If you are vegan, can you get a flu shot?!
Here's the question - Since flu shots are created in eggs (which is why if you're allergic to eggs you can't get a flu shot) how many vegans will still get a flu shot? And what if (like me) you are in a high risk category that is absolutely supposed to get a flu shot (I have asthma)
So I wonder how anyone else breaks down the conundrum that I'm in. (Technically I'm also required to get a flu shot for my job, so I probably will get one, but not feel very great about doing so....
Any views on alternatives to the flu shot (if any exist), vegan options, or that maybe the eggs aren't factory farmed...???
Answers: I am a strict vegetarian, and working on becoming vegan. (The only eggs I eat are from the poultry that I care for, and we don't allow them to have babies)
Here's the question - Since flu shots are created in eggs (which is why if you're allergic to eggs you can't get a flu shot) how many vegans will still get a flu shot? And what if (like me) you are in a high risk category that is absolutely supposed to get a flu shot (I have asthma)
So I wonder how anyone else breaks down the conundrum that I'm in. (Technically I'm also required to get a flu shot for my job, so I probably will get one, but not feel very great about doing so....
Any views on alternatives to the flu shot (if any exist), vegan options, or that maybe the eggs aren't factory farmed...???
If your doctor feels like you need the shot and your employment feels like you need the shot then I would get it. Why put your own health at risk? Vegans are suppossed to minimize suffering as much as possible. That means taking care of yourself. I wouldn't fret over it as much as you are.
Oh for goodness sake - this is the line of thinking that gives vegans a bad name.
Take the shot, quit screwing with your own mind and get on with life.
Contrary to some opinion, life is cheap.
Well this is a very good reason to consider the reasoning and soundness and sensibility of such a lifestyle.....
one of my friends is strict vegan and has asthma and she still get tre flu shot bc to her it could be life or death. i guess she sees it as if it for survival purposes its okay
Ok --- not trying to joke or act stupid, but...
Take some vacation time.... get exposed to the actual flu. Tough your flu out for the week or two it takes to get rid of it-- the flu shot is built to mimic the effect of having had the flu in your system and building an immunity to it.
Not the most pleasant option, but no eggs involved and you should have equal or better protection, since you will have been exposed to a current strain.
Just a thought....
Not sure if your talking about getting your chikens the shot or yourself??.
The medicine in the flu shot isn't made of animal products,or eggs, so I'm not sure what your on about. If it's a case of getting the shot so you can remain healty then I would get it and not worry about the fact that I'm a vegan.
Wow. I actually did not think about that. Well it sucks that you have to get the shot for your job, but the vegans I know don't get the flu shot because it's not common around here. Sorry I'm no help.
Well, first of all, I don't recommend getting a flu shot. If you let yourself get the flu and let your body cure it's self, you may never get the flu again. Second, I believe that anything foreign going into your body isn't good. Third, it's not about factory farmed, Vegan means nothing to do with animal, nothing!!!
So, no don't get it, even if work says get it. It's the companies that make that shot that are getting big bucks to help get you sick again. That's why I don't take any meds. Yeah, if I'm extremely sick, give me drugs, but anything other than that, I'll do without.
Don't do it, let your body work it out and you'll never get sick again!!! Seriously!
I can't fathom some of the stupid and wrong answers you've gotten. Getting the flu (1) puts you at serious risk more than people without asthma and (2) does not protect you from getting flu again, even in the same season, since there are normally both A and B strains every year. You'll only be protected against those with the same H and N subtypes as the one you've had.
If your job is in public, the decision not to take the shot increases the risk that you'll expose others. There's a moral imperative at work that you don't seem to have considered in that you may feel justified in dying to protect a part of an egg, but you hardly can ask somebody else to do so without his informed consent.
Well, I hope some of the vegan regulars will chime in on this. But, 30 minutes in, they are nowhere to be found.
The choice, as always, is yours. But a question also is, what field do you work in that requires a flu shot? Where I come from, flu shots are for the elderly and the sickly.
The flu is one of those dramatic illnesses. 95% of the people who claim to have it don't. Some people claim that every headache is a migraine. Every cold is the flu. I haven't had the flu but once in the last 30 years and I work on a commodities trading floor that's a cesspool of germs.
Unless you're elderly or particularly sickly, getting a flu shot is unneccesary.
It's not only the flu shot, it is almost every vaccine issued to newborns, children, and adults. Forced by law to take these vaccines, some vegans even went to court to try and get out of it, the judge stating "Veganism is not a religion" since only religious groups can boycott having these vaccines for jobs and school. The question you need to ask yourself, as well as many vegan parents is "Am I willing to risk the possibility of (whatever the vaccine protects against) because of these ingredients?" There are no vegan police, it is up to you to decide.
the best thing for you to do is ask your doctor.
I make these kinds of decisions based on the idea of need. I define a need as something a person literally can't live without or something absolutely required for that person to live a normal/productive life. Based on that, I doubt you literally have a need the flu shot to survive (even with asthma), but I can see where you may have a need if your job were in jeopardy over your failure to get it.
Define the word "need" to yourself. Then ask yourself if you need the flu shot.
i agree with WWD about how getting the flu once doesnt protect you from getting it again in the same season, and contrary to what some people on here think, if you are at risk (such as having asthma, like i do) your body just wont cure itself. i got the flu last year and i have never been so sick, i couldnt even pick up a glass of water myself and consequently got extremely dehydrated. it took forever to go away because of my asthma. i am also normally a strict vegan but i think i will be getting the flu shot this year. if it is going to put you in danger, or even endanger your life ( like progressing into pneumonia) i dont really think its a choice. its the same way that some vegans have to take prescription medication even tho it may have lactose or something in it. i would never consider someone a non vegan just because they have to take a medication that isnt their real choice, if they follow the life style otherwise..who am i to judge? if its about life and death then i think you have to take it. being vegan isnt about "whos more hardcore than who" its about doing the best you can to protect animals. if some people feel superior because they dont get extra complications from the flu so they dont need the flu shot then screw them. its the disease we were born with (asthma). we should all be on a united front, not bickering.
Are you talking about the flu vaccine?
That is not in keeping with vegan values, as most of the flu vaccines are strained through animal tissue, and there's no point in getting it and potentially getting sick with something you'll probably never catch in the first place.
This question is about flu jabs but actually raises the wider question of veg*ns and animal-tested drugs.
I am vegan and almost four years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I did not refuse treatment,and I won't refuse it if I have a recurrence. In the October following chemotherapy I had a flu jab, but as I'm well now I no longer have one although it has been offered.
It's easy to talk about refusing any medicines tested on animals when you have never needed life-saving treatment or had a chronic illness or a life-limiting condition such as asthma .
Nothing dies or suffers to feed or clothe me; but I don't think veganism is about this kind of purism. There are no medicines that have not been tested on animals at some time, and there are no vegan or 'natural' treatments for serious illnesses; would anyone really let themselves die for that reason?
Or as someone put it to me: If you let yourself die for your cause, they win.
You need a jab for your job as a sensible precaution to protect others; have it done and ignore any veg*n-baiters on here who say it's a cop-out or that you only take your principles as far as is convenient. Let them have their bit of fun.
Wolf-me - I don't think vegans were avoiding this issue; at 5.30am in Britain and 12.30 am in the states, I think many of them were asleep, don't you?
Veganism is not about martyrdom.
If we lived in a vegan world, we could do research without the use of animals.
Just because things are so backwards and cruel these days, it doesn't mean that compassionate people should suffer curable or treatable diseases. If we could go back in time and do things our way we would. We can't do that so we'll have to accept the fact that medicine won't be clean in our lifetime and only use it when necessary.
If I were you, I would let my body build natural defenses when it comes to common things such as the flu unless you have a special reason such as a compromised immune system.
There is an acceptable alternative to the Flu shot and that is Flu tea made by Traditional
it has the right blend of herbs to staff off the flu. But Vegetarians and Vegans rarely get the flu unless they hang out with do you know who?. It's meat eaters that get it more. Meat eaters can pass it on to Vegetarians and Vegans. An Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! Eat properly take plenty of liquids, get the proper rest, drink herbs and you'll almost never get the flu!
I'm sorry I'm not answering your question, rather, I'm asking my own. Why can't you people let a person be totally passionate about something??? Have you never committed 100% to something you believed in (like Amy is doing here)?
No such thing as a vegan.
A classic case of wanting it both ways.
Modern technology has made life too easy. So easy in fact that you can even choose to eat only certain foods.
Some hippies think animal testing is bad. Yet they don't realize they would have stood a significant chance of not having had survived childhood had it not been for the medical technology derived from it.