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Doctors prescribe it freely and the public takes it obediently, without questioning. Any "disobedience" on the part of consumers shows up mainly in their efforts to buy Tamiflu without prescription, even though this is a prescription drug that comes with potentially dangerous side effects.
Governments, doctors and consumers all turn to Tamiflu as the solution to fight the current H1N1 swine flu outbreak. Yet official medical literature tells us that the effectiveness of Tamiflu is limited.
All it does is reduce flu symptoms by about one day. It's the same with Relenza, the other antiviral drug that is prescribed for the flu. Relenza, too, reduces flu symptoms by only about one day.
Considering that the typical flu patient suffers side effects for seven to 10 days, it means Tamiflu can, at best, produce a 10 to 15 percent improvement in terms of reducing symptoms. That's all there is in terms of Tamiflu effectiveness. Tamiflu does not prevent, cure or reduce the effects of the flu. It only reduces symptoms.
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Tamiflu is 'useless' Tamiflu became popular with the emergence of the avian flu in 2003. But after following World Health Organisation protocols in treating 41 victims of the H5N1 avian flu virus, Vietnamese doctor Nguyen Tuong Van, MD, who runs the intensive care unit of the Center for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi, concluded that Tamiflu is "useless". In an article in WorldNetDaily.com, Dr Nguyen Tuong Van wrote: "We place no importance on using this drug on our patients. It is really only meant for treating ordinary type A flu. It was not designed to combat H5N1..." The Vietnamese doctor did not criticize governments for stockpiling the drug but said doctors had to inform the public about its performance. The WHO confirms Dr Nhuyen's experience, admitting the antiviral drug has not been "widely successful in human patients". |
Since the current swine flu outbreak has proven to be mild, do we really know whether a patient's recovery is due to the effectiveness of Tamiflu, or whether patients are recovering on their own anyway?
What we do know for sure are the following:
So even if it is true that Tamiflu does work against the new 2009 H1N1 virus, it may not be very long before this new virus mutates into a drug resistant strain. What scientists have learned so far about the new virus is that it had mutated very very quickly.
Meanwhile, it does not help that Tamiflu is being prescribed freely. In the UK during April and May 2009, entire classes of school chilren were given the drug as a preventive measure if just one student in the class caught the flu --- even though there is nothing to indicate that the effectiveness of Tamiflu extends to flu prevention.
Fortunately, that practice has since stopped in the UK. But is it still being done elsewhere? In Singapore, a friend who is a tuition teacher tells me that many of his students were given Tamiflu at the slightest signs of the flu, regardless of whether they have the latest H1N1 flu or some other type of flu that may be Tamiflu resistant.
Such widespread prescription of Tamiflu will only speed up the development of drug-resistant viruses. I can think of a few reasons why doctors are quick to prescribe this drug:
And so, hundreds of thousands of flu patients all over the world are being given this costly, ineffective and dangerous drug, which put them at risk of serious side effects that include bizarre behaviour and suicide. All of this merely to reduce the symptoms of a mild flu, by about 10 percent.
Pneumonia
What about the risk of pneumonia -- and death -- if the patient's condition worsens? Does this not justify the use of Tamiflu?
There is no scientific evidence that Tamiflu can prevent deaths from the flu. Remember... Tamiflu has only been proven to reduce symptoms by about one day. It has never been claimed nor proven that the effectiveness of Tamiflu includes reducing flu deaths.
In fact, some health commentators even question whether medical treatment, including the use of drugs like Tamiflu, actually contribute to pneumonia and flu-related deaths.
This is because medical treatment for the flu is mainly aimed at reducing symptoms and reducing symptoms can slow down the body's immune response, since the body is "tricked" into believing that it is no longer sick. In particular, reducing high fever actually facilitates the replication and spread of viruses, since fever is the body's natural way of blocking this process.
Click here to read about how drugs like Tamiflu might cause pneumonia.
Given the limited effectiveness of Tamiflu, the side effects are not worth the risks.