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Before you decide to get a flu shot for yourself or your child, take a few minutes to look into the research on both their effectiveness and safety.

What you will find may very well impact your decision.

Case in point, new research in the Journal of Virology found that the seasonal flu vaccine may weaken children's immune systems and increase their chances of getting sick from influenza viruses not included in the vaccine.

Further, when blood samples from 27 healthy, unvaccinated children and 14 children who had received an annual flu shot were compared, the former unvaccinated group naturally built up more antibodies across a wider variety of influenza strains compared to the latter vaccinated group.

Unfortunately, the pattern with many doctors aggressively promoting vaccinations, the flu shot included, is to "shoot first" and ask questions later.

The truth is there are many unanswered questions about whether or not the flu shot is safe and effective, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends them for everyone over the age of 6 months, nonetheless. As ABC News reported, the study's lead author noted:

"Annual vaccination against influenza ... may have potential drawbacks that have previously been underappreciated and that are also a matter of debate."

Warning: All Vaccines Compromise Natural Immunity

The more vaccines are studied, the more apparent it becomes that proper vaccine studies are lacking, as vaccine expert and pediatrician Larry Palevsky explains. There is a major difference between natural acquired immunity and vaccine-induced immunity. Obtaining natural immunity has far greater benefits, but this fact seems to be completely overlooked in the United States, considering it's recommended that U.S. babies receive 26 doses of vaccines before age 1 (which, incidentally, is twice as many vaccinations as are given to babies in Sweden and Japan).

When children are born, they develop natural immunity to a large variety of microorganisms that they breathe, eat, and touch.

The immune responses initiated by cells lining their airways, skin and intestines are very important in creating "memory" and protection against the microorganisms they naturally come into contact with every day. That primary line of defense is a very important step in the maturation of your child's immune system—and it's bypassed when he/she gets a vaccine. With vaccination, you are merely creating an antibody, but as the Journal of Virology study showed, the unvaccinated children actually built up more antibodies against a wider variety of flu virus strains than the vaccinated children!

Vaccines usually do not impart long-term immunity because they don't create the kind of memory that occurs when you go through the process of a natural immune response. Natural exposure does not necessarily lead to infection—it is possible to obtain natural immunity without actually getting sick, if your immune system is functioning well. In fact, vaccines do NOT strengthen the healthy functioning of the immune system, but actually weaken it.

Past Research Shows Flu Shot May Double Your Risk of Catching Another Type of Flu

ALL vaccines are immune suppressing, meaning they affect immune function for a period of time and can make some people more susceptible to coming down with a viral or bacterial infection.. The chemicals, adjuvants, lab altered viruses and bacteria and foreign DNA/RNA from animal and human cell substrates in the vaccines may compromise immune system function and depress immunity — that is the trade-off you are risking.

The conventional belief is that it is acceptable to exchange this small overall immune suppression for immunity to one infectious disease. However, remember that this means you're trading a total immune system suppression, which is your main defense against ALL known disease — including millions of pathogens — for a temporary immunity against just one disease.

This may help explain why people who get a flu shot may actually be more likely to acquire an infection from another virus, as was shown to be the case with H1N1 (swine flu).

Back in the spring of 2009, just when the swine flu hysteria was building, a Canadian study revealed that people, who had received a regular, seasonal flu shot, were twice as likely to catch swine flu. This was initially passed off as unproven but, lo and behold, in 2010 the results of several epidemiologic investigations revealed that seasonal flu shot DID increase the risk of catching swine flu.

The four studies, which were conducted by public health agencies in Canada, involved about 2,700 people in all, and each one had the same result: if you got the seasonal flu shot, you were more likely to get the swine flu. The researchers wrote in PLoS Medicine: " ... Estimates from all four studies (which included about 1,200 laboratory-confirmed pH1N1 cases and 1,500 controls) showed that prior recipients of the 2008–09 TIV [seasonal flu shot] had approximately 1.4–2.5 times increased chances of developing pH1N1 illness that needed medical attention during the spring–summer of 2009 compared to people who had not received the TIV."

The researchers stopped short of stating that a causal relationship had been established, saying instead that there could have been unidentified factors within the groups studied that accounted for the increase. However, it is certainly plausible that the seasonal vaccine modified people's immune systems in such a way that made them less able to fight off H1N1, similar to what researchers recently reported in the Journal of Virology.

Does the Flu Shot Even Work?

You would probably think that, since the CDC states the annual flu vaccine is the "best" way to avoid catching the seasonal flu, that it has been proven to be effective. However, it is hard to find ANY valid scientific evidence to support flu vaccine effectiveness or safety — and this is particularly true for key target groups for which the CDC says the flu shot is most important, like seniors, children and pregnant women!

For instance, a large-scale, systematic review of 51 studies, published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in 2006, found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo in preventing influenza in children under two. The studies involved 260,000 children, age 6 to 23 months.

In 2010, Cochrane also reviewed the available scientific evidence that flu shots protect the elderly, and the results were abysmal. The authors concluded that:

"The available evidence is of poor quality and provides no guidance regarding the safety, efficacy or effectiveness of influenza vaccines for people aged 65 years or older."

Then there is the new study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, which reveals that the flu vaccine prevents lab confirmed type A or type B influenza in only 1.5 out of every 100 vaccinated adults ... although the media is reporting this to mean "60 percent effective," depending on how you use the statistics, the study confirmed that flu shots provide only "moderate protection" against the flu, and in some seasons protection is altogether "reduced or absent."

The risk you take for this marginal or "absent" protection can be steep.

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