KMPH Fox 26 Central San Joaquin Valley News Source in Fresno, California Entertainment, News, Sports and Weather | Fresno Doctor Says H1N1 Vaccine Isn’t Safe

Fresno Doctor Says H1N1 Vaccine Isn’t Safe

By: Ashley Ritchie

At Washington Union High School in Fresno, thousands lined up Monday morning to get the H1N1 vaccine.

"My daughter's going to be born in December, total flu season, so I just wanted to protect everybody," Jessica Northrup, who was getting the vaccine, said.

But not everyone is convinced the vaccine is providing more protection than it is harm.

"When I researched the vaccine, I know it made me very uncomfortable. So I chose not to give the vaccine," Dr. Marvin Matlock said.

Dr. Matlock practices internal medicine in Fresno and says he's not giving his patients the H1N1 vaccine because it contains squalene and thimerosal; two ingredients commonly found in animal vaccines.

"The ingredients were there to enhance your immune system. But the trouble is it may over enhance it where you start having auto immune disorders," Matlock said.

Disorders like fibromyalgia, lupus and multiple sclerosis, Matlock says.

"The risk of having side effects of the vaccine are probably 100-fold more than the risk of having the virus," Matlock said.

But Fresno County Health officials disagree and maintain the vaccine is perfectly safe.

"The same companies that produce the seasonal vaccine are producing the H1N1 vaccine. That's why we talk about the side affects are similar to seasonal vaccine," David Luchini, Fresno County Health Department, said.

But also raising suspicions, critics say, is the recent report of a change to the World Health Organization's definition of a pandemic by numerous news organizations.

Medical News Today reports for the past 40 years, the WHO has defined a "pandemic" as "simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous amounts of deaths and illness."

But in May, that was changed, to "pandemics can be either mild or severe in the illness and death they cause."

"To a disease epidemic that occurs when there are more cases of that disease than normal, which is the perfect definition, probably should've been the original definition," Luchini said.

But Dr. Matlock says he'll continue to not offer the vaccine, and instead focus on the seasonal flu.

"The seasonal flu kills probably 10, 20 or 30 times as many people as what this virus has done," Matlock said.

Fresno County Health officials say it's just too early to tell what kind of toll the H1N1 virus could take.

Dr. Matlock says he's very confidant in the seasonal flu vaccine and will continue to encourage his patients to get that.

He also says, so far he's treated about 150 people with the H1N1 virus and they've all recovered after a few days.

We tried to contact the World Health Organization about the definition change, but our calls were not returned.