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-- on August 22, Dr. Wolfgang Wogarg, chairman of the health committee in the German parliament and European Council, warned about potential Swine Flu vaccine safety. He said Novartis' vaccine contained cancerous animal cells, and emphasized peoples' fears over the disease from being inoculated. "It is a great business for the pharmaceutical industry," he told Neuen Presse. Swine flu is not very different from conventional flu, but the vaccine can have dangerous side effects.
Lessons from the 1976 Swine Flu Outbreak
Soldiers at Fort Dix, NJ were affected. About 240 became ill. One death was reported, but the illness never spread beyond the base, so it's curious why not. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention couldn't explain why the disease was contained or how it was introduced.
More curious is the current hype over person-to-person transmission when it didn't happen in 1976. Northwestern University's Immunology Professor Robert Lamb explains that isolated swine flu cases in humans aren't uncommon. "Every year, you will find some pig farmer somewhere who gets swine flu. But it usually doesn't transmit to his family," let alone to the surrounding area or beyond.
Several years ago, Texas A & M's head of microbial and molecular pathogenesis, John Quarles, isolated a swine flu virus in a student on campus. He took samples from him and about 100 others close to him. Not a single one of them was affected, and according to Quarles: "That's pretty classic for swine flu."
In research conducted by Dr. Pascal James Imperato, dean at SUNY's School of Public Health, he reported that "the 2009 H1N1 virus was less efficiently transmitted by droplet infection (inhalation of respiratory pathogens exhaled by someone infected) in ferrets compared to the seasonal human H1N1 virus. This is a significant finding as it indicates that the 2009 swine flu virus might not be as easily transmitted between humans as its seasonal counterpart" - unless it's bioengineered to make it contagious and deadly.
Conclusion
Swine Flu is a virus-induced respiratory illness in pigs. Few succumb and die, and humans are rarely infected, except occasionally among people having direct contact with infected animals. For most who do, symptoms are generally mild. Medications and other treatments aren't essential. The illness usually lasts from two to seven days, and most patients recover well on their own.
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