New Killer Flu Is Here—and It's Drug Resistant

by Heidi Stevenson

After years of fear-mongering about a new killer flu, with news about possible outbreaks here and there coming to nothing, the breakout of the real thing is receiving little attention. There's no media outcry, though. Why not?

This isn't a new type of influenza. It isn't the so-called bird flu. It has been created by modern medicine's dubious treatments for one type of influenza virus, called by the characteristically dull name H1N1. During the 2007-2008 influenza season in the United States, 19% of flu cases were caused by H1N1. One in five of these cases consisted of a new drug-resistant variety. Of these cases, 5 of 99 patients were hospitalized and 4 of them died⁽¹⁾.

Influenza has likely been with us since the earliest civilizations. It has swept through populations over and over, with varying degrees of harm. Anyone who has suffered through the rapid onset of influenza's attack of the respiratory system understands how severe it can be, that comparing it with a cold is like comparing war with children's bang-bang-you're-dead playacting. It has become an ongoing tool of the media, sure to produce good sales by featuring an article on the potential horrors of a new killer flu.

For all of modern medicine's efforts, what benefits have we seen? Influenza continues to strike. If treatments have prevented a 1918-like epidemic or death rate, no studies have shown documented it. It continues to mutate into new variations, so that previously-developed methods rapidly become useless. What sense is there in this approach?

Worse, these drugs carry grave risks of their own, though the carnage left in their wake is poorly documented. Tamiflu is the new blockbuster drug for prevention and treatment of influenza and the drug responsible for this new flu epidemic. Here are its known common adverse effects:

Diarrhea, Nausea, Vomiting, Abdominal Pain with Cramps, Bronchitis, Cough, Dizziness, Fatigue, Headache Disorder, Insomnia.

Feel free to go glassy-eyed over this shortened list of conditions that are considered rare:

Abnormal Hepatic Function Tests, Anaphylaxis, Anemia, Angina, Conduction Disorder of the Heart, Delirium, Diabetes Mellitus, Dyspepsia, Eczema, Epistaxis, Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage, Hemorrhagic Colitis, Hepatitis, Impaired Cognition, Pneumonia, Pseudomembranous Enterocolitis, Seizure Disorder, Skin Rash, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis, Trauma, Urticaria, and Vertigo.

Clearly, there is something very wrong with our approach to healthcare. Certainly, we want to treat illness and prevent premature death, but things have gone completely awry. Rather than studying how to achieve optimum health, modern doctors focus on so-called disease prevention and treatment, as if illness strikes out of the blue and hits people haphazardly. Any rational look at reality, though, shows this approach to be inherently flawed. We know from experience that those whose health is poor are the ones most likely to succomb to infections. They are the ones whose bodies have lost the ability to resist and fight. Yet, the medical system seems interested only in adding more toxic drugs.

Indeed, we seem to have forgotten what health is, and our doctors have certainly lost the ability to inform us. For them, the absence of a defined disease equates with health. Any reasonable person can see that's not true. How many of our children are suffering from the modern epidemics of asthma and diabetes? How many adults suffer from chronic disorders, like Crohn's disease, diabetes, cancer, liver dysfunction, heart disease, arthritis? Worse, disease seems to be defined by whether there is an existing drug treatment for it. Thus, we have previously unknown—and in reality, nonexistent—diseases like cholesterol, menopause, and plain old getting old. Our sense of what constitutes health and disease has been convoluted.

It all makes for a constant supply of funds for researchers. A constant supply of headlines for news media and talk shows. A constant supply of patients for doctors. And a river of wealth for pharmaceuticals. How much good has it actually done for people?

Statistics are hard to come by, a fact that should lead us to be suspicious. If modern medical treatments were so good, why don't we see good documentation in support? Of course, we do see bits and pieces that sound good, but the reality is far different. Subtle tricks are used to give an impression of efficacy that may not exist. As documented in Cancer—Does Early Detection Really Mean Longer Life?, the claims that early cancer detection leads to longer life are highly questionable.

Naturally enough, as is the wont of any guild, the medical world has created a complicated language to keep the lay people out by giving an image of intricacy and mystique inaccessible to any but those who have passed through the rigors of training and hazing to join the money-making club. So, of course, the journals containing reports of efficacy of various treatments are couched in terminology so arcane that the average person simply cannot understand without spending hours poring over an article with medical dictionaries and other references at hand. Even worse is that conclusions stated in studies are often not supported by the data contained in those same studies. In the medical world, it has become so bad that even doctors often complain of their inability to comprehend the very reports on which they're supposed to rely for information about efficacy of treatments they prescribe for their patients.

As we press for universal healthcare in the United States and push to reverse the American-like trend towards privatization in the United Kingdom and other European nations, we need to take a look at the entire system. Simply trying to bring this broken healthcare paradigm into universal healthcare will do little or nothing for our health. We now assume that healthcare must be rationed, but why? It's based on the idea that good health is purchased from pharmaceutical manufacturers and doctors, not something that we provide for ourselves. It's a result of focusing on naming and treating diseases, rather than studying how to develop good health. It's a symptom of a medical system that has taken control of how we view our individual roles in health, teaching us that we must hand our bodies—and, increasingly, our minds—to them on their say-so, even accepting normal states as inherently unhealthy.

We are reaching the end of the commonly-believed myth that drugs are a panacea. Instead, we're seeing the havoc they wreak: Feminization of males. Pollution of environments. New and far worse strains of viral and bacterial infections. Destruction of food quality by mass application to feed animals. The often-worse conditions they cause, and their treatment with yet more drugs. Now is the time to take a step back and look at what we've wrought. If we go forward with integrating the modern so-called healthcare system into a nationally-financed one, the results may be even worse. Let's ask basic questions, starting with why we've allowed ourselves to be so cowtowed by a medical system that's clearly creating so much havoc on our health and our world.

References: