H1N1 and fever reducers: a deadly combination

Every time I hear something about H1N1 on TV or radio, it always revolves around support for vaccination. This is the same type of vaccine that caused Guillan-Barre syndrome in some of the people who took it in the 1970s. This new version of the vaccine was barely tested before it was distributed to mass numbers of frightened citizens. Somehow we weren’t told that you shouldn’t take Tylenol when you have the flu because a little boy has now died from taking it. How many times have we given our kids Tylenol or Motrin to bring down a fever when they have the flu or after they’ve had their shots? How many times have our pediatricians recommended it?

Many people who die from H1N1-related complications are young. If you do your homework, you’ll find that children and teens who take aspirin while they have the flu are at risk for Reye’s syndrome. This disease is horrible and destroys the internal organs very quickly, with the liver and brain taking the brunt and eventually causing death. The funny thing is that I had heard of this syndrome, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was until I did some research on my own. My son’s pediatrician certainly never pointed it out. Good thing I never gave my daughter aspirin when she had the flu last year. Phew, that was close. The doctor will tell you what to give her child, but he won’t always tell you why not give her something else. Tylenol and Motrin were supposed to be okay to give our kids and now they’re not. Doctors now recommend cold baths and older techniques to reduce fever when your child has the flu. We probably should have stuck with those in the first place.

There have been many deaths in Mexico related to a combination of flu and fever reducers because patients have not been informed of the deadly effects. Japan stopped the use of NSAIDs (eg, Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, etc.) to reduce fever in children with the flu in 2000, and death rates for children with the flu have decreased. Many people with flu-related deaths between 1918 and 1919 in the US were found to have complications beyond pneumonia at the time of death that were attributed to taking aspirin. Just before the high death rates occurred, the Surgeon General and other health organizations recommended aspirin to the public. According to The British Medical Journal, antipyretics (pain relievers and fever reducers) are the cause of many flu-related deaths and people should not take any of them if they get H1N1.

The H1N1 pandemic has been haunting us for the past year and you’d think you wouldn’t have to search for this kind of information to find it. The deadly combination of flu and fever reducers should have been public knowledge long before this pandemic began. The government is so obsessed with getting this ridiculous flu shot out that it’s not paying attention to the fact that people are dying from something as simple as Tylenol and aspirin.