Vaccines given to children under the age of two have the same effect as if they were given a dummy drug, he added.

Tom Jefferson, co-ordinator of the vaccines field of the highly-respected Cochrane Collaboration, called for an "urgent" re-evaluation of vaccination campaigns.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he said that, because influenza viruses mutate and vary from year to year, it was difficult for scientists to study the precise effects of vaccines.

Most studies are of poor quality, and there is little comparative evidence on the safety of the vaccines, he said.

In addition, policy makers wanted to be seen to be doing something, all of which leads to a "large gap" between policy and the evidence, he said.

The difficulty in distinguishing between flu and flu-like illness added to the confusion, with some illnesses listed as flu when they were not, he said.

Earlier this month, there were fears that vulnerable people in the UK might have to wait for flu jabs after the Government confirmed stocks would arrive late.

The jab is given to high-risk groups first, including the over-65s, people with respiratory conditions such as asthma, and those with chronic conditions such as diabetes.

The NSTDC disinfectant spray has been certified as effective at killing wide ranges of bacteria, mold and viruses, including the H1N1 virus. MTR announced it would be sprayed on all escalator handrails, Add Value machines, the buttons on ticket issuing machines and all handrails and buttons in elevators in the company's Hong Kong stations. The colloidal silver spray would also be applied to all grab poles and straps within the trains.

"Germs and diseases are most commonly transmitted through the hands," said MTS safety and quality manager George Lee. "They pick up bacteria from public surfaces, which may then be passed into our bodies if we rub our eyes, nose or mouth before washing our hands."

A spokesman for Transport for London (TfL) said London Underground is in the process of developing anti-flu measures with the UK government and other agencies, including the possibility of using NSTDC spray in tube stations.

"We are in regular contact with other metro networks from cities around the world, including MTS in Hong Kong, and we share the best practices and technological innovations. We would, of course, be interested in any measures which could be shown to be effective," the TfL spokesman said.

Consumer health advocate Mike Adams, author of "How to Beat the Bird Flu," said colloidal silver has well-documented antibacterial properties.

"It works so well against bacterial strains -- even antibiotic-resistant strains -- that it has been under constant attack in the United States by the FDA, which sees it as a threat to the profits of drug companies that manufacture prescription antibiotics," Adams said.

I asked my doctor - a specialist for this condition - how many people have ever gotten better. Answer: zero. While there's no cure, painful Botox injections through the front of the neck and into the vocal cords can stop the spasms for a few months. That weakens the muscles that otherwise spasm, but your voice is breathy and weak.

The weirdest part of this phenomenon is that speech is processed in different parts of the brain depending on the context. So people with this problem can often sing but they can't talk. In my case I could do my normal professional speaking to large crowds but I could barely whisper and grunt off stage. And most people with this condition report they have the most trouble talking on the telephone or when there is background noise. I can speak normally alone, but not around others. That makes it sound like a social anxiety problem, but it's really just a different context, because I could easily sing to those same people.

I stopped getting the Botox shots because although they allowed me to talk for a few weeks, my voice was too weak for public speaking. So at least until the fall speaking season ended, I chose to maximize my onstage voice at the expense of being able to speak in person.

My family and friends have been great. They read my lips as best they can. They lean in to hear the whispers. They guess. They put up with my six tries to say one word. And my personality is completely altered. My normal wittiness becomes slow and deliberate. And often, when it takes effort to speak a word intelligibly, the wrong word comes out because too much of my focus is on the effort of talking instead of the thinking of what to say. So a lot of the things that came out of my mouth frankly made no sense.

To state the obvious, much of life's pleasure is diminished when you can't speak. It has been tough.

But have I mentioned I'm an optimist?

Just because no one has ever gotten better from Spasmodic Dysphonia before doesn't mean I can't be the first. So every day for months and months I tried new tricks to regain my voice. I visualized speaking correctly and repeatedly told myself I could (affirmations). I used self hypnosis. I used voice therapy exercises. I spoke in higher pitches, or changing pitches. I observed when my voice worked best and when it was worst and looked for patterns. I tried speaking in foreign accents. I tried "singing" some words that were especially hard.

My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That's consistent with any expert's best guess of what's happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It's somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar - but still different enough - from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. But I'm no brain surgeon.

The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadn't considered. A poem isn't singing and it isn't regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.

I repeated it dozens of times, partly because I could. It was effortless, even though it was similar to regular speech. I enjoyed repeating it, hearing the sound of my own voice working almost flawlessly. I longed for that sound, and the memory of normal speech. Perhaps the rhyme took me back to my own childhood too. Or maybe it's just plain catchy. I enjoyed repeating it more than I should have. Then something happened.

My brain remapped.

My speech returned.

Not 100%, but close, like a car starting up on a cold winter night. And so I talked that night. A lot. And all the next day. A few times I felt my voice slipping away, so I repeated the nursery rhyme and tuned it back in. By the following night my voice was almost completely normal.

When I say my brain remapped, that's the best description I have. During the worst of my voice problems, I would know in advance that I couldn't get a word out. It was if I could feel the lack of connection between my brain and my vocal cords. But suddenly, yesterday, I felt the connection again. It wasn't just being able to speak, it was KNOWING how. The knowing returned.

I still don't know if this is permanent. But I do know that for one day I got to speak normally. And this is one of the happiest days of my life.

But enough about me. Leave me a comment telling me the happiest moment of YOUR life. Keep it brief. Only good news today. I don't want to hear anything else.

Researchers found that moderate amounts of alcohol - amounts equivalent to a couple of drinks a day for a human - improved the memories of laboratory rats.

Such a finding may have implications for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, said Matthew During, the study's senior author and a professor of molecular virology, immunology and cancer genetics at Ohio State University .

"There is some evidence suggesting that mild to moderate alcohol consumption can protect against diseases like Alzheimer's in humans," said During. "But it's not apparent how this happens."

He and his colleague, Margaret Kalev-Zylinska, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, uncovered a neuronal mechanism that may help explain the link between alcohol and improved memory.

"We saw a noticeable change on the surface of certain neurons in rats that were given alcohol," During said. "This change may have something to do with the positive effects of alcohol on memory."

The researchers presented their findings at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Atlanta.

During and Kalev-Zylinska designed a special liquid diet for the rats. One formulation included a low dose of alcohol, comparable to two or three drinks a day for a human, while the other diet included a much higher dose of alcohol, comparable to six or seven drinks a day for a human. A third group of rats was given a liquid diet without alcohol. All animals were given their respective diets daily for about four weeks.

The researchers measured the rats' blood-alcohol levels three times throughout the study. Toward the end of the study, they subjected the rats to two different memory tasks.

For the first task, the rats were given several minutes to examine two identical, square plastic objects. After a certain amount of time, a researcher replaced one of the objects with a new, round object made of glass. The researchers measured the amount of time that each rat spent checking out the new object - an indication that the animal recognizes it as a new object.

Rats given low doses of alcohol spent about three times longer examining the new object than did rats on the alcohol-free diet. Rats given the high dose of alcohol spent equivalent amounts of time checking out both objects, suggesting that they were unable to differentiate the old object from the new one.

For the second task rats were placed in a box with two chambers separated by a door. One chamber was well-lit, while the adjacent chamber was dark. After placing a rat in the well-lit chamber and then lifting the door, the researchers timed how quickly the rats entered the dark chamber (rats are nocturnal, and naturally prefer dark spaces.) Once inside the dark chamber, the rat received a mild electric shock to its feet.

The researchers repeated this same experiment 24 hours later, and kept track of how long it took the animal to enter the dark chamber. Many of the animals re-entered the dark area, yet the rats given alcohol waited anywhere from 2.5 to 4.5 times longer to enter the dark chamber than did the animals given the alcohol-free diet.

"The results suggest that both doses of alcohol moderately improved the animals' ability to remember this negative event, since they seemed hesitant to go into the dark area," During said. "It also suggests that high levels of alcohol can reinforce bad memories.

"People who drink to forget bad memories may actually be doing the opposite by reinforcing the neural circuits that control negative emotional memory," he continued.

At the end of the study, the researchers analyzed brain and liver tissue from each animal.

They found that low levels of alcohol increased the expression of a particular receptor, NR1, on the surface of neurons in a region of the brain, the hippocampus, that plays a role in memory. Researchers think that NR1 plays a role in memory and learning.

In a separate set of experiments, During and Kalev-Zylinska increased the number of NR1 receptors in another group of rats, and found that this boost improved the animals' memories to an extent similar to the improvement seen in the rats given low doses of alcohol. They also they used a new gene transfer technique to knock down the NR1 receptors in a group of rats given alcohol - alcohol had no memory-enhancing effects on these animals.

"These experiments suggest that the effect of alcohol works through the NR1 receptor, at least where memory and learning are concerned," During said.

"We didn't see any toxic effects of low-level alcohol consumption on the brain or the liver," During said. "It didn't damage neurons nor did it cause liver damage during the short study. But the higher dose of alcohol damaged both."