The Last Word On Nothing

Last fall, ninth-grader Jordan McFarland received a jab of seasonal flu vaccine and the vaccine to prevent pandemic H1N1 virus. The next day, he got a bad headache and the chills. His muscles began to spasm and shake. He couldn’t walk. One of the people working at Jordan’s after-school daycare called 911. He was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a rare disorder that occurs when the body’s immune system attacks nerve cells.

In the US, about 3,000 to 6,000 people contract GBS each year. No one knows exactly what causes the illness, but infections appear to play some role. In Jordan’s case, his parents blame the vaccine. “There is no doubt in my mind that Jordan got GBS from his swine flu shot,” said Arlene Connin, Jordan’s stepmother.

And who could blame Connin? Less than 24 hours after receiving a flu shot, Jordan was writhing around on a hospital bed, unable to control his muscles. “It was so shocking and scary for everyone, because we didn’t know what was going on,” she said. But Connin had one more reason to suspect a link.

In 1976, a handful of army recruits came down with the flu at Fort Dix. Laboratory work showed that they carried a strain of swine flu similar to the virus that killed an estimated 50 million people in 1918. To avoid another pandemic, then President Gerald Ford launched a massive campaign to vaccinate the entire country. Just a couple of months after the campaign began, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention halted it after evidence surfaced that the vaccine increased the risk of contracting Guillain-Barré. Out of the 48 million people vaccinated, 532 patients contracted the disorder soon after receiving the jab. That’s about 10 excess cases per million people. To make matters worse, the feared swine flu pandemic never materialized.

That experience—some have called it a fiasco—left a lasting mark on the country. So it was no surprise when, last year, the vaccine against H1N1 sparked renewed fears about Guillain-Barré. Jordan was one of the first people to develop the sometimes-fatal illness after being vaccinated. Did the vaccine cause his illness? Frustratingly, we may never know.

Today’s flu vaccines appear to be safe. A preliminary report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June suggests that there were 0.8 excess cases of Guillain-Barré for every million H1N1 vaccinations, comparable to the risk associated with the seasonal flu vaccine. That’s far lower than the risk of dying from the flu (9.7 per million) or of having to be hospitalized due to flu-related symptoms (222 per million).

Stories like Jordan’s can be terrifying. Personal anecdotes are so much more powerful than statistics. But when it comes time to make decisions about your health, you have to weigh the risks and benefits. The flu vaccine may lead to a few cases of Guillain-Barré, but how many lives has it saved?

So what are you waiting for? Go get your flu shot!

[Note: At least one man – Leonard Kurland – thinks that the 1976  “outbreak” of Guillain-Barré may not have been real. Once the link between GBS and the swine flu vaccine became public, Kurland argued, doctors were much more likely to diagnose people with muscle weakness and tingling with GBS if they had been vaccinated and much less likely if they had not. Gina Kolata outlines his argument in the fascinating book Flu.]

photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

**

Update: Some of you may be wondering how Jordan is doing today. I contacted Arlene Connin, Jordan’s stepmom, to find out. This is what she had to say:

Thanks for asking. Yes, soon it will have been 1 year since getting the shot Nov 5th. He’s all better now and active again. He’ll be playing basketball for school this year and we won’t be getting shots. I was happy that all our interviews got the information out there so people could make a more informed choice. We got so much correspondence from people all over the country that have gone through this or have more questions about what happened. So far no long-term side effects have been noted.