Alternative flu remedies abound.
Lock the deadbolt. Seal the windows. And do not-under any circumstances-shake hands with anyone holding a Kleenex.
It's baaaaaack. Ah, influenza. We meet again.
You may remember last flu season. Hysteria ensued when a vaccine shortage ***image1***was announced. Supplies were rationed. People waited for hours to get the needle. Politicians wrung their hands in despair. Dire predictions of a catastrophic health crisis ran rampant.
Except, of course, it didn't happen.
Make no mistake, influenza is no pansy. Some 36,000 people are killed by the virus every year with 200,000 more requiring hospital treatment. But beneath the annual flu hysteria is an industry monopolized by two companies with close government ties. Chiron and Sanofi Pasteur will manufacture a vast majority of the nation's vaccination stockpile.
Sanofi Pasteur will handle about 60 million doses-of a national stockpile that may reach 100 million-this flu season. The French company has a partnership with Merck, a company embroiled in scandal, whose CEO Raymond Gilmartin has close ties to the Bush administration.
That leaves little room for alternative vaccinations. Particularly when the Center for Disease Control says there is no scientific evidence such remedies work.
Jim Klemmer begs to differ.
"We have more than 100 years of treating the flu successfully with homeopathic treatment," Klemmer says. "But those are the kind of official statements you will hear from the government and the drug companies."
Klemmer is the owner of Natural Health Supply in Santa Fe. One of Klemmer's clients is High Desert Homeopathy, a fledgling practice operated by Debra Owens and Lauren Hunt that offers an oral inoculation free of preservatives and free of charge.
"The major significance of this is that it's free, it's safe-it's completely non-toxic-and its more effective," Owens says. "Pharmaceutical vaccines are expensive, they use highly toxic preservatives and they can have very negative effects on people."
Owens says alternative medicine is frequently marginalized by the government and major drug companies focus on their own bottom line.
"There is a long history of homeopathy trying to be squashed by [organizations like] the American Medical Association," Owens says. "The pharmaceutical industry is threatened by homeopathy as a competitor."
According to the CDC, conventional vaccines-either administered with an injection or nasal spray-utilize dead or weakened strains of the flu virus that are variations on recent strains. In order to supply the demand, drug companies are forced to make an educated guess on what the top three strains of flu will be in any given flu season. Owens says that isn't the case with homeopathic vaccines.
"We use a very old strain of the virus-almost 200 years old-that works as a sort of blueprint," Owens says. "We don't need to guess, we don't need to be exact. This old strain can essentially cover any new strains that may develop based on the 'law of similars,' the primary scientific principle used in homeopathy."
Owens and Klemmer are not alone in Santa Fe in the administration of natural alternatives. The Wild Oats store on St. Francis Drive, for example, is offering a more natural, preservative-free flu vaccine to adults at $25 a pop.
The billion dollar question is, of course, does it work?
"Officially, no," Klemmer says. "Unofficially, these remedies have been effective for some people."
