Sentient Times Dec/Jan 06

Pandemic Pandemonium

By Moksha Mokma

For months now we have been flooded with information regarding an impending bird flue pandemic. With the torrent of information out there about bird flu virus H5N1 it is hard to know what to believe. The World Health Organization lists 116 confirmed cases with 60 deaths, definitely a frightening statistic. However, statistics without elaboration can be misleading. Not one conclusive human to human transmission has occurred. Then there is the scientist who exhumed the permafrost body of an Inuit woman to recover the 1918 Spanish Influenza from her lung tissue. Will this give us the vaccine to H5N1 as some scientists say—or, as some are now questioning, was the 1918 flu even a bird virus?

As we attempt to answer these questions, we must also consider one of the tools used by politicians, that of utilizing focus events (the occurrence of natural disasters or national disasters) to push legislation that is desired but deemed unattainable in the current political climate. In the field of political science policy makers who use focusing events to further their agenda are referred to as “policy entrepreneurs.” Paul Wolfowitz described the need for a focus event (which he referred to as a “new Pearl Harbor”) prior to the events of September 11, 2001 as being necessary if the strategic goals of the New American Century were to be achieved. Last November we heard of a White House memo being circulated that stated the need for a new event equal in magnitude to that of the events of 9/11 if the President is to regain much needed political capital. Is another military attack needed, or will a pandemic do?

Another tool used in politics is “slippery slope legislation,” which, according to author and cognitive scientist George Lakoff, is legislation that is proposed to tackle one specific issue but which has huge reverberating effects on laws and issues that seem to have no immediate connection, but have been sought by politicians for years. Often slippery slope legislation will be in response to a focus event that captures the minds of the nation, or the world.

Combine slippery slope legislation with policy entrepreneurs and you get Senate Bill S.1873, the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005. Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in a statement regarding bill S.1873 said, “I hope … that people don’t think that this [S.1873] is going to do anything to solve the problem of the possible avian flu pandemic that is on our doorstep.”

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is calling the bill “a drug company stockholder’s dream and a consumer’s worst nightmare.” Amongst other things the bill calls for the creation of a Biodefense Advanced Research and Development Agency. Under provisions in this bill BAFDA would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which legally binds agencies such as BAFDA to the advice of federal advisory committees, the only check and the only channel for our views to be represented regarding federal agency conduct. Under this bill, if they felt it was necessary, the US government could declare Marshall Law during a flu outbreak.

Additionally, Senate Bill S.1873 would make BAFDA and pharmaceutical companies exempt from litigation regarding any damages which may be caused by forced or voluntary vaccinations, destroying our seventh amendment right to seek redress in a civil court in front of a jury of our peers. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 protected drug companies and doctors from almost all lawsuits. Because of this to date there are only a handful of vaccine injury lawsuits pending in civil courts. Fortunately many citizens have become vocal in their opposition to certain provisions of this bill, specifically the immunity for the drug companies. Unfortunately Senator Bill Frist feels these provisions are important enough to ignore the people and sneak them in as riders on other bills. This is not just about vaccines, this also falls under tort reform which protects big companies from laws suits.

Senate bill S.1873 also calls for millions of vaccines (which many experts doubt will be capable of combating H5N1) to be made. According to the pharmaceutical companies these new vaccines won’t be completed until 2007, although many critics believe 2011 is a more realistic date. Congress has come up with legislation they claim will “save us” from the avian flu virus H5N1, but it appears to do more to save the pharmaceutical companies from “frivolous lawsuits” while guaranteeing large profits for companies manufacturing questionable vaccines and remedies for the current strains of influenza than it does to prevent an avian flu pandemic.

It is important to remember that an avian flu pandemic is only a possibility at this time. While 116 people appear to have been ill with avian flu these have not all been confirmed by the World Health Organization nor have they occurred anywhere outside of Asia. All of the people that have been infected are involved in the poultry business—where inadequate pay and poor living conditions create a situation where it is harder to eat properly and take care of your immune system—and/or live with poultry in their home. This means that people being infected have had prolonged exposure to sick birds, their blood, and their feces. No human to human transmission of the virus has been reported. And while the 1918 pandemic is still widely believed to have originated from a bird virus, that virus’s structure has a truly unique characteristic.

Recently Dr. Jeffery Tauben-berger, a molecular pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Technology, reconstructed the virus’s genome patterns from a sample taken from the lungs of an Inuit woman buried in permafrost and from two lung samples, sitting in formaldehyde, of soldiers who died from the 1918 virus. When compared to viruses taken from formaldehyde soaked birds at the Smithsonian that dated to the time of the Spanish Pandemic the team discovered that the 1918 virus’s chain of nucleotides that coded for the amino acids in the protein were arranged differently from those found in any other bird flu. The genetic code is flexible; there is more than one way that a group of three nucleotides can be arranged to code for the same amino acid. However, every bird flu virus ever studied used the same spellings for the hemagglutinin amino acids. Not the 1918 flu. Another unique characteristic of the 1918 virus is that when compared with today’s human flu virus, alterations occurred in 25 to 30 of the 1918 virus’s 4,400 amino acids. Dr. Taubenberger noticed that, so far, the H5N1 viruses in Asia have just a few of those changes. They do not, however, have the unusual ways of coding the amino acid instructions that the 1918 virus had.

Another remarkable finding was that the flu samples from the Smithsonian birds were identical to the bird viruses common in today’s birds, no significant evolution (mutation) has occurred in the last hundred years. There has never been a bird found with any virus similar enough to the 1918 virus to cause significant concern, only the H5N1 virus has any similar mutations and a lot more are needed to create a super flu, including the huge mutation needed to change the coding system of the amino acids. The fact that in the last century no significant mutation has occurred and that over thirty had to occur for the 1918 virus to come into form along with the unique spellings for the hemagglutinin amino acids leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Specifically, what could have caused this mutation? Bird viruses are not set up to evolve rapidly because they don’t need to. Birds only live for a couple of years so there are always new birds to infect, unlike humans who live for decades and thus have flu strains that can evolve and mutate quickly to insure their survival against the natural antibodies built up through exposure the season before.

So, are the Asian bird viruses on their way to becoming pandemic viruses, or not? Some experts, such as Dr. Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, say that the H5N1 flu virus is a false alarm. He notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 from people in rural China indicated that millions of people there had antibodies to the H5N1 strain. That means they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered, apparently without incident.

In a February 2005 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases compared flu-related mortality among older people to rates of immunization. Their finding: during the past quarter century, immunization rates for the elderly have climbed substantially while the elderly flu-related mortality rate has stayed the same. The authors of the research wrote “We conclude that observational studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit.”

Flu vaccines themselves can be dangerous—in addition to strains of dead flu virus, each shot contains Thimerosal (a mercury derivative added as a preservative), Formaldehyde (to kill viruses), Aluminum (to promote antibody response), and Ethylene glycol (also known as antifreeze, used in vaccines as a disinfectant). According to Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, FluMist nasal spray vaccine contains live viruses. Once treated with FluMist, people shed live, infective viruses for up to 3 weeks, which can spread influenza to others. She stresses that immuno-compromised people, nursing babies, people with eczema, HIV, taking steroids, chemotherapy or radiation treatment are at significant danger if they come into contact with anyone who has been inoculated with FluMist. And the live viruses in FluMist can cause mutations in the avian flu by supplying the genetic code needed to effectively transmit to humans. Because of this Dr. Laibow believes the FluMist live virus nasal inoculation could possibly assist the much feared avian flu virus to transform into the very pandemic we are being told to fear.
The H5N1 virus is serious because it depletes Vitamin C stores so quickly that the cause of death is actually fulminate scurvy. The immune system becomes overwhelmed and the blood vessels lose their structural integrity, causing them to leak so badly that infected animals bleed through the damaged vessels. Vitamin C is necessary for both immune function and vascular integrity. Allan Spreen, MD, (a panelist with the Health Sciences Institute, hsibaltimore.com) believes that vitamin C can knock out any virus—including H5N1—if enough is taken. The key word is enough. He writes “The required dose can, indeed, be huge … even upwards of 100,000 milligrams/day. During flu season, a person wanting some ‘health insurance’ would be well advised to take 2,000 mg of C (orally) 3x/day, along with alpha lipoic acid (ALA), 400-600 mg 1-2x/day. If you get flu-like symptoms, then the vitamin C should be increased to 2,000-3,000 mg per hour, up to bowel tolerance.” The first sign of diarrhea means you’ve reached the upper dosage limit. But once a flu sets in, Dr. Spreen says getting to bowel tolerance is “nearly impossible,” even with as much as 100 1-gram capsules of vitamin C in eight hours. “Often, until a certain threshold is reached (variable with both the victim, and the extent of the infection), there are no changes at all—then wham, the patient is (very) rapidly much improved. Once the virus is overwhelmed, then a far lower dose will cause diarrhea.”

The flu shot and other pharmaceutical remedies are designed to prepare the immune system to fight specific virus strains. But even better is preparing and strengthening the underlying foundation of your immune system by exercising regularly, getting a sufficient amount of sleep, and nourishing yourself with a diet rich in whole, unprocessed foods—like raw and lightly cooked garlic, and foods which are high in Vitamins C and E and chlorophyll. Foods high in beta-carotene—all of which have been shown to help fight colds and flu—can make a big difference in our immune function. Consider taking supplements as well. According to Dr. Gabriel Cousens, aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA), the cyanophyta nutritional algae that grows in Klamath Lake, significantly enhances the immune system and may be exactly what we need to fight influenza. In an interview conducted in 2000 Dr. Cousens said “A recent study showed that AFA activates up to 40% more of the immune system’s beneficial natural killer cells. Natural killer cells hunt out viruses and bacteria, even seeking them out deep in the body’s tissues.”

Fresh, green vegetables are essential for health in large part due to their high content of chlorophyll (the compound that makes plants green) which is a natural blood purifier. Chlorophyll assists our bodies in cleaning out the by-products of bacterial, fungal, yeast or viral infections which remain in the blood vessels. Our immune systems create complexes that attack these foreign substances, and chlorophyll helps activate enzymes which assist in this process. The chlorophyll content of dark greens like kale, collards, mustard greens, spinach, arugula and red leaf lettuce make them essential parts of our daily nourishment stream. Plants such as spirulina, chlorella, and wild blue-green algae also contain large amounts of chlorophyll and have been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries.

Asian mushrooms, which contain immune-enhancing complex sugars known as polysaccharides, can also help increase our resistance to bacteria and viruses. Shiitake, maitake, enoki, and oyster mushrooms may be eaten fresh or dried, and are a delicious addition to any meal.

Just because you are exposed to the flu doesn’t mean you will become ill. Viruses cause illness only when the body’s defenses are inadequate. And a strong immune system, which can prevent organisms from getting in the body, will also help limit the length and severity of symptoms.

So, get enough rest, eat whole organic foods, get plenty of fresh air and exercise—more sickness gets passed around in the winter thanks to our being indoors so much—give your body lots of vitamin C and E, beta-carotene, and AFA. Also, avoid sleeping in chicken coops in Asia, vaccines, and FluMist, and you should be safe from the avian flu virus H5N1.

Moksha Mokma is a freelance journalist and student of political science living in Ashland, Oregon. You can contact him at moktmok@hotmail.com.