacteria.

Laboratory analysis shows that olive leaf extract works in several complementary ways:

• It stunts the growth of bacteria by interfering with the production of certain amino acids needed for them to thrive.
• It stimulates the immune system to attack and destroy pathogens in the blood.
• It has the ability to shut down viral replication processes.
• It inhibits the spread of bacteria by disabling the mechanism that lets them attach to the membranes of health cells.

Best of all, olive leaf extract is completely non-toxic and does not promote the development of drug-resistant strains. It is safe to use as a preventative against viral and bacterial infection and is an ideal complement to the immune-enhancing actions of Transfer Factor.