I have expressed my opinions on the pending avian flu pandemic. My concern is that there has never been a human to human transfer of the flu, and in order for that to happen, the A5N1 virus has to mutate. We don’t know at all what that mutation will be. In most cases, from what I have read, what is fatal to one life form is not necessarily fatal to others. If the A5N1 does mutate and becomes transferable human to human, it might not be any more dangerous than the average flu. In the meantime, there has been a rush to use Tamiflu as the treatment of choice for A5N1, with the US government among others looking to stockpile Tamiflu in anticipation of the pandemic. However, I was sent this by an associate:
Two boys have died after reacting abnormally to the flu medicine Tamiflu, with one plunging to his death from a condominium and the other jumping in front of a truck, a doctor has announced.
Even though a document attached to Tamiflu warns that the drug could cause abnormal behavior or hallucinations, this is the first time that such a reaction has led to a death.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has confirmed the cause of death of at least one of the boys was the result of side-effects from the drug……
The boys had never shown any abnormal behavior before they took Tamiflu.
Besides these fatal cases, a teenage girl attempted to jump from a window two days after taking Tamiflu, but her mother managed to stop her. (Mainichi)
In Japan, no one has died of A5N1, two people have already died from Tamiflu. The implications IMO are rather serious in that the rush to respond to the panic of potential pandemic could be causing more serious repercussions than the pandemic itself might.
The CDC still advises that the risk of A5N1 is incredibly remote. Most reputable sources still advise that the human version of A5N1 is still an unknown. What I do know from professional experience is that any drug that causes hallucinogens WILL be abused. The social risks of Tamiflu IMO far outweigh the health risks of A5N1 in that it can be treated normally and is not any more fatal than any other type of serious flu.
IMO, the media needs to be a lot more responsible in balancing this avian flu scare. My fear is within the next few years the deaths from Tamiflu abuse will be more than the deaths from A5N1. The deaths of these boys in Japan need to be front page news on Fox, CNN, and all the other major media. It’s more real than the pandemic itself.
Category: Health | Tagged with a5n1, avian-flu, Health, tamiflu, tamiflu-deaths
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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 12th, 2005 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
IMO, the risk of H5N1 and its transference to humans may be less that the potential risk that it holds to birds and poultry and thus to the economies of areas where poultry is significant. Thus my interest in bird flu and the DELMARVA area.
As for the Tamiflu deaths…I wonder (and I have no proof whatsoever), if it was real product, or given the well publicized shortages, if it might have been phoney.
I have no issue concerning ourselves with the industrial and economic issues of A5N1. However, that’s not the angle ALL media is taking. They are pushing the next pandemic. There has to be some voices of reason on the internet. In many cases of late the blogosphere has countered the cumulative effect of traditional media. Hopefully this will be happen again. I have not seen the story of the boys dying in Japan on any news media in the US. I have not seen hardly any media saying what the CDC and almost all major research says, that the human version will most likely not be dangerous. What I have seen is them reporting every single human death as if it were already a pandemic. I just want balance and I’m not seeing it.
http://moonagewebdream.blogs.com/moonage_political_webream/2005/11/heres_the_headl.html
Here’s the headline:The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it’s proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California b…
UPDATE
Here’s Roche’s factsheet on Tamiflu. The only potential side effect they mention is possible nausea, which could be caused by the cold itself. This could be bigger than the tobacco witch-hunt.
Look guys and Girls
Tamiflu is an oxymoron its useless not a vaccine nor a cure and could according to the WHO alleviate symtoms.
There will be no pandemic ever it would have happened by now, and so what if 300 have died out of a world population of billions.
Sian
Important Update:
I am uncomfortable with this incredibly rapid response from the FDA. Some of these studies take years to fulfill. This study of Tamiflu is accomplished in days? There is no detail in this report. The FDA has not published their full findings yet.
Yet another question mark hits Tamiflu:
In a development health experts are calling alarming, two bird flu patients in Vietnam died after developing resistance to Tamiflu, the key drug that governments are stockpiling in case of a large-scale outbreak.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179429,00.html
Of course one of the other questions is that of counterfeit Tamiflu hitting the U.S. market in the form of supposedly “generic” Tamiflu…
WARNING: THERE IS NO GENERIC VERSION OF TAMIFLU
Customs seizes fake TamifluNation’s first haul of bogus bird flu pills traced to China
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/19/BAGGFGA9FI1.DTL
…The seizures of 51 packages marked “generic Tamiflu” began Nov. 26 and continued through last week, Roxanne Hercules, spokeswoman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, said Sunday.
“They were actually in containers that stated they were generic Tamiflu, but there is no generic Tamiflu, so that’s a pretty big tip off,” said Hercules, explaining that the local seizures are the first in the nation of a counterfeit form of the drug…
Expect more of this on the horizon…and expect “you know whose” company to try to take advantage of this situation.