Pneumonia Vaccine — Risky and Little Protection?

The FDA recently approved the expansion of the Prevnar pneumonia vaccine to adults 50 and older. Prevnar was originally created to fight pneumonia, meningitis, and other diseases caused by pneumococcus bacteria in children aged 6 weeks to 5 years. Previously, the only other pneumoncoccal vaccine approved for the over-50 crowd was Pneumovax. Advocates say the vaccines will lower the risk of developing pneumonia as well as hospitalizations and deaths from the disease. No so, says world-renowned neurologist Dr. Russell Blaylock.

"Not only is the vaccine not very efficient, there are 90 species of the pneumoncoccal organism that cause pneumonia and meningitis, and the best vaccine available only covers 13 of those 90," Dr. Blaylock tells Newsmax Health.

"And studies have shown that when you start immunizing against those few different strains, those other strains become the primary cause of disease," he says. "When Prevnar was first licensed in 2000, 65 percent of all pneumonia was caused by a strain that was in the vaccine. But by 2004, only 27 percent was caused by that strain, and 73 percent of all cases of disease were caused by strains that weren't included in the vaccine.

"So, the vaccine shifted the cause of pneumonia and meningitis to a strain that's not covered by the vaccine," he says. "Chances are great that the vaccine will give you no protection at all.

"A large carefully done study showed that the vaccine has no effect on any of the major reasons that are used to scare old people into getting this vaccine," says Dr. Blaylock.

"In addition to getting little or no protection, the vaccine will lower their immunity," he says. "If they get this vaccine and are also on statins — which also lower immunity — you're really interfering with their immune function."