Are U.S. Health Experts Inflating Flu Statistics?
FRIDAY, Dec. 9 (HealthDay News) — A Harvard grad student is charging that the U.S. government is hyping the threat of the annual (non-avian) strains of influenza. Specifically, Peter Doshi says, the estimate of 36,000 flu-related deaths a year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is unsupported by the available data. And, he suspects, the numbers may be inflated to help drug companies sell more flu vaccine. It’s a familiar charge — a quick scan of the Internet turns up several Web sites claiming much the same thing — and like many others who make the claim, Doshi is not a medical expert. He’s a student in Harvard’s department of East Asian studies. But he presents his charges with one notable difference: They appear in the form of an article published in this week’s issue of the prestigious British Medical Journal. In his one-page article, Doshi lauded the BMJ’s “system of open discussion and open debate through their on-line bulletin board … a very democratic form of
