‘No forced shots!” Controversy erupts over swine flu vaccine
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
10/16/09 3:30 PM EDT
A state Supreme Court judge in New York issued a restraining order Friday barring the first state in the nation to require swine flu vaccinations for all health care workers from implementing the statewide mandate after hundreds protested in Albany shouting “No forced shots!”
A group of New York medical professionals have also filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, requesting an emergency restraining order against the U.S. Food & Drug Administration based on allegations that the FDA’s hasty licensing of four A/H1N1 vaccines on Sept. 15 violated federal law.
The lawsuit, filed Oct. 9 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of physician Rima Laibow, MD, dietician Gary Null, PhD, nurse Suzanne Field, RN, and other New York health care workers, charges that the FDA used its Emergency Use Authorization powers to illegally approve vaccines that have not been tested for either safety or effectiveness.
“Since one of the vaccines approved (and the first one that the government is making available to the public) is a ‘live virus’ nasal mist vaccine, made with a virus declared by both the government and the World Health Organization to be a ‘novel virus’ with pandemic potential, this particular Vaccine poses an immediate risk of irreparable harm,” the complaint charges. To date, there are no published, peer-review scientific studies or clinical trials demonstrating that the swine flu vaccines licensed by the FDA were ever tested for safety.
In addition, the inactivated vaccines will be mixed at injection sites with unspecified adjuvants - pharmacological agents added to increase a drug’s effectiveness - including squalene, which has triggered massive autoimmune responses and even paralysis in laboratory animals and has never been approved for use in an FDA-approved drug, the lawsuit charges.
Nevertheless, the FDA has purchased 40 million doses of swine flu vaccine and nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of injectible squalene adjuvants to be administered at 90,000 locations, including schools, hospitals and nursing homes, according to the lawsuit.
James Turner, one of the D.C. attorneys representing the plaintiffs, helped stop the administration of a swine flu vaccine in 1976 after thousands of Americans suffered adverse reactions, including Guillain-Barré syndrome paralysis and death.
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