from Jenny Thompson HSI

Our government has tried every underhanded trick in the book to get us to roll up our sleeves for the flu vaccine.

They’ve lied about how well it works. And even about your chances of catching and dying from flu. But it looks like we only understood half of what the feds were up to.

Because right now, government scientists for the National Institutes of Health are quietly working on the next flu shot monster. In fact, they just admitted that they’ve tested it on mice.

It’s called the universal flu vaccine, and just one shot is supposed to protect you for life.

But the truth is that the universal flu vaccine is just the government’s latest dangerous plot to jab every man, woman and child with a flu vaccine.

And it may even create a dangerous flu outbreak like nothing we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

They say when you’re a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.

And any time our government starts pouring research dollars into the flu vaccine, it’s with one — and only one — thought in mind.

To deny Americans the right to choose whether to get the flu shot — and to nail as many of us as possible with it.

And that’s what the universal flu vaccine the NIH is developing is all about. Instead of convincing us year after year to get the seasonal flu vaccine — which sometimes fails nine out of 10 times for seniors — the government would only have to sell us the flu shot once.

You can bet it will become part of the CDC’s vaccination schedule. And as we’ve seen in states like California, legislators can force kids and adults alike to get the shot.

The universal flu vaccine has never been about building a better mousetrap — and if the government successfully develops one, it may be the most dangerous flu vaccine we’ve ever had.

You see, a typical flu virus is shaped like a frying pan. The head frequently mutates and creates different strains, but the stem stays pretty consistent.

Right now, the seasonal flu shot tries to guess all the potential strains and mutations of the head — and it’s wrong more often than it’s right. But a universal flu vaccine is designed to help us create antibodies against just the stems.

If we can kill the stems, scientists say, we ought to be able to kill just about any flu virus.

Great idea, in theory. But in practice it may create a supercharged version of the flu virus that could be worse than just about anything we’ve seen.

The problem is, when we’re exposed to pieces of flu viruses — or things that look like something we might catch — we’re actually more likely to get sick when we come into contact with similar flu strains.

That’s called “fusion enhancing” and a study on pigs a few years ago found that the ones who were vaccinated developed the most serious cases of flu. And the same phenomenon may have been behind a massive flu outbreak in Canada in 2009.

The universal flu vaccine could practically lead to flu on steroids. And the tests on the shots haven’t been going nearly as swimmingly as researchers — and our government — would have us believe.

A universal flu vaccine was tested at Oxford a few years back, and folks who were vaccinated still got the flu. In this most recent NIH research, some of the mice who got the vaccine even died when exposed to flu strains.

And the real problem with accepting a universal vaccine means that you’re in it for life. It’s a permanent alteration of your body chemistry that you can’t undo once we better understand the dangers.

No matter what our government or the drug companies want us to think, there are only a few surefire ways to prevent the flu. And they don’t change with the times. Things like washing your hands often — especially during flu season — and loading up on immune-building supplements like selenium and vitamin D.

And these simple strategies are backed by decades of research. Not just a crackpot theory that’s being driven more by politics than science.