I try to scan every diary every day, and I don't recall seeing this topic. And I don't find it on a diary search.
One of my wingnut uncles sent around the following email today to everybody in the family:
Subject: Flu Vaccine
Why the shortage:
Almost half of the nation's flu vaccine will not be delivered this year. Chiron, a major manufacturer of flu vaccine, will not be distributing any influenza vaccine this flu season. Chiron was to make 46-48 million doses vaccine for the United States.
Chiron is a British company. Recently British health officials stopped Chiron from distributing and making the vaccine when inspectors found unsanitary conditions in the labs. Some lots of the vaccine were recalled and destroyed.
[rest below]
Why is our vaccine made in the UK and not the US? The major pharmaceutical companies in the US provided almost 90% of the nations flu vaccine at one time. They did this despite a very low profit margin for the product. Basically, they were doing us a favor.
In the late 80's a man from North Carolina who had received the vaccine got the flu. The strain he caught was one of the strains in that years vaccine made by a US company.
What did he do? He sued and he won. He was awarded almost $5 million!
After that case was appealed and lost, most US pharmaceutical companies stopped making the vaccine. The liability outweighed the profit margin.
Since UK and Canadian laws prohibit such frivolous law suits UK and Canadian companies began selling the vaccine in the US.
By the way...the lawyer that represented the man in the flu shot law suit was a young ambulance chaser by the name of John Edwards.
*
And here is the blast I fired back, which is probably going to attract shotgun blasts of rock salt or worse at the next family get together:
Dear [relative]:
Just this morning I was telling [my wife[, "I still can't believe how dumb some Republicans are. They're sending around this lie about John Edwards being behind the flu vaccine shortage."
So sure enough, you show up the same day, passing along the slime.
Every part of the story is a lie. That is what Republicans do. LIE! No interest in truth. No respect for justice. Just hatred and lies. -- And it's all the worse because it comes draped in the flag and covered with the cross and stinking of hypocisy and fascism.
This particular lie is debunked all over the Internet. It's false on its face, because obviously nobody every got millions in damage for getting the flu. It's not my duty to debunk a lie. It's your duty to be responsible before sending it around. But see:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/flushot.asp . (This is the best of several "urban legends" sites.)
By the way, Chiron is not a British or French company. It's a U.S. company.
Incidentally, these "urban legend" emails all have the same feel about them. You should be able to spot them immediately by now. . . .
**
There's a long history of controversy that precedes this exchange. Lots of the wingnuts in my family are solid family people, well educated, solidly middle class, and I think they think this kind of thing is kind of funny. I wish I could detach better, but I don't see this as funny at all. I have no doubt that there will be a few miserable elderly people who will not vote for Kerry just because they blame the "demoncrats" for messing up their flu vaccine.
Sorry, but I just want to vent on this. I've been steaming about this all day. Two days ago I spent almost an hour patiently and lovingly trying to refute the previous such attack with lots of reason and good sense, all of which was ignored, and the above is what I got back.
That ABC executive recently who said that we must stop acting like there is equal weight on both sides of every story. God almighty, he was speaking the truth!