By Jack Armstrong ’15

It’s flu-shot season, and many teenagers will be receiving their annual flu shot. What many do not realize, however, are the hidden risks that lay underneath each vaccine.

How effective really are they?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Overall vaccine effectiveness varies from year to year, depending upon the degree of similarity between the influenza virus strains included in the vaccine and the strain or strains that circulate during the influenza season.”

There is no guarantee getting a flu shot will protect you from this year’s flu. Even the CDC admits there may be no benefits to receiving a flu vaccination, “During years when the flu vaccine is not well matched to circulating viruses, it’s possible that no benefit from flu vaccination may be observed.”

University of Minnesota infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm and three other national flu researchers published a comprehensive flu study in 2011. Their studies show the vaccine was only “59 percent effective overall in individuals 18 to 65 years of age”. Therefore, on average, more than 40 percent of the vaccinated population will not get protection against the flu. These highly accredited studies show despite many misconceptions, that the flu vaccine does not automatically protect everyone from getting the flu by simply getting the flu shot. You may be the same, or better off, if you didn’t receive the vaccine at all.

Even more surprising, healthy teen immune systems can fight off a common flu without receiving a vaccine. Between 2004 and 2012 only 331 children under 18 died from influenza-associated causes. The risks arise when you look at the harmful ingredients in many vaccines that negatively affect a healthy teen immune system. When you receive a flu vaccine multiple strains of a predicted flu virus are introduced into the body. This along with other ingredients in a vaccine can sometimes cause unpredicted reactions in the body due to the immune system being over stimulated.

Flu vaccines contain harmful ingredients in addition to the strains of the flu that are supposed to protect against the season’s flu. After years of not listing ingredients, the CDC now lists ingredients of vaccines on its website. There are numerous neurotoxins and adjuvants, substances added to enhance the recipient’s immune response, in flu vaccines. A majority of flu vaccines contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative to prevent contamination, which contains 50 percent mercury, a known neurotoxin. Some vaccines contain up to 25mcg mercury, 250 times the EPA’s safety limit for mercury.

In addition to mercury, flu vaccines also contain other hazardous ingredients like aluminum, another heavy metal that has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

Over extended periods of exposure to these neurotoxins, such as over your lifetime, your immune system can be significantly impacted by frequent exposure from these neurotoxins. Therefore why vaccinate a healthy teen if it is not absolutely necessary?

In 1976, the Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), an autoimmune disorder that develops when a person’s own immune system attacks and damages the myelin sheath of the body’s nerves causing muscle weakness and paralysis, affected several hundred healthy people only after receiving the vaccine. There were 30 deaths. Since 1976 there have been 1,539 reported cases of GBS. This amount may seem minuscule when compared to the masses that receive the vaccine each year; however to those people their lives were changed forever; they will never be able to take back the vaccine. Every year there is a risk this could happen to anyone no matter how healthy they are.

Every season the push for flu vaccines in teenagers is extensive. Even MCPS provides numerous resources for parents and students to educate themselves on vaccines as well. However, recent research shows vaccines can do more harm than good and are not necessary for healthy active teens.

** Jack is currently a journalism student at Sherwood.