Melissa Melton
February 15, 2013

A new study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases actually claims taking antidepressants will increase vaccine effectiveness.

The two-year study compared immune responses in 40 elderly participants with major depressive disorder to 52 control subjects in regard to Merck’s Zostavax, the herpes zoster (shingles) vaccine. According to an Infectious Diseases Society of America press release:

“Depressed patients not being treated with antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) had lower cell-mediated immunity to the varicella-zoster virus—and were less able to respond to the shingles vaccine—compared with patients who were not depressed or who were depressed but were receiving treatment with antidepressants, the researchers found.”

The implications here are much more frightening, as the press release continued:


So, let’s get this straight: it isn’t the ineffectual vaccines themselves we should be concerned with, it’s the fact that, if we get depressed, we all need to take antidepressant medications in order to make our vaccines work better?

As it stands, America consumes more psychotropic drugs than any other country in the world, a fact surely not missed by pharmaceutical companies. In fact, antidepressants were recently named the nation’s number one prescription for adults aged 18-44.

Big Pharma giant Merck & Co. is currently responsible for the production of nine vaccines, including the ‘live vaccine’ Zostavax for shingles. But what’s more, while the mainstream media is readily reporting that untreated depression is hurting vaccine efficacy in the study’s wake, many forgot to mention that, of the 20 authors listed on this study, four of them work for guess who?


How Shingles Became So Prevalent

Adverts on pharmacy signs everywhere urge people to get their shingles shot right away, but this vaccine wasn’t even around until 2006. Why develop such a vaccine? Were incidences of shingles really all that common?

Both chickenpox and shingles are caused by related viruses. New York Times bestselling author and licensed physician and surgeon Dr. Joseph Mercola has written extensively on the connection between the widespread release of the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine and the 90 percent increase in reported shingles cases in the five years following it. As chickenpox is nature’s way of protecting people from contracting shingles, with so many kids walking around with weakened chickenpox strains due to vaccination, adults were no longer receiving the booster immunities the live, wild virus real chickenpox provided.

Dr. Mercola fears a shingles epidemic is now underway in America:

“All evidence points to the fact that we have traded a relatively mild illness (chickenpox), which does NOT involve complications for 99.9 percent of healthy children, for a more serious illness in our elderly (shingles) that has the potential for compromising the health of an entire population.”

The catch? Not only does shingles result in five times more hospitalizations and three times as many deaths as chickenpox, but shingles is much more costly to treat. The shingles vaccine is pricey as well at over $200 a jab. While expensive, according to the National Vaccine Information Center, the shingles shot is only 51 percent effective.

The icing on this high-priced cake?

Both the chickenpox vaccine Varivax that preceded this shingles epidemic and the shingles vaccine Zostavax that was created to accommodate it were developed by none other than guess who?


Where’s the Logic in Ineffective Vaccine = Take Antidepressants?

So, one vaccine was created and mass released, a medically expensive and dangerous health epidemic ensued, another (more expensive) vaccine was then developed to fight that, and now we have a study explaining that to make that vaccine effective, we need to take more pharmaceuticals (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors aka SSRIs, specifically)?

Sadly, it was not much of a surprise to learn four of the authors on this new “study” claiming depressed people need to take antidepressants to make their vaccines work came from the same company who manufactured said vaccine. Merck has a history of paying medical journals to advance the company’s agenda.

During a personal injury lawsuit over Merck’s multi-billion-dollar painkiller Vioxx, The New York Times reported a Merck affiliate sponsored eight issues of a medical journal between 2002 and 2005 to reprint favorable Merck articles while hiding under the guise of being an independent, peer-reviewed publication. The Legal Examiner also reported, “An April 2008 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) article reveals how Merck compensated ghostwriters, who were not doctors, to create articles for professional journals that have the potential to influence doctors and popularize drugs prescribed to the public.”

Not only does this current journal article state that antidepressants make vaccines more effective, but these people actually claim antidepressants are good for this purpose even if they don’t help the person with their depression!

SSRI drugs come with a barrage of horrible potential side effects, including fatigue, nausea, headaches, erectile dysfunction, decreased sexual desire, diarrhea, confusion, hallucinations, anxiety, agitation, mood swings, impulse-control disorder, paranoia, psychosis and hostility, not to mention the FDA requires a black box warning on antidepressants for possible increased suicidal tendencies.

Now add those side effects to the potential side effects of the shingles vaccine — headache, joint and muscle pain, fever, abnormally swollen glands, a shingles-like rash and hypersensitivity reactions including life-threatening anaphylaxis (shock).

Sounds like fun.

Antidepressant Adjuvants, Anyone?

So what now? Are pharmaceutical companies going to start adding antidepressants to vaccine shots to ensure better efficacy?

Wouldn’t be much of a stretch from what is already being considered. Scientists have recently been discussing other “designer” adjuvants including toxins, bacterial DNA and genetically engineered e. Coli bacteria to boost vaccine effectiveness as well. One such promising candidate is a cholera toxin.

Just last month, Natural News reported that a Freedom of Information Act request brought to light 30 years of secret British government documents showing vaccine schedules to be a totally contrived hoax based on covering up bad data on vaccine ineffectiveness to gain public compliance.

Apparently if you are depressed and your vaccines don’t work, there’s no need to worry; a study with a grand total of 40 elderly people taking antidepressants suggests you should be too.

(In other related news, Merck has just been slammed with a new $39 million lawsuit for consumer fraud and deceptive marketing practices…)