Injecting People With The Wrong Stuff Doesn’t Help…
January 22nd, 2010
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Vaccines are one of the greatest advances in medical science and their safety and effectiveness has never been better. Still, many refuse them due to inflated (or just plain false) claims of dangers. Because of this, it’s all the more important that vaccine producers and dispensers work to assure they don’t do anything that could add fuel to the fire.
And really, this just does not help.
School staff get insulin instead of swine flu shot
WELLESLEY, Mass. (AP) – Wellesley school officials said several staff members at an elementary school had to be taken to the hospital after being injected with insulin rather than the swine flu vaccine. Superintendent Bella Wong said no students were ever in danger at Friday’s vaccine clinic for staff at Schofield Elementary School and all the people who got the wrong shot have recovered.
Wong, in a letter to staff and parents Monday, said the insulin belonged to students with diabetes and was provided by their parents.
Wong said in the letter that the school nurse who administered the insulin to staff has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. She did not give the nurse’s name.
Obviously, making the vaccines ultra-safe is only going to go so far when the person giving the injections uses the wrong thing. I am quite astonished that this could even happen. When administering any medication a doctor, nurse or pharmacist should know to read the label and identify the medication, as opposed to just grabbing the bottle and assuming it contains what they think it does. This would seem all the more true with something that’s injected.
It may be that the school had insulin on hand in case it was needed by a diabetic student or staff member, but that still doesn’t explain how it was injected rather than vaccine. Doing this can be quite dangerous. Even a small dose of insulin in a healthy individual can cause shock coma and seizures. It was once even used this way to intentionally induce seizures, but has been abandoned as too dangerous. It can also be deadly. Luckily in this case, everyone seems to have gotten to a hospital relatively quickly. However, if someone had gotten in their car afterward and started to drive away, this could have turned into a much worse situation.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 2:21 am and is filed under Bad Science, Quackery, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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January 22nd, 2010 at 8:17 am
Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens (Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain) – Friedrich von Schiller
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January 22nd, 2010 at 8:28 pm
It has nothing to do with the safety of the vaccine, but obviously, no medicine can ever be free of the problem that someone will administer it wrong or just administer the wrong medicine. No, it does not help things. Also, aside from the issue of vaccine safety publicity, someone could have gotten killed.
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January 23rd, 2010 at 2:56 am
There is a limit to how much you can idiot proof anything. This is why nothing will ever be 100% safe. It just takes missuse to turn soemthing that is perfectly safe into deadly and this is especially true with anything in the medical field.
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January 23rd, 2010 at 8:50 am
That is quite a mixup. Good thing nobody was hurt. Hopefully it won’t be used by anti-vaxers because it’s pretty irrelevant anyway.
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January 24th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
One of my sons is diabetic. His insulin injector (because it is a purpose-built device) looks nothing like a flu shot syringe. Granted, I am no expert on the range of injection methods available. I only know what we use, but it boggles the mind to think a medical professional could confuse the two.
I recall a TV show (some years ago now and I’m sure things have improved at least somewhat) that revealed how several otherwise healthy patients were killed or cripppled for life because the doctor injected the wrong fluid into their spine. There were two vials on the tray and the doctor grabbed the wrong one. Other industries put physical blocks in place to prevent mixing things that shouldn’t be mixed e.g. the whatchamacallit just won’t fit on the snazzlefraz injector. I think the medical industry is gradually learning these lessons, but it would be interesting to hear how this mixup happened.
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January 28th, 2010 at 12:33 am
Actually, the diabetic dose was far safer than your typical “vaccine”. ( Sugar water)
How about you do some real research into vaccines and their history. Especially the maths of effectiveness.
Have YOU got any idea what is in your last shot? Flu, or whatever?
A good little read is to look around the web for “dangerous vaccinations” or the little book “don’t get stuck”.
THEN, only then talk about the procedure and hypertheory of vaccination.
Peace!
Or Else!
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