Contrary to the province's slick television ad campaign, Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center in Vienna, Va., says the flu shot is not for everyone, especially expectant mothers.
People are better able to generate their own permanent antibodies.
Then, when the body is challenged with a variation, it's better able to resist it. We've already created over-resistant strains with the overuse of antibiotics. Of course you don't want to get polio or tetanus, but it's one thing to say everybody ought to get a smallpox vaccine. It's quite another to say everybody should get the flu vaccine. Fisher says the risks to expectant mothers and unborn babies remain unclear, and recommends that parents think twice.