The government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is strongly urging Americans to get flu shots. The CDC's 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations each year on who should be vaccinated. Almost all the members of the advisory committee who make these recommendations have financial ties to the vaccine industry.

The CDC therefore must grant each member a conflict-of-interest waiver. Reports of injury and lifelong debilitating disease from vaccines abound, and are hidden or dismissed by these same officials as "unrelated."

Left unsaid, is the amazing benefit of monitoring and supplementing vitamin D levels to protect from the flu and many other debilitating conditions. Vitamin D levels can be checked via a blood test from your doctor, or you can order a home test kit from the Vitamin D Council.

One doctor from the Central Wisconsin Center, a long-term care facility, reports "our patients (who are tested and supplemented with vitamin D) were largely immune from the flu, while the flu was rampant in our staff."

You should run, not walk, away from the vaccines. Ask your doctor or naturopath to test you and your family, and prescribe a D3 supplement. P.S. A little known fact -- 60 percent of doctors do not get a flu shot.

John J. O'Donnell

Monmouth