{"id":16588,"date":"2017-07-20T21:26:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T11:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=16588"},"modified":"2024-06-30T05:37:07","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T19:37:07","slug":"remember-the-vaccine-tamiflu-and-the-bird-flu-scare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=16588","title":{"rendered":"Remember the Vaccine Tamiflu and the Bird-Flu Scare?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it turns out that Tamiflu was a great big con job! It does not work!<\/p>\n<div class=\"teaser\">\n<p id=\"p-1\">Important lessons from the Tamiflu story<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"p-2\">Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1999 for the treatment of uncomplicated influenza within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms. The manufacturer\u2019s press release stated that the drug was studied in two randomised trials enrolling a total of 849 patients with influenza and reported a 1.3 day mean reduction in the duration of symptoms.<span class=\"xref-bibr\">1<\/span>\u00a0The drug was described as safe, with less than 1% of patients discontinuing it because of adverse effects. It was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2002.<span class=\"xref-bibr\">2<\/span><\/p>\n<p id=\"p-3\">On the basis of these limited (and ultimately revealed as incomplete) data, governments acted. Concerned about a possible outbreak of avian influenza, as well as the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, the UK government stockpiled oseltamivir at a cost of over \u00a3600m (\u20ac680m; $770m) from 2006 to 2014. Similarly, the US government has spent over $1.5bn stockpiling the drug, based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).<span class=\"xref-bibr\">3<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/358\/bmj.j3266\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/358\/bmj.j3266<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it turns out that Tamiflu was a great big con job! It does not work! Important lessons from the Tamiflu story Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1999 for the treatment of uncomplicated influenza within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms. The manufacturer\u2019s press release stated that &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=16588\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Remember the Vaccine Tamiflu and the Bird-Flu Scare?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-health-tips","category-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51996,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16588\/revisions\/51996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}