The Flu Shots, They Do Nothing

Remember the panic when the Bush administration had to announce a shortage of flu shots? Democratic senators rolling off numbers of senior citizens who would die because of the "short-sightedness of this administration." Some politicians even calling for a national stockpile of vaccine and/or government control of all supplies from now on. Well, now one study is showing the flu vaccine makes no difference in reducing mortality among the elderly.

A new study based on more than three decades of U.S. data suggests that giving flu shots to the elderly has not saved any lives...A shift to vaccinating schoolchildren, the age group most likely to spread the flu virus, is advocated by colleagues of Orenstein's at Emory in a separate report to be published Tuesday in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

This proves my theorem that the most dangerous thing in a grandparent's life is really their grandchildren.