# 3636
Crof at Crofsblog tonight has picked up a blog by an NHS doctor, who takes an extremely dim view of the Tamiflu and vaccine initiatives being pushed by the UK government for the novel H1N1 virus.
Dr. Crippen’s blog (excerpts below) is in response to today’s story out of the Nursing Times that 30% of nurses would be unwilling to take the pandemic vaccine this fall.
Obviously there is considerable resistance, even in the medical community, to taking this vaccine. I covered that story earlier today here.
Here is Doctor Crippen’s blog entry. Follow the links to read it in its entirety.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Swine flu news : update (12) - nurses are called upon to do their "duty"
posted by Dr John Crippen at 5:21 PM
Nursing Times has carried out a survey to find out how many of their members would be prepared to have a swine-flu immunisation.
Overall 30% of survey respondents answered ‘no’ when asked if they would get immunised when the vaccine became available, compared with 37% who replied ‘yes’. A further 33% remained undecided and answered ‘maybe’.
Nursing Times
The Government’s chief Commissar for immunisations said that nurses had a “duty” to be immunised.
Nurses who opt to have the vaccine can expect to be given one of two products, both of which will require two jabs roughly three weeks apart. The majority of swine flu vaccine will be the adjuvant version manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, which contains 4mcg of antigen. The second type, manufactured by Baxter, is a whole virus vaccine containing 7.5mcg of antigen.
You can write-off Dr Crippen as a curmudgeonly old fart if you like. I have not yet prescribed Tamiflu and, frankly, I rather doubt I will. On the facts available to date, I will not be having the swine flu immunisation. Nor will my family. I will not be the only doctor taking this view. And if the government is surprised at the number of nurses who will not have the immunisation, just wait to see what happens when they offer it to doctors.
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