To the editor:

Flu season is just around the corner, and we will hear quotes from the Centers for Disease Control of 36,000 deaths from flu per year. Just a quick search of the CDC’s own Web site will provide educated consumers with the real information. Here is the actual death rate from several years: 1,806 in 2005; 1,100 in 2004; 1,792 in 2003; 727 in 2002; 257 in 2001.

Flu vaccines are not safe or effective; read the manufacturers’ package insert. Most of the flu vaccines contain 25 micrograms of thimerosal, a mercury preservative that, according to science, is toxic to tissue cells at a single nanomolar level. Giving mercury containing vaccines to any form of life is insane. But when we promote them for infants, children and pregnant women, it should be criminal.

The cries for better health care ripple through this year’s election campaigns. Maybe we should take a page from the 1950s when only a couple of vaccines were given to infants and the United States was ranked second in the world for infant mortality; today we are ranked 41st. Can you name 40 countries with better infant survival rates?

Linda Weinmaster,
Lawrence