Is there enough evidence to support the policy of immunising people against seasonal flu?

BBC News reports the claim of an expert, Tom Jefferson, in the British Medical Journal, that there is not enough evidence to support the policy of immunising people against seasonal flu. Mr Jefferson, who works for the Cochrane Library, a body that determines the relative effectiveness of health interventions, has found that flu vaccines have "little or no effect on many influenza campaign objectives such as hospital stay, time off work, or death from influenza and its complications." He believes a re-evaluation of the evidence is urgently necessary, in view of the financial cost to the taxpayer of flu campaigns.

My own concerns about vaccines, as about other prescribed pharmaceutical medications, are about their safety and ubiquity, as well as their effectiveness or otherwise. When pharmaceutical drugs do harm patients, as they so very often do, this costs the drug companies so little financially or in any other way, that there is little to spur them into ensuring the safety of their products. See Drug firms dodge swine flu liability

You can boost your immunity by optimising your nutrition. Good nutrition has no adverse side-effects.

NHS intends Swine Flu Vaccination for the whole of the population

The Telegraph reports that the NHS is planning to vaccinate the entire nation against swine flu.

You can boost your immune system by cutting down on salt and salty food, and by avoiding dieting, because dieting lowers your resistance to infection.

Children will not be allowed to start school unless they have had the MMR jab, under controversial Labour Party proposals.

No MMR jab, no school under new plans

Extract from the Telegraph:

"Primary schools will be compelled to demand proof that pupils have had a full range of jabs – including measles, mumps and rubella – before allowing them to register.

The policy, disclosed to the Telegraph, has been drawn up by the Labour MP in charge of the party's health manifesto for the next election.

It sparked outrage last night among doctors' leaders, as the head of the British Medical Association labelled it "Stalinist" and counterproductive.

Mary Creagh, the head of Labour's manifesto group on public health, will outline her plans next week in the Fabian Review, the quarterly magazine of the Left-wing think-tank.

The current NHS programme, which immunises toddlers against MMR, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, meningitis and pneumonia, would be expanded under the scheme, adding chicken pox, flu and winter vomiting virus to the list of jabs for under-twos.

Children who had missed the vaccinations would attend mass "catch-up" sessions before school starts.

The Wakefield MP, who is an unpaid aide to Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, said: "Parents need to protect their children and science gives them a way to do that. We need to get that message across loud and clear. We want to see what the response from the public is," she said.

The ideas have yet to be discussed with the Prime Minister, who is expected to react cautiously. Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA, said forcing parents to have children immunised was "morally and ethically dubious" and would go "beyond the nanny state to a police state"."