Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a Harvard-trained emerging diseases expert

LOL now that's slapping some serious lipstick on that pig.

Lenny boy is a dentist with an MPH and a quack to boot.

For the record I do think vaccines are becoming seen as the easy way out.

What was the best defense against communicable diseases that you'd get regardless of age, sex ect is not being applied as an easy way out for complex problems like obesity and smoking.

self-aggrandizing idiots who have no basis for their hare-brained theories, L_R.

You just described it to a t.

I posted numero uno dumb fuck.

king of pharma

I wish. Then I could drive a much nicer car. Live in a much nicer home. Use my money to lobby for you to get a mandatory, forced H1N1 vaccine. You know, all the good things in life.

Give me your honest opinion on the H1N1 swine flu shot. (I already had the other regular flu shot for this year in October.)

I'm not a clinician or an influenza expert, so this is solely a personal opinion. However, I feel it is not a bad idea to get the H1N1 vaccine if you can. I've yet to see evidence that the vaccine is dangrous and have seen evidence that it induces a high level of immunity.

Is it true that the H1N1 vaccine has already mutated since it first came out...

I can't give you a 100% answer. Nothing I've read indicates that it has mutated and I wouldn't have expected it to mutate significantly at this point in time. A virus will mutate when a selective pressure is applied. This pressure is usually in the form of wide spread immunity in the population, something we don't have yet.

and that this particular vaccine is relatively untested? Have you gotten this particular vaccine yourself? Just wondering.

Define "relatively."

The H1N1 vaccine trials are currently underway. However, they are several months old and are largely measuring the length of the immune response they induce. Safety is not an issue as this point in time as test subjects (plus many many others) have been inoculated for an extended period of time, a long enough time to expose any significant safety issues.

For your last question- no I have not gotten vaccinated yet. The vaccine are in low supply where I am at and I don't feel I should get one over someone else.

By "relatively untested" I mean the short period of time where this new H1N1 vaccine has been available for public consumption and to receive the stats back as to its effectiveness. Of course I'm not reading in-depth medical journals but merely news articles so....

The problem with influenza vaccines is you don't have the luxury of time.

Seasonal vaccines have been used for years now, so we know that the process by which the vaccines are made doesn't produce any safety problems.

Trials were started early so that the dosage and safety of this particular vaccine could be assessed. It didn't raise any red flags, so it was OKd for general use.