Side by Side Homeopathy - Hpathy Ezine, November, 2015 | Clinical Cases • Homeopathy Papers • Materia Medica

Homeopath Elena Cecchetto reports on her experiences using homeopathy in a community of homeless and substance addicted people. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of homeopathy in situations where there is extreme need but there are very few resources.

Introduction:

I went to school at Vancouver Homeopathic Academy with Murray Feldman graduating in 2007. When I was in my fourth year of school, I did a project on using homeopathy for substance misuse. This work was inspired by the troubles my partner at the time was going through. I was asked by a woman who worked for the Portland Hotel Society if I would be interested in doing that kind of work for the people in Vancouver’s DownTown EastSide (DTES).

The area is known as a downtown Vancouver area covering a few block radius where the police turn a blind eye to drugs being used and dealt very openly. It’s a very densely populated area where there are many marginalized, homeless and substance addicted people.

Portland Hotel Society (PHS) is a Canadian non-profit society created in 1993 to provide advocacy, housing and various services for the marginalized citizens of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It had approximately 451 staff and supports, 1,153 rooms (AKA SROs-Single Residency Occupancy hotels – old hotels that are used as living spaces in the DTES). PHS is also famous for opening North America’s first legal supervised-injection site called INSITE.

PHS began by converting old local hotels to housing for homeless people and named the first one after the American city of Portland, Oregon due to its reputation for aiding homeless people.

Once I graduated I put in a proposal to the executive director but it didn’t go forward at that time. Less than a year later, I was working with a homeopath who also held a ‘doctor’ title before his name and I told him he should give it a try. We were able to get on the PHS’s good side and were allowed to offer homeopathy to their clients. Then a group of more than 20 homeopaths started the non-profit group called Side by Side Homeopathy back in 2008 to volunteer with the marginalized populations of Vancouver in the DTES.

We now have three ‘pods’ (different DTES PHS locations) that we send our homeopaths to. Each pod gets a team of two homeopaths one half day weekly or every second week.

At the POD that I work at (ONSITE which is above the injection site called INSITE) we’ve been consistently seeing approximately 200 people per year. There, we are using homeopathy for acute and chronic trauma, PTSD, constipation, digestive concerns (and other detox-like symptoms), anxiety/restlessness, anger/irritability, grief/loss, insomnia, liver problems and acute and chronic pain.

Case Examples:

(Excerpts from Materia Medica are taken from Vermeulen’s Synoptic unless otherwise noted.)

This was one of our very first clients and we were being observed by the social worker staff member of PHS to see what it was we were going to actually do. Along with another homeopath I started asking some questions of our first client. She’s was an obese, elderly woman hooked up to an oxygen machine because she suffered from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Crack was her drug of choice and it sends her into panic attacks. Neither of us had seen a client this fragile with such a deep chronic illness as COPD in our regular private practice. Luckily she described to us what she needed and what she felt like during those panic attacks. “I Couldn’t breathe – felt like I wasn’t getting enough air”. We could see in that she was slouched. I thought she was going to slip down out of her wheelchair. She looked clammy, grey and like she was trying to use the least energy to exist. After hearing her tell us that she needed to have the window open no matter how cold it is in the room or outside – that she wanted the air blown directly on her face, we just turned and looked at each other and it was decided… Find The Carbo Veg!

CARBO-VEG Allen’s KEYNOTEs:

-desire to be fanned (air on her face)

-Hippocratic pallor (grey clammy look)

-craves things that do themselves harm (her drug of choice gives her panic attacks)

THE STATES

When I was doing my project in the fourth year, I theorized that it would be relatively easy to do homeopathy for that population. I had watched documentaries on addictions and on the DTES and saw some very distinct characters and characteristics. Mainly the impression I got is that there is that raw state – the uncompensated state – they are who they are – been through so much – they have no energy for keeping up pretenses or ‘compensating’. Some of this is true. At ONSITE, the POD that I volunteer at, most of the people that we see are fresh off injectibles as their drugs of choice.

Prescribing on ‘THE STATE’ fresh from detoxing from various injectibles…

1. ACUTE / IN AGITATION

Everything is very immediate and sudden. There is a lot of restlessness, nervousness, they are very tense, they have a very wide eye response with a feeling of imminent danger/threat to someone/something. Distrust is common.

REMEDIES

– aconite, arnica, arsenicum, carb-v, opium, nux-v, ign, liver rxs, stram, gels,

Aconite:

Great fear, anxiety and worry accompany every ailment, however trivial. Forebodings and fears. Delirium characterised by unhappiness, worry, fear, raving, rarely unconsciousness. Fears death, but believes that he will soon die; predicts the day. Fears the future, crowds, crossing busy streets; of touching others passing by; fear of loss of reason. Restlessness, tossing about. Tendency to start. Imagination acute, clairvoyance.

  • Stupefaction alternating with restlessness
  • self soothing mechanism for substance users

Nux Vom: (Agitated)

  • Fastidious, ambitious, irritable, malicious, violent, hurried.
  • Worse Early morning [unrefreshed, irritable, depressed, pains].
  • Very chilly. Pains better heat.
  • Craving for stimulants.
  • Cramped states.
  • Strong urge; ineffectual urging; feeling as if not finished. Pains and urging for stool.

2. NUMBED

Everything seems unreal, there is a pronounced lack of reaction, there is an element of escapism, heroic efforts, ANGER (reserved).

REMEDIES

opium, the solonaceaes (belladonna, hyos, helleborous), staphysagria, phos-ac, natrums

 

Phos Acid:

Emaciation with suffering expression and sunken eyes. Twitching here and there, agg. lower limbs. Epilepsy. Discomfort after eating, with anxiety. Dullness of head and limbs as after intoxication or loss of sleep. Think of them as burning through or burnt out.

 

Nitric Acid:

Pains: sticking, pricking as from splinters; suddenly appearing and disappearing; Sensation: of a band around head, around the bones. broken – down constitutions. After continued loss of sleep, long – lasting anxiety; over – exertion of mind and body from nursing the sick; anguish from the loss of his dearest friend; indifference; tired of life;

 

Opium/Papa (Numbed)

  • Withdrawal, especially after emotional or physical shocks [fright, shame, sight of an accident, reproaches, head injury, surgery].
  • Unaffected by external impressions; or boldness and fearlessness.
  • Snoring respiration.
  • Worse Heat; better cold.
  • All secretions suppressed [ie. constipation], except perspiration.
  • No pain.

Needs stimulants (coffee, alcohol, heroin

 

3.CHRONIC SUFFERER

Trauma (discrimination), abuse, injuries, ANGER (expressed or reserved).

The state has a stronger hold on them. It is more complex and a deeper part of them at this point.

REMEDIES

  • alum, natrums, the lacs, ANGER (EXPRESSED), androc, latrodrectus, some snake remedies.

 

Chief Complaints (agitated and/or numbed) Matching to… the Homeopathic Remedies’ state.

 

Treating the Drugs’ States:

  • methadone
  • Suboxone
  • Clonazepam (benzo)
  • Xanax
  • Respiradone
  • Trazedone
  • Prozac
  • Divalproacz (was for seizures, bipolar (epival)
  • zoplaclone

 

Numbed states, joint pains, nightmares, foggy head, tired feeling, OR nervous/jittery feeling, constipation, diarrhea, other digestive complaints…

 

DIGESTIVE COMPLAINTS

  • Nux vom (agitated) impatient, irritable, hurried
  • Opium (numb)
  • Sulphur

Agitated. hurried. Sharp pains. extreme. Burps and tastes of sulphur. Can’t eat. Needs to lie down. Lying down helps. Sharp cramps in right side. Two hours after eating. Quickly. Pain, burping & gas. Worse from dairy. Takes lactaid but it doesn’t help. Sulphur 30C single dry dose followed by Sulphur 6X in RSB every second day for two weeks. Follow up after two weeks. Less indigestion, haven’t been burping, no burps, stomach not cramping anymore. Just better generally. Sleep is great.

 

ACUTE AND CHRONIC PAIN

ACUTECHRONIC

ArnicaArnica

Rhus toxCamphor

BryoniaCrot casc

Methadone

 

A case example of Crot Casc for agitated/restlessness and pain in the ribs (hernia).

 

CASE: “Constant. Like a knot. Size of an egg”. He broke his leg in 5 places. “Head injury. Sucker punched. Never saw it coming. Spit out teeth. ‘took it like a champ’.” He has a heart murmur. Is on methadone. Has constipation and sleep problems. So we give Arnica and some methadone 6C in RSB daily. Follow up – he has had a heart attack. Feeling better than before the heart attack. He had felt like it was heart burn. Burning & squeezing feeling. Wants to quit smoking. He talks about nasty dreams. Violent dreams. Flying dreams. Colours in his dreams. Green. It is about people being two faced and about being lied to. There is a duality within him where he is joking with us but also very serious. He is loquacious and he is flirting with us.

We give crot casc 220C dry doses.

More - to be posted... in future posts.

https://hpathy.com/materia-medica/side-side-homeopathy/

I would also love to see Ananda More's film about homeopathy in Vancouver

See her succinct article here. It fills my heart with good stuff.

Attack of the Killer Pseudoskeptics

I’ve hit that rite of passage – that thorn in the side of every homeopath in the public eye.  When anonymous, self-proclaimed skeptics start to harass you with email, Twitter, and Facebook posts that refer to poorly-designed studies in order to prove that homeopathy doesn’t work. These people are demonstrating blatant hypocrisy when they use cherry-picked, fundamentally flawed studies to support their unscientific perspectives while simultaneously accusing homeopaths of the same.  If the same standards or faulty methods were used to study pharmaceutical medicine, we would find very few medications that could be termed evidence-based!

What do I use the term “pseudoskeptic”? Well, first, because they love to use the word “pseudoscience” as a derogatory umbrella term for any research whose results don’t fit into their limited paradigm. Second, because a real skeptic is someone who critically analyzes the data from both sides with an open mind, a true scientist unprejudiced to finding the unexpected. Pseudoskeptics pretend to genuinely have an open mind in order to hide their actual agenda of ridiculing and discrediting. They fail to apply the same critical eye to research that defends the orthodox perspective.

So the most recent link I’ve been receiving and have seen on social media is the following:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/homeopathy-therapeutic-dead-end-systematic-review-no-evidence-it-works-a6884356.html

The above article refers to a study published by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. Now before I pass you to the experts and their explanations as to why this study is fatally inadequate, I would like to quietly point out that the study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal – mirroring the skeptics’ favourite line of attack when it comes to homeopathic studies.

I would like to raise the question as to why studies like the one above receive so much media attention, while peer-reviewed, quality studies that have a positive outcome for homeopathy are completely ignored by mainstream media? For example, how many of you non-homeopaths out there are familiar withDr. Robert Mathie’s systematic review of individualized homeopathy – the only meta-analysis of homeopathy to consider model validity in its study design? This means that he only included studies in which homeopathy is studied in the way homeopaths actually practice in the real world. No other meta-analysis has done that!

Now let’s listen to what the folks at the Homeopathic Research Institute have to say about the NHMRC’s systematic review of homeopathy (read in blue). You can read their extensive concerns about the study here.

We maintain that the conclusions of the NHMRC report are inconsistent with the evidence.

The inaccuracy of the NHMRCs conclusions stem primarily from one fundamental flaw at the heart of this report – the NHMRC reviewers considered the results of all trials for one condition together as a whole, even though the individual trials were assessing very different types of homeopathic treatment.

To illustrate this flaw, the NHMRC reviewers asked, “Is homeopathy effective for condition A?’, working from the premise that a positive trial showing that one homeopathic treatment is effective is somehow negated by a negative trial which shows that a completely different homeopathic treatment for that same condition is ineffective. This is a bizarre and unprecedented way of assessing scientific evidence. In conventional research the question asked would be, “Is treatment X effective for condition A?”, not “Is conventional medicine effective for condition A?” based on combining the results of all drug trials together. Some treatments work, some don’t. The whole point of medical research is to establish which treatments are useful and which are of no value. This is no different in homeopathy.

So, this is like saying, Let’s see if pharmaceutical medicine is good for headaches. In my hypothetical systematic review we’ll examine a study that shows NSAIDs work for headaches, then look at another study that shows blood pressure medication doesn’t, and another study that says statin medicines don’t help headaches. I then conclude that pharmaceutical medicine is not effective for treating headaches.

Secondly, we are deeply perplexed as to the reasons for the exclusion of some of the best evidence for key clinical conditions. In brief:

  • Jacobs et al performed meta-analysis a meta-analysis of the treatment of childhood diarrhea using homeopathy in 2003, N=242 in placebo controlled trials, p-value = 0.008. This meta-analysis was excluded … why? [Link]
  • Wiesenauer & Lüdtke conducted a meta-analysis into the treatment of hayfever in 1996, N=752 in placebo controlled RCTs, p-value <0.0001. This meta-analysis was excluded. Again we ask ourselves why? [Link]
  • Schneider et al conducted a meta-analysis of non-inferiority trials of homeopathy compared to usual care for the treatment of vertigo, N=1388, non-inferiority was clearly demonstrated. Again excluded, again why? [Link]

Now let’s hear Dana Ullman’s critique of the study’s parameters. Dana is referring to a BMJ blog entry foundhere:

What this BMJ article conveniently failed to report and what the Australian government’s press material failed to acknowledge was that ANY study that with less than 150 subjects was deemed “inadequate” by this report, and thus, the dozens of studies that have shown the efficacy of homeopathy in treating many ailments were totally thrown out and ignored, including many “high quality” randomized double-blind, placebo controlled trials that have been published in The Lancet, BMJ, Cancer, Pediatrics, Chest, Rheumatology, Pediatrics Infectious Disease Journal, British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, European Journal of Pediatrics, and many others!

 

Further, unless there were at least three studies conducted by three separate groups of researchers, with each study having over 150 subjects, the results were deemed to be “unreliable.”

 

By not acknowledging these arbitrary guidelines, the BMJ and the Australian government are showing “bad faith” and are purposefully seeking to misinform the medical community and the general public.

 

Based on these definitions of what “adequate” and “reliable” research, the vast majority of conventional drugs on the market today would also be deemed to be INEFFECTIVE and UNPROVEN.

 

In fact, when the BMJ’s “Clinical Evidence” analyzed common medical treatments to evaluate which are supported by sufficient reliable evidence, they reviewed approximately 3,000 treatments and found only 11% were found to be beneficial (1). It should be noted and emphasized that the BMJ deemed 20 subjects to be a more reasonable guideline (2). If using the similar guidelines as the Australian government, only between 1% and 5% of medical treatments would be deemed to be “effective,” and virtually every surgical procedure would be consider “unproven.” Is Glasziou or the BMJ asserting that virtually all of medical treatment and surgical procedure be deemed unproven and ineffective? If not, then why use unrealistic and arbitrary guidelines for evaluating homeopathy? Are some extremely serious biases in evidence here instead of good science?

 

Also, Paul Glasziou doesn’t seem to understand the real implications of his assertion that any study that has a P-value of .05 would suggest that this treatment had a 5% chance of occurring by sheer random chance. Based on the BMJ’s review of clinical research in the entire field of medicine having less than 5% efficacy, it could easily be assumed that many of these studies may have happened by chance, thereby suggesting that there is virtually no evidence for the entire field of medical treatment.

 

For the record, Dr. Glasziou has conveniently ignored the many studies testing homeopathic treatment that has significantly better than a p-value of .05. Chest published a study on the homeopathic treatment of people with COPD with a p-value of 0.0001 (3). David Reilly and his team at the University of Glasgow conducted a series of four studies on patients with various types of respiratory allergies, two of which were published in the BMJ and one in the Lancet. Although their studies included over 200 patients, no single study included more than 150 patients, and therefore, ALL of the evidence from these high-quality trials were completely ignored, even though a review of the four trials found a p-value of 0.0007 (4). Even an editorial reviewing Reilly’s research has acknowledged that it is highly unlikely that these results are due to random happenstance (5).

 

Or wasn’t it convenient that the Australian government’s report ignored a study on the homeopathic treatment of people with pancreatic cancer that showed that 39% of patients with this extremely serious chronic illness survived five years (6), even though no other study has ever found a five-year survival rate of greater than 1%. For the record, this study was not even considered by Dr. Glasziou’s report because it reviewed only 44 patients and was not a placebo-controlled trial, and yet, I challenge Dr. Glasziou or anyone to report results anywhere that can be comparable.

 

Courts of law do not determine guilty or innocence only based on double-blind or placebo controlled trials. They report on all evidence.

 

References:

 

(1) What conclusions have Clinical Evidence drawn about what works, what doesn’t based on randomised controlled trial evidence? BMJ, 2015. 

 

(2) Nuts, bolts, and tiny little screws: how Clinical Evidence works. BMJ, 2015.

 

(3) Frass, M, Dielacher, C, Linkesch, M, et al. Influence of potassium dichromate on tracheal secretions in critically ill patients, Chest, March, 2005;127:936-941. 

 

(4) Taylor, MA, Reilly, D, Llewellyn-Jones, RH, et al., Randomised controlled trial of homoeopathy versus placebo in perennial allergic rhinitis with overview of four trial Series, BMJ, August 19, 2000, 321:471-476. 

 

(5) This week in the BMJ. Homoeopathic dilutions may be better than placebo. BMJ 2000;321:0.

 

(6) Chatterjee A, Biswas J, Chatterjee A, Bhattacharya S, Mukhopadhyay B, Mandal S. Psorinum therapy in treating stomach, gall bladder, pancreatic, and liver cancers: a prospective clinical study. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2011;2011:724743. An abstract of the above study was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology

I tried to shorten Dana’s comments, but I found it all pretty relevant. So, in conclusion – you have to take everything from the pseudoskeptics with a grain of salt. The only way to sift through all the nonsense is to be able to identify what makes for good science and what makes for scientism. Unfortunately, with all of their convenient omissions, obfuscations, and failure to comprehend basic statistical principals, they don’t make that very easy.

Ananda

http://magicpillsmovie.com/pseudo-skeptics/

Just One Drop - the story behind the homeopathy controversy by Health Action Network Society (HANS)

Just One Drop - In Vancouver, October 17th, 2017

by Health Action Network Society (HANS)

Description

Part of the Health Action Film Series, JUST ONE DROP tells the little known story of homeopathy: the most controversial system of medicine. To many, homeopathy seems implausible. They fear it is purely a placebo effect or worse, a form of deception or quackery. Yet, homeopathy has been around for over 200 years and is used by millions of people around the world. The film explores the controversy, reveals the rich history, dispels myths and misconceptions, and asks whether or not homeopathy been given a fair shake.

Panel discussion to follow screening.

The Just One Drop trailer may be viewed here.

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/just-one-drop-the-story-behind-the-homeopathy-controversy-tickets-37436307002

 

 

Homeopathic Medicine Controversial Medicine

Shingles Natural Remedies

Cheap and Natural Quick Solutions here

Shingles is a painful skin rash . It is caused by the varicella zoster virus. Shingles usually appears in a band, a strip, or a small area on one side of the face or body. It is also called herpes zoster.

Shingles is most common in older adults and people who have weak immune systems because of stress, injury, certain medicines, or other reasons. Most people who get shingles will get better and will not get it again. But it is possible to get shingles more than once.

Shingles occurs when the virus that causes chickenpox starts up again in your body. After you get better from chickenpox, the virus "sleeps" (is dormant) in your nerve roots. In some people, it stays dormant forever. In others, the virus "wakes up" when disease, stress, or aging weakens the immune system. Some medicines may trigger the virus to wake up and cause a shingles rash. It is not clear why this happens. But after the virus becomes active again, it can only cause shingles, not chickenpox.

Buy our natural Shingles/Herpes Remedy and heal quickly and naturally.

Buy our natural Shingles/Herpes Remedy and heal quickly and naturally.

Cheap and Natural Quick Solutions here

You can't catch shingles from someone else who has shingles. But there is a small chance that a person with a shingles rash can spread the virus to another person who hasn't had chickenpox and who hasn't gotten the chickenpox vaccine.

Shingles symptoms happen in stages. At first you may have a headache or be sensitive to light. You may also feel like you have the flu but not have a fever.

Later, you may feel itching, tingling, or pain in a certain area. That's where a band, strip, or small area of rash may occur a few days later. The rash turns into clusters of blisters. The blisters fill with fluid and then crust over. It takes 2 to 4 weeks for the blisters to heal, and they may leave scars. Some people only get a mild rash. And some do not get a rash at all.

It's possible that you could also feel dizzy or weak. Or you could have long-term pain or a rash on your face, changes in your vision, changes in how well you can think, or a rash that spreads.

The Mayo Clinic declares there is no cure for shingles and discusses various conventional treatments that may relieve symptoms; however, many only suppress symptoms leaving the patient open to future attacks. Homeopathy has shown to be highly effective in the treatment and cure of both chicken pox and shingles. Additionally, homeopathic remedies are helpful for treatment of shingles produced as the result of either the chicken pox or shingles vaccine.

Cheap and Natural Quick Solutions here

Prevention of swine flu — Is homeopathy the answer? Debjani Arora Mar 09, 2015 at 11:07 am

With swine flu claiming lives at an alarming rate, death toll reaching a shocking 1300 across the country, it becomes clear that prevention is better than cure. But the sad part is many fall prey to rumours and quacks while looking for preventive measures to be safe and healthy. However, if one resents the conventional form of treatment, homeopathy stands to be a safe and wise option to follow. Moreover, it stands to be the second largest system of medicine in India. Here are 10 tips every parent should follow to keep children safe from swine flu. ‘It is a safe method of treatment with almost no side effects. The advantage of homeopathy drug is such that apart from taking care of the main symptoms, it also helps in dealing with other problems in a subtle way. So if one patient is given doses for say gastric problem, the same drug could also help in treating other minor issues of the body and build immunity. Going the homeopathy way is a safe and secure method for anyone who is looking for prevention from swine flu,’ informs Dr Bhavi Mody, Vrudhi Homeopathy and Wellness Centre, Mumbai. Here is how you can build immunity to save yourself from a bout of swine flu. 

Can homeopathy be as effective in treating swine flu as the conventional form of medication?

A study conducted by the Central Council for Research in Homeopathy from September 2009 to February 2010 pointed out that homeopathy drugs, when used to treat patients suffering from symptoms of swine flu, showed effective results in treating them. ‘In the discipline of homeopathy, when there is an outbreak of an epidemic, the few main symptoms are taken into consideration along with the major drugs that could treat the same. With swine flu, it was observed that the drug ARS. alb. 30 stood effective in both, treating and preventing a bout of swine flu,’ informs Dr Bhavi. The study also indicated that the drug could treat 80 percent of the symptoms of the flu effectively. Here are 10 facts about swine flu you need to know.

Moreover, the Indian Department of AYUSH (alternative systems) suggests use of the homeopathic medicine ARS. alb. 30, also known as Arsenic alba 30; one dose for three consecutive days as prevention for Swine flu. Here are the symptoms of swine flu that you need to be aware off.

So is homeopathy a better approach for preventing swine flu?

‘Homeopathy drugs don’t just treat the symptoms of the ailment but act on the psycho-neuron-axis of the brain, helping in building immunity and improving overall well-being. So if a patient has been following a homeopathy treatment for some other illness, his immunity is already been taken care of and would not need the said drug to fight swine flu,’ says Bhavi. Here is the answer to an important question — Is swine flu curable? 

However, for others who wish to take adequate prevention to ward off a viral attack, taking homeopathy pills, prescribed by a practitioner, can help. Remember, it is advised not to take homeopathy pills without proper consultation. As with homeopathy, all drugs are not suitable for everyone. ‘Homeopathy is a line of medicine where drugs are prescribed after taking into account the patient’s history, other signs and symptoms, apart from the existing symptoms or illness. It is a long painstaking process, so it is better to see a doctor rather than self-treat,’ says Dr Bhavi. Here is what you should know how life treats one after recovering from swine flu.

When should one turn to homeopathy?

One can take help of homeopathy treatment or use it for preventive measures at any point in time. However, keeping in mind the swine flu epidemic, it is better to reach to your practitioner soon after you see the symptoms – persistent cold, cough, high fever, etc. ‘When taken on time or soon after the symptoms of flu are noticed, homeopathy drugs can help fight swine flu and put one on the road to recovery effectively,’ says Dr Bhavi.

Image source: Getty Images

http://www.thehealthsite.com/news/homeopathy-for-swine-flu-is-homeopathy-the-answer-da0315/

Research Randomised placebo-controlled trials of individualised homeopathic treatment: systematic review and meta-analysis Robert T Mathie1*, Suzanne M Lloyd2, Lynn A Legg3, Jürgen Clausen4, Sian Moss5, Jonathan RT Davidson6 and Ian Ford2

Abstract

Background

A rigorous and focused systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of individualised homeopathic treatment has not previously been undertaken. We tested the hypothesis that the outcome of an individualised homeopathic treatment approach using homeopathic medicines is distinguishable from that of placebos.

Methods

The review’s methods, including literature search strategy, data extraction, assessment of risk of bias and statistical analysis, were strictly protocol-based. Judgment in seven assessment domains enabled a trial’s risk of bias to be designated as low, unclear or high. A trial was judged to comprise ‘reliable evidence’ if its risk of bias was low or was unclear in one specified domain. ‘Effect size’ was reported as odds ratio (OR), with arithmetic transformation for continuous data carried out as required; OR > 1 signified an effect favouring homeopathy.

Results

Thirty-two eligible RCTs studied 24 different medical conditions in total. Twelve trials were classed ‘uncertain risk of bias’, three of which displayed relatively minor uncertainty and were designated reliable evidence; 20 trials were classed ‘high risk of bias’. Twenty-two trials had extractable data and were subjected to meta-analysis; OR = 1.53 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.22 to 1.91). For the three trials with reliable evidence, sensitivity analysis revealed OR = 1.98 (95% CI 1.16 to 3.38).

Conclusions

Medicines prescribed in individualised homeopathy may have small, specific treatment effects. Findings are consistent with sub-group data available in a previous ‘global’ systematic review. The low or unclear overall quality of the evidence prompts caution in interpreting the findings. New high-quality RCT research is necessary to enable more decisive interpretation.

Keywords:

Individualised homeopathy; Meta-analysis; Randomised controlled trials; Systematic review

http://www.systematicreviewsjournal.com/content/3/1/142

 

Just Some History to Consider

Some information that I found interesting. Some things may seem relevant, some random. Take your pick.

Biology (Polio, Lipids, Myelin Sheath, and Meninges)

Poliomyelitis was the term used by doctors to describe the condition in which the gray (polios) anterior matter of the spinal chord (myelos) was inflamed (-itis). 90-95% of reported Polio infections cause no symptoms and leave the host with a life time immunity.

At its peak, Polio was most prevalent in school aged children. Between 5 and 10% of those infected with Poliomyelitis do experience symptoms such as fever, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, stiffness or pain in the arms or legs. 95% of children who experience symptoms are usually back to normal within 3-4 days or up to two weeks when muscle weakness is experienced. However, up to 5% of cases in which children do experience symptoms, result in death. The death rate in adults experiencing symptoms is higher, between 15 and 30%.  (1)

Normally, the Poliovirus enters the body, goes to the gut, and begins reproducing. 90-95% of the time this viral infection is short lived because the immune system is designed  to send antibodies to fight the virus, just as it would with a common cold.

But, in rare cases, the virus penetrates the central nervous system, causing meningitis. Contrary to the popular understanding, meningitis is not a virus. Meningitis is an event defined by any virus or bacteria penetrating the protective layer of the Central Nervous System and creating inflammation. The CNS is normally protected by 3 durable membranes called the meninges. The Poliovirus only breaches this membrane in approximately 1% of cases. When this happens the patient develops nonparalytic aseptic meningitis, with symptoms of headache, neck, back, abdominal and extremity pain, fever, vomiting, lethargy, and irritability. Similarly, Polio related paralysis occurs only if the virus penetrates the myelin sheath which protects the nerve cells. (32)

The Myelin Sheath and the Meninges are protected and strengthened by phospholipids. Lipids account for 40% of the organic matter in a healthy human body. Phospholipids are abundant in breastmilk, Grass-fed dairy, grass-fed beef, bovine liver, and free range eggs.

“Phospholipids serve as barriers for your cells and have a role in other specialized functions as well. Dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine is the phospholipid responsible for helping your lungs expand during breathing. Cephalin is a phospholipid in your brain’s white matter, neural tissue, nerves and spinal cord. Sphingomyelin, another phospholipid, is a source of ceramide, one of the substances your body needs to kill defective cells. Lecithin is one of the components of bile, a substance your liver produces to help with digestion.” (53)

Phospholipids play a vital role in the myelinization of the central nervous system. Infants who lack phospholipids (abundantly available in breast milk but not in formula or pasturized cows milk) in their diet have abnormally unstable myelin and a higher propensity to breakdown of the myelin in early adulthood. Adults who lack nutrition high in phospholipids are at increased risk of myelin sheath deterioration.(25)

HISTORY

1870 * “During the rapid urbanization and industrial development, high rates of female employment in poorly paid and casual work, domestic over-crowding, adulterated and contaminated milk all posed enormous threats to the survival of the newborn in the nineteenth century… While physicians, philanthropists, politicians and public health professionals were unanimous in their support of breastfeeding, they were forced to search for substitutes for mothers’ milk, to save those infants whose mothers would not or could not nurse them… The application of chemistry and microscopy to an understanding of the composition of milk laid the foundations for the development of artificial feeds, and food technology, and nutritional science began to inform the theory and practice of infant feeding. By the end of the century simple infant milk formulas were becoming available, and wet nursing was undermined by dry nursing.” (43)

1880 * Canned foods first became available for the public to purchase. (45)

1884 * Evaporated Milk is patented. (49)

1885 * Dr.Pepper was created in Waco, Texas. (49)

1886 * CocaCola was created. (49)

1890 * Increasing numbers of cattle farmers were moving to feed lot style ranches necessitating that cattle be fed increasingly grain-based diets rather than free range grass-based diets. (46) * The outcome was that the resulting beef and dairy products contained far less of the omega-3 and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) necessary for healthy myelin sheath production. (47)

1893  * The Panic of 1893 was, at the time, the worst economic depression the United States had ever experienced. Many women and children were abandoned by husbands who had lost jobs, wealth, and hope. As a result, many turned to bottle feeding their infants so that they could share child care and look for work. Good nutrition was rare so that even breastfed infants were not likely to get needed fats (lipids) for adequate myelin production.  (44)

1894 First US recorded cases of Polio. 132 cases in Vermont. (2)

1906  * It began to gain public attention that foods and medicines had become much more processed and deceptive in the last 50 years. Chemical additives were used to add color, heighten flavor, delay spoilage, soften breads, and more. People who thought they were purchasing strawberry jam found themselves eating strawberry flavored apple scraps, glucose, coal-tar dye, and timothy seed compound that looked and tasted similar to strawberry jam. Questionable producers had begun using adulterated fertilizers, chemicals to cover rancid meat, deodorizer to hide rotten eggs, and substituted less expensive glucose for honey. This concern grew to such a degree that the 1906 Food and Drug Act was passed calling for some degree of government regulation on the labeling of food and medicine.

1909 * Nearly 400 Coca-Cola bottling plants were operating. Some were open only during hot-weather months when demand was high. (68) * The average American consumed 65 pounds of sugar annually. (70)

1910  * Bruce Kraig, professor of history at Roosevelt University and president of the Culinary Historians of Chicago, said “the 1910s saw the beginning of the proliferation of processed foods. In a scant 10 years, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Oreo cookies, Crisco, Quaker Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice, Marshmallow Fluff and Nathan’s hot dogs took a bow. Aunt Jemima’s smile was already imprinted upon the American culinary psyche, as were the Kellogg’s and C.W. Post’s brand names.” (70)

1913  * Mississippi was the last state to enact compulsory school attendance laws which had begun in some states as early as 1852. (59)

1914 * The average family spent 60% of their income on food. (45) * Margarine made with vegetable oils and animal fats began to replace butter, greatly reducing the average person’s intake of Vit K2, CLA, Butyrate, and Omega3 (which help prevent cancer, lower body fat, fight inflammation, and strengthen the Myelin sheath). (48)

1916 Reported: 27,000 cases of Polio in the US. (3) * New York City experienced the first large epidemic of polio with over 9,000 reported cases, resulting in 2,343 deaths, out of a population of more than 5 million. This meant that, in New York City, 1 in 550 people contracted Polio and 1 in 2,134 died. (3) * Nationwide there were 27,000 total reported cases and 6,000 deaths out of a US population of 102 million. Or 1 in 3778 contracting polio with 1 in 17,000 resulting in death. (3) * The most serious cases were commonly found in areas with poor nutrition and sanitation such as the densely packed New York City.

1917 * During WWI, women entered the workforce like never before. On the home front, women were employed in factories, stores, and within the government leaving infants and young children in the care of family and friends, thus necessitating a significant rise in the number of bottle fed infants.

1919  * Nutritional foods were in short supply and the government was encouraging  Meatless-Mondays, Wheatless Wednesdays, etc.

1920  * Coca-Cola was operating more than 1,000 bottling companies and the drink was found in all but six soda fountains in the US. Some attributed the increased sales to the fact that prohibition had shut down bars. (66, 68)

1922  * Due to contamination of milk supplies, pasteurization became widespread in the United States. Pasteurization destroys Lipase, an enzyme found in milk which is essential to the digestion of fats (lipids). (65)

1923 * Milky Way bar was created. (45)

1929 * The Great Depression cause families to find ways to stretch every bit of food, many spending their days in soup lines when the groceries didn’t go far enough. Even low-lipid grain-fed beef consumption was cut back greatly. (70)

1930 Reported: 9,000 cases. (29) * Snickers bar was created. (45)

1931 Reported: 17,000 cases. (29)

1932 Reported: 3,000 cases. (29) * Mars Bar was created. (45)

1933 Reported: 5,000 cases. (29) * Arthur Kallet and F.J. Schlink authored the national bestseller “100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics”. They asserted that the American population is being used as guinea pigs in a giant experiment undertaken by the American producers of food stuffs and medicines. Kallet and Schlink premise the book as being “written in the interest of the consumer, who does not yet realize that he is being used as a guinea pig…” (35)

1934 Reported: 7,000 cases. (29)

1935 Reported: 10,000 cases. (29) * KitKat bar was created. (45)

1936 Reported: 4,000 cases. (29) * Spam was invented. (45) * Doctors noted that paralytic poliomyelitis often started at the site of another type of injection. The phenomenon later became known as Provocation Polio. (37)

1937 Reported: 9,000 cases. (29) * Families were spending only 35% of their income on food. (45) * Rolo’s were invented. (45)

1938  Reported: 1,000 cases. (29) * The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis was created by President Roosevelt and his law partner, Basil O’Connor. (27)

1939 Reported: 7000 cases. (29)

1940 Reported: 10,000 cases. (29)

1941 Reported: 9000 cases. (29) * Drs. Francis and Mack isolated the Mahoney poliovirus “from the pooled feces of three healthy children in Cleveland.” (22)

1942 Reported: 4,000 cases. (29) * Diphtheria and pertussis vaccines were first introduced and cases of paralytic poliomyelitis tripled. (34)

* With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the US entered into WWII. The government rationed meat, butter, milk, cheese, and eggs (all of the most prominent sources of phospholipids). As a result of these limits, sales of convenience and prepared foods shot up. Margarine became the standard household butter replacement. (70)

1943 Reported: 12,000 cases. (29)

1944 Reported: 19,000 cases. (29) * July 12, Coca-Cola manufactured their one-billionth gallon of Coca-Cola syrup.

1945 Reported: 13,000 cases. (29) * Families were encouraged to plant “Victory Gardens” to fill out the dinner table with vegetables. However, DDT (chlorophenoethane, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was a top recommended pesticide recently released in the United States (against the advice of investigators who had studied the pharmacology of the compound and found it dangerous for all forms of life).   (71) It would later be classified as a neurotoxin and banned for agricultural use both in the US and worldwide. * Margarine had evolved to a formula completely composed of vegetable oils due to shortages on animal products. (52) * WWII ended. Over 400,000 fathers, sons, and brothers would not be returning from the war. (54) * Spam become a large part of the U.S. soldier’s meat consumption as well as a common household meat on the homefront. Military personnel referred to as “ham that didn’t pass its physical,” or “meatloaf without basic training”. (55)

1946 Reported: 25,000 cases. (29)

1947 Reported: 11,000 cases. (29)

1948 Reported: 26,000 cases. (29) * Jonas Salk, funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, set out to determine the number of different types of polio virus. Salk and his team saw this as an opportunity to research the possibility of a vaccine. (19)

1949 Reported: 42,000 cases. (29) * Research showed that Polio struck the hardest in summer months. Dr. Benjamin Sandler, a nutritional expert at the Oteen Hospital, theorized that there could be a connection between the increase of Polio cases and greater amounts of ice cream, soft drinks, and artificial sweeteners consumed during the summer. He used local media to advise North Carolina residents to decrease their consumption of such products. The people listened and the North Carolina State Health Department reported 2,498 cases of polio in 1948, and only 229 cases in 1949 in spite of a national rise of almost 40%! One company reported ice cream sales in NC to be down by 1 million gallons during the first week following Dr. Sandler’s publishing of the anti-polio diet. This inspired the Rockefeller Milk Trust, which sold frozen products to the area, to work with the soft drink business leaders (who also took a significant hit) to convince the people that Dr. Sandler’s findings were contrived and the Polio drop was a coincidence. The next summer ice cream and soda sales, as well as Polio rates were back to normal. (36)

1950 Reported: 32,000 cases. (29)

1951 Reported: 27,000 cases. (29)

1952 Reported: 57,628 cases (The peak year for Polio). *This was 58 years after first reports in the US. (4,5)

1953 Reported: 35,592 cases (3) A significant drop of 22,000 fewer cases and no vaccine was yet available.

1954, Reported: 38,476 cases.  (Up 3,000) (3) * In June of 1954, the first small scale trials with Salk’s vaccine began (2) . The Salk’s Polio strain had been inactivated with formaldehyde (21) and required 4-5 weeks to trigger immunity in the average person. * Six months before Salk’s vaccine test for safety and effectiveness would be reviewed the Polio Fund in the U.S. had already contracted to purchase enough of the Salk vaccine to immunize 9,000,000 children and pregnant women the following year. (15) * Reports claim that Salk’s vaccine was tested for safety and efficiency on 1.8 million children. However, only 443,000 received one or more injections of Salk’s vaccine. 201,229 children received a placebo and 1.2 million children received no vaccination at all and served as a control group. (7, 30) Despite objections and published concerns by numerous scientist, Harry Weaver, the NFIP’s director of research, wrote: “The practice of medicine is based on calculated risk …. If [we wait until more] research is carried out, large numbers of human beings will develop poliomyelitis who might have been prevented from doing so.” (28) It turned out that Salk’s “killed-virus” was not as attenuated as he had hoped. Hundreds contracted polio from Salk’s vaccine and many died. (38)

1955, Reported: 28,985 cases. (3) (Down 10,000) * Less than a year later, on April 12th 1955, Salk’s vaccine was declared safe and effective with the field trial results showing that 1 in 1,907 un-vaccinated children contracted Polio while only 1 in 3,964 vaccinated children contracted Polio. In the observed control trials, 1 in 12,333 vaccinated children contracted non-paralytic Polio while 1 in 11,788 unvaccinated children contracted non-paralytic Polio. (30) * Prior to 1955, Polio, Coxsackie virus, and Meningitis (caused by any virus or bacteria) were all diagnosed and reported as Polio based on symptoms. After the field test of Salk’s virus they were redefined as three separate illnesses with specific diagnostic parameters and began to be reported as such. (17) * The first commercial inactive polio vaccines (IPV’s) were being produced by 5 different labs. An American virologist and epidemiologist named Bernice Eddy and her team were assigned to test the vaccines from each company. She discovered that the inactivated vaccine manufactured by Cutter Laboratories contained residual live poliovirus, resulting in the test monkeys showing polio-like symptoms and paralysis. Eddy reported her findings to William Workman, head of the Laboratory of Biologics Control, but her findings were never given to the vaccine licensing advisory committee. (9) The vaccine rolled out anyway. * A few weeks after the press conference announcing success of the vaccine trials, an Idaho doctor reported a case of paralytic polio in a recently vaccinated girl. In the following weeks, more reports came in to local health authorities. All involved a disturbing detail: paralysis began in the vaccinated arm, rather than in the legs as was more common. It was traced back to the Cutter Laboratory batches of the vaccine. (6) * Children who contracted Polio from the Cutter batches were more likely to suffer severe and permanent paralysis, require breathing assistance from and Iron Lung, and more likely to die than children affected with natural polio. (13)

1956 Reported: 15,110 cases. (3) (Down by 14,000 cases)

1957 Reported: 5,185 cases. (3) (Down by 10,000) * At this point more than 100 million doses of Salk’s vaccine had been distributed throughout the United States. (11) * After reports of Polio being contracted from the vaccine and Polio cases contracted by multiple associates of those who had received the vaccine became so numerous that they could no longer be ignored, it came out that the batches issued in 1955 differed from those used in Salk’s trials in that Salk’s original field tested vaccine had included Methiolate and the ones being dispensed to the public did not. (31) * While Salk’s vaccine was inactivated, Dr. Albert Sabin, an American physician and microbiologist, was working to create a live attenuated vaccine because the immunity of Salk’s vaccine was showing evidence of waning and live virus would produce a more natural immunity. However it was also more dangerous to inject people with a live vaccine. To achieve the optimal virulence, he had to isolate the 3 poliovirus strains and then pass them through a myriad of host cells.  Sabin’s oral polio vaccine (OPV) is composed of 3 strains. Type 1 evolved from Drs. Francis and Mack’s Mahoney poliovirus from 1941 and had been passaged through no less than 69 monkey cultures, mostly testicular and kidney. (20) * “The resulting material was called Sabin Original Merck (SOM) and was provided to Lederle in 1960 as the seed material to manufacture its polio vaccine. Types II and III were created in a similar fashion.” (22) * He hoped to stimulate a true immune response using a weakened, or attenuated, live virus. He eventually encountered a strain of the polio virus which would infect the intestinal tract but appeared to be to weak to penetrate the myelin sheath of the central nervous system. He had experimented on thousands of monkeys to find the virus but the initial human trials would be carried out in foreign countries. (38, 39)

1958 Reported: 5,787 cases (3) (Up by 600) I * Sabin’s vaccine was given permission for trials in the United States but it was found that people who received Sabin’s oral polio vaccine (OPV) shed weakened virus in their fecal waste for up to 6 weeks, infecting family memebers. (38, 39)

1959 Reported: 8,425 cases. (3) (Up by 2,500) * The US used 79 million pounds of DDT in one year. (72)

1960 Reported: 3,190 cases (3) (Down by 5000) * Ben Sweet and Maurice Hilleman published results showing cancerous growths in the offspring of rodents injected with Salk’s original polio vaccine but no one listened. (h) * “In May of 1960, Dr. Ratner chaired a panel discussion, at the 120th Annual Meeting of the Illinois Medical Society to review the increasing rise in paralytic polio in the United States. The proceedings were reprinted in the August, 1960, Illinois Medical Journal which exposed the Salk vaccine as a frank and ineptly disguised fraud. One of the experts on the panel, statistician Dr. Bernard Greenberg, who went on to testify at Congressional hearings, revealed how data had been manipulated to hide the dangers and ineffectiveness of the vaccine from the pubic. Dr. Greenberg explained that the perceived overall reduction in polio cases was achieved by changing the criteria by which polio was diagnosed.” (16) “In the 1950’s, the sophisticated virological techniques of today did not exist. And the technology that existed was rarely available to practicing physicians. Therefore, most diagnoses were based upon clinical observation, not sophisticated virological studies. Since polio was epidemic, most physicians were cavalier in making a diagnosis of “non-paralytic poliomyelitis” in children presenting with vague symptoms of muscle aches, malaise, and fever. Since polio was “going around”, such children must have had polio. . . . Interestingly, as the number of polio cases decreased, the number of meningitis cases increased.” (17)

1961 Reported: 1,312 cases (3) (Down by 2000) * Scientist learned that children exposed to the virus during the first year or two of life still carried some antibodies from the womb and nursing causing them to experience a quick and symptom free bout with the Poliovirus conferring lifetime immunity. Modern sanitation practices had eliminated the potential for early exposure meaning that more children were having their first bouts with the virus without the antibodies that were present in the first year of life.  (51)

1962 Reported: 886 cases (3) * Virologist Bernice Eddy described the SV40 (vacuolating virus) oncogenic function in inducing sarcoma and tumors in the central nervous system of hamsters inoculated with monkeys cells infected with SV40. (12) Again, it was published and dismissed. In July, scientist collect lung tissue from an aborted female which were used as a host to produce the WI-38 cell line used in the MMR vaccine development. (61) * Dr. Bernard Greenberg, a biostatistics expert and chairman of the Committee on Evaluation and Standards of the American Public Health Association, testified at a panel discussion used as evidence for the congressional hearings on the Salk’s vaccine. During these hearings he highlighted many problems associated with polio statistics. He pointed out that the recent decline in reported Polio cases were likely the result of changes in the diagnostic requirements for Polio, “Prior to 1954 any physician who reported paralytic poliomyelitis was doing his patient a service by way of subsidizing the cost of hospitalization and was being community-minded in reporting a communicable disease. The criterion of diagnosis at that time in most health departments followed the World Health Organization definition: ‘Spinal paralytic poliomyelitis: signs and symptoms of nonparalytic poliomyelitis with the addition of partial or complete paralysis of one or more muscle groups, detected on two examinations at least 24 hours apart.’ Note that ‘two examinations at least 24 hours apart’ was all that was required. Laboratory confirmation and presence of residual paralysis was not required. In 1955 the criteria were changed to conform more closely to the definition used in the 1954 field trials: residual paralysis was determined 10 to 20 days after onset of illness and again 50 to 70 days after onset…. This change in definition meant that in 1955 we started reporting a new disease, namely, paralytic poliomyelitis with a longer-lasting paralysis. Furthermore, diagnostic procedures have continued to be refined. Coxsackie virus infections and aseptic meningitis have been distinguished from paralytic poliomyelitis. Prior to 1954 large numbers of these cases undoubtedly were mislabeled as paralytic poliomyelitis. Thus, simply by changes in diagnostic criteria, the number of paralytic cases was predetermined to decrease in 1955-1957, whether or not any vaccine was used.” (16) *The same year Salk’s inactivated vaccine began to be replaced by Sabin’s live vaccine (11) reportedly because it was easier to administer and less expensive to manufacture.

1963 * Subsequent studies demonstrated that SV40, which was used in Salk’s vaccine, caused brain tumors in animals (24) and that SV40 could transform or turn cancerous normal human tissue in vitro. * Sabin’s oral “sugar-cube” vaccine became available for general use in spite of the knowledge that the vaccinated individuals would shed a live but weakened Poliovirus for 6 weeks after inoculation. (38, 39)

1964 Reported: 121 cases. (50)

1965 Reported: 61 cases. (50)

 1966 * A male fetus was aborted for psychiatric reasons from a 27 year old woman. Fetal lung tissue was removed for the purpose of culturing the origins of the MCR-5 cell line. (14) This cell line would later be used in the DTaP, IPV (Pentacel) as well as 5 other vaccines.

1971 * The USDA moved to ban sodium nitrite because of studies showed connections to pancreatic and bowel cancer, diabetes, and red blood cell damage, but the meat industry insisted that the chemical was safe and publicly accused the USDA of trying to “ban bacon.” (56)

1972 * DDT is banned for agricultural use in the US. (57) * This was be followed by a worldwide ban in the Stockholm Convention in 2001. (58) * The Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry lists developmental processes, endocrine glands and hormones, liver function, the central nervous system, and reproductive systems as areas that are adversely affected by DDT. (72)

1978 * Enhanced Potency IPV produced in human diploid cells was created with the goal of decreasing the number of vaccinations required for lifetime immunity from 4 down to 2 or 3.

1979 * The last recorded case of “wild Polio” in US. All further reports have been vaccine shed strains. (2) * Between 1980 and 1999 there would be 162 confirmed cases of Vaccine induced (or shed) Paralytic Polio in the United States.

1980 * 54% of American women were nursing. (26)

1983 * The CDC recommends 23 doses of 7 vaccines (DPT, MMR, polio) between two months and age six. (63)

1986 * The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was passed by Congress to reduce the potential financial liability of vaccine makers due to vaccine injury claims.  There had been an recent upturn in adverse reactions to the DTaP vaccine. The company producing the vaccine was losing money so they cut back production. Concerned that reduced production would mean reduced availability of the vaccine, the government created a special Court specifically for dealing with adverse reactions to vaccines. The National Injury Compensation Program was created to provide a no-fault system for compensating vaccine-related injuries or death. Vaccine companies could no longer be held at fault for vaccine related injuries. (60)

1987 * Enhanced potency IPV was released in the US. (18) * The CDC states: “The effect of enhanced-potency IPV on the circulation of poliovirus in a community has not yet been determined, but it is likely to be at least as good as that seen with conventional IPV.” (62)

1992 * A study in Sweden found a 2.5-fold increase in the incidence of meningitis between 1970 and 1980. A case-control study of risk factors for Meningitis conducted in the same area found breastfeeding to be a strong protective factor against Meningitis. (33)

2000 * Due to the fact that Sabin’s OPV could not be given to people with compromised immune systems, it’s ability to cause polio in some recipients, and it’s viral shedding tendency (whereby people exposed to recently vaccinated individuals occasionally contract Polio) the CDC reverted back to recommending that children only be given the Salk’s killed-virus vaccine (IPV) based on previous saftey and efficiency test. Only it wasn’t the same vaccine. The IPV in production was based on Salk’s vaccine but it was in fact the Inhanced Potency IPV released in 87. The CDC recommends 4 doses. (40, 41, 42)

2005 * Inflammation of the Meninges (by any virus including the Poliovirus) is considered Non-Paralytic-Aseptic-Meningitis. (23)

2008 * 70% of women choose to breastfeed. (26) * Studies show evidence that exposure to DDT may be associated with breast cancer, diabetes, decreased semen quality, spontaneous abortion, and impaired neurodevelopment in children. (73)

2014 * The CDC now recommends 49 doses of 14 vaccines before the age of 3 years, more than double what was recommended in 1983. * The CDC recommend 69 doses of 16 vaccines by the age of 18. (63, 64)

Other interesting reads:

National Vaccine Information Center

http://www.nvic.org/

http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/dont-vaccinate-protect-cancer-kid/

“A calculated Risk”: the Salk Polio vaccine field trials of 1954 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114166/

Provocation Polio

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/polio-provocation-the-health-debate-that-refused-to-go-away

Polio, HIV, and Cancer

http://vaxtruth.org/2012/04/the-polio-vaccine-part-3-2/

Vaccines, Abortion & Fetal Tissue

http://www.rtl.org/prolife_issues/LifeNotes/VaccinesAbortion_FetalTissue.html

Human Fetal Cell Lines http://www.ms.academicjournals.org/article/article1409245960_Deisher%20et%20al.pdf

Which Vaccines contain Human Protien and DNA?

http://www.vaccine-tlc.org/human

The benifits of Phospholipid high foods

http://metabolichealing.com/phospholipids-for-tissue-repair-regeneration/

The Polio Vaccine Myth

http://www.vaclib.org/sites/debate/polio.html

Benefits of butter vs. Margarine

http://authoritynutrition.com/butter-vs-margarine/

http://vaccines.procon.org/

1. Atkinson W, Hamborsky J, McIntyre L, Wolfe S (eds.) (2009). “Poliomyelitis”. Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases (The Pink Book) (PDF) (11th ed.). Washington DC: Public Health Foundation. pp. 231–44.

2. http://amhistory.si.edu/polio/timeline/

3.The Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Poliomyelitis. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Public Health Service. Health Information Series, No. 8. Public Health Service Publication No. 4. Rev. 1963.

4. Zamula, Evelyn (1991). “A New Challenge for Former Polio Patients”. FDA Consumer 25 (5). Retrieved2010-02-07.

5.“History of Vaccines Website – Polio cases Surge”.College of Physicians of Philadelphia. 3 November 2010. Retrieved 3 November 2010.

6. April 30, 1955 Press Release regarding the investigation into Poliomyelitis Vaccine produced from Cutter Laboratories. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

7. “Competition to develop an oral vaccine”. Conquering Polio. Sanofi PasteurSA. 2007-02-02. Archived from the original on 2007-10-16.

8. Sweet BH, Hilleman MR (November 1960). “The vacuolating virus, S.V. 40″. Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med.105: 420–427. PMID 13774265.

9. Offit, Paul A. The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis. Yale University Press, 2007. pp. 62-63.

10. Eddy BE, Borman GS, Berkely WH, Young RD (May 1961). “Tumors induced in hamsters by injection of rhesus monkey cell extracts”. Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 107: 191–197.doi:10.3181/00379727-107-26576. PMID 13725644.

11. “World Polio Cut by Salk Vaccine: Safety and Effectiveness of Preventive Confirmed at Geneva Conference”, The New York Times, July 10, 1957

12. Eddy, BE, Borman, GS, Grubbs, GE, Young, RD (May 1962). “Identification of the oncogenic substance in rhesus monkey kidney cell culture as simian virus 40″. Virology17: 65–75. doi:10.1016/0042-6822(62)90082-x.PMID 13889129.

13. Wilson, Daniel J. “The Polio Vaccines of Salk and Sabin”. pg 119

14. J.P. Jacobs et al., “Characteristics of a Human Diploid Cell Designated MRC-5,” Nature 227 (1970): 168.

15. “Polio Fund Buying Salk Vaccine For 9,000,000 Children, Women”, The New York Times, October 19, 1954

16. J.I. Rodale: The Encyclopedia of Common Diseases, Rodale Books Inc., Emmaus Pennsylvania (1962).

17. Congressional Hearings, May 1962; and National Morbidity Reports taken from U.S. Public Health surveillance reports.

18. Atkinson W, Hamborsky J, McIntyre L, Wolfe S, eds. (2008). Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases (The Pink Book) (PDF) (10th ed. (2nd printing) ed.). Washington, D.C.: Public Health Foundation. Archived from the original on 2008-09-24. Retrieved 2008-11-29.

19. Rose DR (2004). “Fact Sheet—Polio Vaccine Field Trial of 1954.” March of Dimes Archives. 2004 02 11.

20. A.B. Sabin, A.B. & L. Boulger, History of Sabin Attenuated Poliovirus Oral Live Vaccine Strains. 1 J. Biol. Stand. 115, 115–18 (1973). The Mahoney virus was isolated in 1941 by Drs. Fancis and Mack.

21. Passaging is defined as successive transfer of an infection through experimental animals or tissue culture. Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary 1240 (27th ed. 1988).

22. Edward Hooper, The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS 200 (1999).

23. Chamberlin SL, Narins B (eds.) (2005). The Gale Encyclopedia of Neurological Disorders. Detroit: Thomson Gale. pp. 1859–70. ISBN 0-7876-9150-X.

24. Ruth L. Kirschstein & Paul Gerber, Ependymomas Produced After Intracerebral Inoculation of SV40 into New-Born Hamsters, Nature, July 21, 1962, at 299–300.

25. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/797220

26. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/magazine/28froelich-t.html?_r=0

27. Minutes of the Committee on Immunization, Hershey, Pennsylvania, January 23, 1953. Jonas Salk Papers, Mandeville Special Collections, University of California San Diego, Box 254, Folder 2, page 157.

28.  Benison S. Tom Rivers: reflections on a life in medicine and science (an oral history memoir). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 1967.

29. Paul Meier. “Safety of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine.” Science 125 (1957) 1067-1071.

30. Thomas Francis, Robert Korn, et al. “An Evaluation of the the 1954 Poliomyelitis Vaccine Trials.” American Journal of Public Health 45 (1955)

31.  K.A. Brownleb. University of Chicago. Journal of the American Statistical Assosiation. “Statistics of the 1954 Polio Vaccine Trails”. (1955).

32. Chamberlin SL, Narins B (eds.) (2005). The Gale Encyclopedia of Neurological Disorders. Detroit: Thomson Gale. pp. 1859–70. ISBN 0-7876-9150-X.

33. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10195681

34.  Lindsay KW, et al. Neurology and Neurosurgery Illustrated. Edinburgh/London/New York: Churchill Livingston, 1986:100. Figure 15.2. Polio incidence rates obtained from National Morbidity Reports.

35. Jackson, J. “The Ergot Controversy: Prologue to the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act” J Hist Med Allied Sci1968; XXIII: 248-257

36. data taken from North Carolina State Health Department figures. [26:146;29].

37. Lambert SM. A yaws campaign and an epidemic of poliomyelitis in Western Samoa. J Trop Med Hyg 1936; 39:41–6.

38. Okonek BM, et al. Development of polio vaccines. Access Excellence Classic Collection, February 16, 2001:1. http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC /CC/polio.html

39. A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries. Salk produces  polio  vaccine.www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm52sa.html

40. Shaw D. Unintended casualties in war on polio. Philadelphia Inquirer June 6, 1993:A1.

41. Gorman C. When the vaccine causes the polio. Time October 30, 1995:83

42. Reuters Medical News. CDC publishes Updated Poliomyelitis prevention recommendations for the  U.S.,  May 22, 2000.

43. http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/feeding-babies-in-the-21st-century-breast-is-still-best-but-for-new-reasons

44. Timberlake, Jr., Richard H. (1997). “Panic of 1893″. In Glasner, David; Cooley, Thomas F., eds. Business Cycles and Depressions: an Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 516–18.

45. http://www.localhistories.org/food.html

46. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/aucrw

47. https://www.bulletproofexec.com/grass-fed-meat-part-1/

48. http://authoritynutrition.com/butter-vs-margarine/

49. http://www.localhistories.org/drinktime.html

50. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/polio/dis-faqs.htm

51. Jane Smith, Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc, 1990), p. 34.

52. Clark, Paul (6 May 1983). “The marketing of margarine”. Paper presented to a seminar on Marketing and Advertising in the 20th Century at Central London Polytechnic. Emeral Backfiles. p. 54. Retrieved 2009-11-10.

53. http://www.livestrong.com/article/446527-what-are-phospholipids-in-the-diet/

54. Michael Clodfelter. Warfare and Armed Conflicts – A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1500–2000. 2nd ed. 2002 ISBN 0-7864-1204-6 pp. 584–591

55. Martin, Andrew (November 15, 2008). “Spam Turns Serious and Hormel Turns Out More”. The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2010.

56. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19771018&id=Y99NAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BIsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1754,2504359

57. Linda Lear (1 April 2009). Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. Mariner Books. ISBN 978-0-547-23823-4.

58. Larson, Kim (December 1, 2007). “Bad Blood”. On Earth (Winter 2008). Retrieved June 5, 2008

59. Katz, Michael S. “A History of Compulsory Education Laws”. ERIC – Institute of Education Sciences. ERIC. Retrieved 19 December 2014.

60. National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34)

61. http://www.nature.com/news/medical-research-cell-division-1.13273

62. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00025216.htm

63. http://www.nvic.org/CMSTemplates/NVIC/pdf/49-Doses-PosterB.pdf

64. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/downloads/child/0-18yrs-pocket-pr.pdf

65. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9602205

66. http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring08/Cantwell/20thcent/20-40.html

67. “Coke Can History”. Archived from the original on January 18, 2010.

68. http://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/history-of-bottling

70. http://leitesculinaria.com/10348/writings-dining-through-the-decades-american-food-history.html

71. http://jee.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/2/197 (“DDT to Control Corn Flea Beetle” April 1, 1945)

72 http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/substances/toxsubstance.asp?toxid=20

73. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737010/

Glutathione: The Mother of All Antioxidants

It's the most important molecule you need to stay healthy and prevent disease -- yet you've probably never heard of it. It's the secret to prevent aging, cancer, heart disease, dementia and more, and necessary to treat everything from autism to Alzheimer's disease. There are more than 89,000 medical articles about it -- but your doctor doesn't know how address the epidemic deficiency of this critical life-giving molecule ...

What is it? I'm talking about the mother of all antioxidants, the master detoxifier and maestro of the immune system: GLUTATHIONE (pronounced "gloota-thigh-own").

The good news is that your body produces its own glutathione. The bad news is that poor diet, pollution, toxins, medications, stress, trauma, aging, infections and radiation all deplete your glutathione.

This leaves you susceptible to unrestrained cell disintegration from oxidative stress, free radicals, infections and cancer. And your liver gets overloaded and damaged, making it unable to do its job of detoxification.

In treating chronically ill patients with Functional Medicine for more than 10 years, I have discovered that glutathione deficiency is found in nearly all very ill patients. These include people with chronic fatigue syndrome, heart disease, cancer, chronic infections, autoimmune disease, diabetes, autism, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, arthritis, asthma, kidney problems, liver disease and more.

At first I thought that this was just a coincidental finding, but over the years I have come to realize that our ability to produce and maintain a high level of glutathione is critical to recovery from nearly all chronic illness -- and to preventing disease and maintaining optimal health and performance. The authors of those 76,000 medical articles on glutathione I mentioned earlier have found the same thing!

So in today's blog I want to explain what glutathione is, why it's important and give you 9 tips that will help you optimize your glutathione levels, improve your detoxification system and protect help yourself from chronic illness.

What is Glutathione?

Glutathione is a very simple molecule that is produced naturally all the time in your body. It is a combination of three simple building blocks of protein or amino acids -- cysteine, glycine and glutamine.

The secret of its power is the sulfur (SH) chemical groups it contains. Sulfur is a sticky, smelly molecule. It acts like fly paper and all the bad things in the body stick onto it, including free radicals and toxins like mercury and other heavy metals.

Normally glutathione is recycled in the body -- except when the toxic load becomes too great. And that explains why we are in such trouble ...

In my practice, I test the genes involved in glutathione metabolism. These are the genes involved in producing enzymes that allow the body to create and recycle glutathione in the body. These genes have many names, such as GSTM1, GSTP1 and more.

These genes impaired in some people for a variety of important reasons. We humans evolved in a time before the 80,000 toxic industrial chemicals found in our environment today were introduced into our world, before electromagnetic radiation was everywhere and before we polluted our skies, lakes, rivers, oceans and teeth with mercury and lead.

That is why most people survived with the basic version of the genetic detoxification software encoded in our DNA, which is mediocre at ridding the body of toxins. At the time humans evolved we just didn't need more. Who knew we would be poisoning ourselves and eating a processed, nutrient-depleted diet thousands of years later?

Because most of us didn't require additional detoxification software, almost of half of the population now has a limited capacity to get rid of toxins. These people are missing GSTM1 function -- one of the most important genes needed in the process of creating and recycling glutathione in the body.

Nearly all my very sick patients are missing this function. The one-third of our population that suffers from chronic disease is missing this essential gene. That includes me. Twenty years ago I became mercury poisoned and suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome due to this very problem. My GSTM1 function was inadequate and I didn't produce enough glutathione as a result. Eventually, my body broke down and I became extremely ill ...

This is the same problem I see in so many of my patients. They are missing this critical gene and they descend into disease as a result. Let me explain how this happens ...

The Importance of Glutathione in Protecting Against Chronic Illness

Glutathione is critical for one simple reason: It recycles antioxidants. You see, dealing with free radicals is like handing off a hot potato. They get passed around from vitamin C to vitamin E to lipoic acid and then finally to glutathione which cools off the free radicals and recycles other antioxidants. After this happens, the body can "reduce" or regenerate another protective glutathione molecule and we are back in business.

However, problems occur when we are overwhelmed with too much oxidative stress or too many toxins. Then the glutathione becomes depleted and we can no longer protect ourselves against free radicals, infections, or cancer and we can't get rid of toxins. This leads to further sickness and soon we are in the downward spiral of chronic illness.

But that's not all. Glutathione is also critical in helping your immune system do its job of fighting infections and preventing cancer. That's why studies show that it can help in the treatment of AIDS.(i)

Glutathione is also the most critical and integral part of your detoxification system. All the toxins stick onto glutathione, which then carries them into the bile and the stool -- and out of your body.

And lastly, it also helps us reach peak mental and physical function. Research has shown that raised glutathione levels decrease muscle damage, reduce recovery time, increase strength and endurance and shift metabolism from fat production to muscle development.

If you are sick or old or are just not in peak shape, you likely have glutathione deficiency. In fact, the top British medical journal, the Lancet, found the highest glutathione levels in healthy young people, lower levels in healthy elderly, lower still in sick elderly and the lowest of all in the hospitalized elderly. (ii)

Keeping yourself healthy, boosting your performance, preventing disease and aging well depends on keeping your glutathione levels high. I'll say it again ... Glutathione is so important because it is responsible for keeping so many of the keys to UltraWellness optimized.

It is critical for immune function and controlling inflammation. It is the master detoxifier and the body's main antioxidant, protecting our cells and making our energy metabolism run well.

And the good news is that you can do many things to increase this natural and critical molecule in your body. You can eat glutathione-boosting foods. You can exercise. And you can take glutathione-boosting supplements. Let's review more specifics about each.

9 Tips to Optimize your Glutathione Levels

These 9 tips will help you improve your glutathione levels, improve your health, optimize your performance and live a long, healthy life.

Eat Foods that Support Glutathione Production

1. Consume sulfur-rich foods. The main ones in the diet are garlic, onions and the cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, cauliflower, watercress, etc.).

2. Try bioactive whey protein. This is great source of cysteine and the amino acid building blocks for glutathione synthesis. As you know, I am not a big fan of dairy. But this is an exception -- with a few warnings. The whey protein MUST be bioactive and made from non-denatured proteins ("denaturing" refers to the breakdown of the normal protein structure). Choose non-pasteurized and non-industrially produced milk that contains no pesticides, hormones, or antibiotics. Immunocal is a prescription bioactive non-denatured whey protein that is even listed in the Physician's Desk Reference.

Exercise for Your Way to More Glutathione

3. Exercise boosts your glutathione levels and thereby helps boost your immune system, improve detoxification and enhance your body's own antioxidant defenses. Start slow and build up to 30 minutes a day of vigorous aerobic exercise like walking or jogging, or play various sports. Strength training for 20 minutes 3 times a week is also helpful.

Take Glutathione Supporting Supplements

One would think it would be easy just to take glutathione as a pill, but the body digests protein -- so you wouldn't get the benefits if you did it this way. However, the production and recycling of glutathione in the body requires many different nutrients and you CAN take these. Here are the main supplements that need to be taken consistently to boost glutathione. Besides taking a multivitamin and fish oil, supporting my glutathione levels with these supplements is the most important thing I do every day for my personal health.

4. N-acetyl-cysteine. This has been used for years to help treat asthma and lung disease and to treat people with life-threatening liver failure from Tylenol overdose. In fact, I first learned about it in medical school while working in the emergency room. It is even given to prevent kidney damage from dyes used during x-ray studies.

5. Alpha lipoic acid. This is a close second to glutathione in importance in our cells and is involved in energy production, blood sugar control, brain health and detoxification. The body usually makes it, but given all the stresses we are under, we often become depleted.

6. Methylation nutrients (folate and vitamins B6 and B12). These are perhaps the most critical to keep the body producing glutathione. Methylation and the production and recycling of glutathione are the two most important biochemical functions in your body. Take folate (especially in the active form of 5 methyltetrahydrofolate), B6 (in active form of P5P) and B12 (in the active form of methylcobalamin).

7. Selenium. This important mineral helps the body recycle and produce more glutathione.

8. A family of antioxidants including vitamins C and E (in the form of mixed tocopherols), work together to recycle glutathione.

9. Milk thistle (silymarin) has long been used in liver disease and helps boost glutathione levels.

So use these nine tips and see how they work to help you optimzie your glutathione levels. When you do, you will take one more step to lifelong vibrant health.

Now I'd like to hear from you...

Had you ever heard of this important nutrient before?

Have you tried any of the advice in this article?

What effects have you noticed on your health?

Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

References

(i) De Rosa SC, Zaretsky MD, Dubs JG, Roederer M, Anderson M, Green A, Mitra D, Watanabe N, Nakamura H, Tjioe I, Deresinski SC, Moore WA, Ela SW, Parks D, Herzenberg LA, Herzenberg LA. N-acetylcysteine replenishes glutathione in HIV infection. Eur J Clin Invest. 2000 Oct;30(10):915-29

(ii) Nuttall S, Martin U, Sinclair A, Kendall M. 1998. Glutathione: in sickness and in health. The Lancet 351(9103):645-646

Mark Hyman, M.D. practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center is a pioneer in functional medicine. Dr. Hyman is now sharing the 7 ways to tap into your body's natural ability to heal itself. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on Youtube and become a fan on Facebook.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/glutathione-the-mother-of_b_530494.html

Excretion of vaccine strain measles virus in urine and pharyngeal secretions of a child with vaccine associated febrile rash illness.

Excretion of vaccine strain measles virus in urine and pharyngeal secretions of a child with vaccine associated febrile rash illness;

  1. Croatian Institute of Public Health, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Zagreb, Croatia
  2. Croatian Institute of Public Health,Virology Department, Zagreb, Croatia
  3. Institute of Immunology, Molecular Biomedicine Unit, Zagreb, Croatia
  4. Brodsko-posavska County Institute of Public Health, Slavonski Brod, Croatia

Citation style for this article: Kaic B, Gjenero-Margan I, Aleraj B, Vilibić-Čavlek T, Santak M, Cvitković A, Nemeth-Blazic T, Ivic Hofman I. Spotlight on measles 2010: Excretion of vaccine strain measles virus in urine and pharyngeal secretions of a child with vaccine associated febrile rash illness, Croatia, March 2010. Euro Surveill. 2010;15(35):pii=19652. Available online: http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19652 Date of submission: 04 June 2010


We describe excretion of measles vaccine strain Schwarz in a child who developed a febrile rash illness eight days after primary immunisation against measles, mumps and rubella. Throat swabs and urine specimens were collected on the fifth and sixth day of illness, respectively. Genotyping demonstrated measles vaccine strain Schwarz (genotype A). If measles and rubella were not under enhanced surveillance in Croatia, the case would have been either misreported as rubella or not recognised at all.


Introduction

Vaccination against measles was introduced into the Croatian vaccination schedule in 1968 for all children at the age of 12 months and at first grade of elementary school. The vaccine containing the Edmonston-Zagreb measles virus strain was produced by the Institute of Immunology, Zagreb. In 1976, the monovalent measles vaccine was replaced by a trivalent measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, containing the same Edmonston-Zagreb strain of the same producer. In 2008, 18 cases of vaccine-associated mumps were reported that has resulted from transmission of the mumps component (L-Zagreb) to close contacts of children who had received primary vaccination with this trivalent vaccine [3,4,11]. This vaccine was thereafter replaced by Priorix (GSK; containing the RIT 4385 mumps virus strain and the Schwarz measles virus strain) for the first MMR vaccination in January 2009. The MMR vaccine produced by the Croatian Institute of Immunology is still used for the second dose of MMR. Since the MMR vaccine used for primary vaccination was changed in January 2009, vaccine-associated mumps in contacts of vaccinees have no longer been reported [5].

No suspected measles or rubella cases were reported in Croatia during 2010. In the last five-year period, one local outbreak of rubella occurred in Croatia in 2007, affecting 39 adolescents and one outbreak of measles in 2008, affecting 51 people. The illness in the index cases of both outbreaks was imported. Independently of these two outbreaks, only five cases of measles and another five cases of rubella were reported in Croatia from 2005 to 2009, which were eventually discarded by serology or classified as imported. After receiving information on a measles outbreak in Roma children in Bulgaria in 2009 [6,7] and media reports on rubella cases in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croatian Institute of Public Health sent a circular letter to healthcare workers in Croatia on 15 March 2010 to raise awareness of possible importations of measles and rubella.

Four suspected rubella cases were notified in Croatia in the second half of March 2010. Three cases were discarded based on negative serology for measles and rubella and lack of epidemiological link to a possible source. One case may have had a chance to be exposed to rubella but also had a history of MMR vaccination and is described here.

Case description

A healthy child (14 months-old) was vaccinated on 9 March 2010 with Priorix MMR vaccine according to the Croatian childhood vaccination schedule. The child had facial erythema without fever on 14 March and developed a macular rash and fever on 17 March. It was examined on 21 March at the county hospital and reported as a possible case of rubella to the epidemiology department at the County Institute of Public Health on 23 March.

Since rubella and measles are under enhanced surveillance according to the national action plan for measles and rubella elimination, an epidemiological investigation was initiated, and serum, urine and throat swab specimens for laboratory testing were obtained. The investigation found no similar cases among contacts of the patient. A source of rubella infection was not identified, however, possible exposure to rubella or measles virus could not be completely excluded, because the child had travelled abroad during the two weeks preceding the illness.

A serum sample and throat swabs were taken on 23 March and a urine specimen on 24 March. On 26 March, the rash was still present. Serum was obtained again from the convalescent child on 11 April. In addition, a serum sample from the asymptomatic pregnant mother was obtained on 24 March.

Laboratory investigation

Serologic tests of the patient and mother were performed at the World Health Organization (WHO) national measles laboratory, Virology Department, Croatian Institute of Public Health. For the detection of specific measles and rubella IgM and IgG antibodies we used commercial ELISA (Rubella IgM/IgG: Dia Sorin; Measles IgM/IgG: Genzyme Virotech GmbH). For detection of specific mumps IgM and IgG antibodies, a commercial immunofluorescence test was used (Euroimmun). Throat swab and urine were initially tested for measles virus at the Department of Molecular Diagnostics, Croatian Institute of Public Health using real-time RT-PCR (Applied Biosystems), using the primer/probe set for the measles virus nucleoprotein (N) gene [2].

The child's paired sera were tested in parallel. The first serum tested negative for IgM and IgG antibodies against rubella virus and mumps virus, while measles antibodies were equivocal for IgM and negative for IgG. The child's second serum obtained on 11 April also tested negative for both IgM and IgG rubella antibodies, while measles antibodies were negative for IgM, but IgG-positive, and mumps antibodies were postitive for IgM as well as for IgG. The mother was negative for IgM and positive for IgG antibodies against both measles and rubella virus (the mother’s vaccination status could not be determined with certainty). The child's throat swab was negative in RT-PCR for measles RNA, while the urine tested positive.

An additional RT-PCR was performed, targeting the 3’-end of the N gene [1]. PCR products were obtained from throat swab and urine, sequenced and compared using the BLAST algorithm, and finally identified as Schwarz vaccine strain (genotype A).

Discussion

We demonstrated excretion of the Schwarz measles vaccine virus in a child with a vaccine-associated febrile rash illness in urine and in pharyngeal excretions.

Virus excretion in vaccinees has been reported before [8-10], but to our knowledge, this is documented for the first time for the Schwarz vaccine strain. Interestingly, although the blood for serology testing was obtained 14 and 32 days after vaccination, the child still had no antibodies to rubella virus in either serum sample. It is unclear why there was no seroconversion to rubella 32 days after vaccination, although this is not an unusual finding. The dynamics of measles and mumps antibodies were as expected for someone who had either been vaccinated or had natural infection, indicating that the child did not have impaired antibody production kinetics in general.

According to WHO guidelines for measles and rubella elimination, routine discrimination between aetiologies of febrile rash disease is done by antibody assays, not necessarily by virus detection [12]. However, in a patient recently MMR-vaccinated, only molecular techniques can differentiate between wildtype measles or rubella infection or vaccine-associated disease.

This case report demonstrates that excretion of Schwarz measles virus occurs in vaccinees. Also, it demonstrates a need to strengthen surveillance of measles and rubella cases continuously, also in countries that are currently approaching elimination of measles and rubella.

Competing interests: Maja Santak is an employee of the Institute of Immunology, Zagreb, the national vaccine producer.


References

  1. Forcić D, Baricević M, Zgorelec R, Kruzić V, Kaić B, Marina BM, et al. Detection and characterization of measles virus strains in cases of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis in Croatia. Virus Res. 2004;99(1):51-6.
  2. Hummel KB, Lowe L, Bellini WJ, Rota PA. Development of quantitative gene-specific real-time RT-PCR assays for the detection of measles virus in clinical specimens. J Virol Methods. 2006;132(1-2):166-73.
  3. Kaic B, Aleraj B, Ljubicic M, Gjenero-Margan I, Nemeth-Blazic T, Simunovic A et al. Adverse events following immunization in Croatia in 2005. [Croatian]. Report. Zagreb: Croatian Institute of Public Health, 2006.
  4. Kaic B, Gjenero-Margan I, Aleraj B, Ljubin-Sternak S, Vilibic-Cavlek T, Kilvain S, et al. Transmission of the L-Zagreb mumps vaccine virus, Croatia, 2005-2008. Euro Surveill. 2008;13(16):pii=18843. Available from: http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=18843
  5. Kaic B, Gjenero-Margan I, Aleraj B, Ljubicic M, Nemeth-Blazic T, Simunovic A, et al. Adverse events following immunization in Croatia in 2007-2008. [Croatian]. Report. Zagreb: Croatian Institute of Public Health, 2008. [Accessed 10 May 2010]. Available from: http://www.hzjz.hr/epidemiologija/nuspojave2008.pdf
  6. Marinova L, Kojouharova M, Mihneva Z. An ongoing measles outbreak in Bulgaria, 2009. Euro Surveill. 2009;14(26):pii=19259. Available from: http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19259
  7. Marinova L, Muscat M, Mihneva Z, Kojouharova M. An update on an ongoing measles outbreak in Bulgaria, April-November 2009. Euro Surveill. 2009;14(50):pii=19442. Available from: http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19442
  8. Morfin F, Beguin A, Lina B, Thouvenot D. Detection of measles vaccine in the throat of a vaccinated child. Vaccine. 2002;20(11-12):1541-3.
  9. Rota PA, Khan AS, Durigon E, Yuran T, Villamarzo YS, Bellini WJ.. Detection of measles virus RNA in urine specimens from vaccine recipients. J Clin Microbiol. 1995;33(9):2485-8.
  10. Strebel PM, Papania MJ, Dayan GH, Halsey NA. Measles vaccine. In: Plotkin S, Orenstein W, Offit P, editors. Vaccines. 5th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier; 2009.
  11. Tesović G, Poljak M, Lunar MM, Kocjan BJ, Seme K, Vukić BT, et al. Horizontal transmission of the Leningrad-Zagreb mumps vaccine strain: a report of three cases. Vaccine. 2008;26(16):1922-5.
  12. World Health Organization. Surveillance Guidelines for Measles, Rubella and Congenital Rubella Syndrome in the WHO European Region. Copenhagen: WHO; 2009. p.6-14. Available from: http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/79020/E93035.pdf

http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19652

Homeopathy Safe Medicine Searching for safe medicine. Exposing dangerous drugs and vaccines.

Homeopathy Safe Medicine Searching for safe medicine. Exposing dangerous drugs and vaccines. Sunday, 28 December 2014 Use Homeopathy and stay healthy for a long time! People who use Homeopathy to keep themselves healthy, and help them recover from illness, stay healthy over the long-term. This has been the experience of many people who rely on this highly effective, and completely safe, medical therapy for over 200 years.

Now, what so many of us have believed and experienced for so long, to our benefit, has been reinforced by academic research. And Homeopathy has been found to have a long-lasting benefit.

The question the researchers asked was "How healthy are chronically ill patients after 8 years of homeopathic treatment?" and they set up a long-term observational study to discover the answer. A total of 3,709 patients were studied, and their perceived change in both complaint severity, and quality of life was analysed. The conclusion was simple, concise and extremely clear.

"Patients who seek homeopathic treatment are likely to improve considerably" and "these effects persist for as long as 8 years".

To read more about this research, see these links:

Claudia M Witt, Rainer Lüdtke, Nils Mengler, and Stefan N Willich http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2630323/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1298309/

So if you suffer from an illness, especially if it is a long-term illness, and despite ongoing conventional medical treatment; or if you just want to stay healthy, you no longer have to believe the 'there is no evidence' school of thought, so loved by our mainstream media!

There is plenty of evidence that Homeopathy works, safely and effectively.

And the main evidence comes from people who use it!

http://safe-medicine.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/people-who-use-homeopathy-to-keep.html

TITLE: Homeoprophylaxis – Can you believe it?

TITLE: Homeoprophylaxis; Can you believe it?AUTHOR: © Elena Cecchetto CCH, NSHom(NA), MSc(cand) AUDIENCE: Myself, my professors, other students, other homeopaths, other interested parties. PURPOSE: To critically challenge the epistemology of an element of Homeopathic Practice; specifically the idea that Homeopathy can be successful in preventing disease amongst a population for epidemic or pandemic disease outbreaks. ABSTRACT: I have written this essay to deconstruct an aspect of my clinical practice. There is controversy around the use of homeoprophylaxis in preventing disease during epidemics and pandemics. I wanted to see if there was research that could demonstrate the ability to use homeopathy in epidemics/pandemics. If so, what type of research and can it be recognized as valid. If it is not, why not? I explored and gathered information, interviews with practitioners, charts, essays, population studies and Random Controlled Trials. These helped to see the various levels of ability for homeopathic remedies to be used to prevent infectious diseases in a laboratory and in actual contemporary populations. However, these studies are in contrast within the prevailing paradigm to do with how homeopathic remedies work. Since there is an underlying disbelief in the idea that highly diluted substances could work, there is a difficulty in accepting the studies that demonstrate success for homeopathic remedies.

Introduction:

Can homeopathy help for prevention of disease in epidemics or pandemics? I have been using Dr. Isaac Golden’s (2007) homeoprophylaxis (HP) program for children in my homeopathic clinical practice for 8 years. However, when clients and others ask for the scientific evidence, my reference to historical accounts of the use of homeopathy during actual epidemics doesn’t always seem to satisfy them. As I am questioning what is science and what is knowledge, I am also unsure. The purpose of this essay is to identify and come to an understanding of the idea behind using homeopathy for the prevention of illness in epidemic or pandemic diseases and addressing whether there is valid demonstration of the successful use of homeopathy for epidemics/pandemic diseases. Ranging from historical references, Random Control Trials (RCTs) and population studies, and provings; are these sufficient to demonstrate the premise that homeopathic treatment can be used to have an impact on infectious diseases? Are there factors limiting the research or use of the information generated?

Important aspects of this essay defined:

According to Webster’s online dictionary (2013), Epidemics and pandemics refer to an outbreak of an infections disease where many people are affected in a wide geographic area. A pandemic is the same except it is affecting a larger geographic area that can occur beyond borders of one region or even country. The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann explains in the Organon (1996), that homeopathy is most simply defined as a medical art relying on two main principles being the law of minimum dose and the law of similars. Homeoprophylaxis is the use of homeopathic remedies to prevent ahead of time a specific disease. A homeopathic remedy proving is a collection of observed and recorded signs and symptoms conducted according to the instructions outlined in Hahnemann’s (1996) Organon. The material medica is the resource where these provings and other useful sources are compiled for organized reference of each remedy’s therapeutic uses.

How did the use of homeopathy for epidemics start?

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann and homeopaths inspired by him and his writings in the Organon have seemed to make good use of homeopathic treatment to help people who have succumbed to infectious diseases or to help prevent them from succumbing to them. It was Hahnemann’s discriminating observation in 1789 that began the exploration of prevention of disease with homeopathic remedies. In his Lesser Writings (1852), he first described his experience preventing Scarlet Fever by giving them all doses of Belladonna in addition to the members of the family who had contracted it. Using the principles of homeopathic medicine combined with knowledge of homeopathic remedies from provings or other material medica resources has granted the use remedies homeoprophylactically.

Physician’s records:

Historical references of hospital reports are one way a direct comparison can be made between homeopathy and non-homeopathic treatment. In the chart below compiled by Navab (2012), numbers of patient deaths in hospitals are compared to allopathic numbers of deaths. In these reports the rate of success for homeopaths in specific hospitals is shown as a mortality rate of less than 10% for the treatment of scarlet fever, cholera, typhus fever, pneumonia, yellow fever and Spanish influenza. The mortality rates for the conventional doctors of the time (termed allopaths) are over 10% for each of these diseases. The treatments the allopaths had for the 1918 flu were limited to aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid according to Billings (1997) compared to what is available now. It is also very plausible that the results in charts are simply lower for allopaths because the allopathic medicines used between 1798 and 1918 were not as sophisticated as the ones in the present.

homeopathic immunizations historical success rates for homeopathy and homeoprophylaxis in the medical system

In the 1800’s and early 1900’s when homeopaths were working as physicians within the medical system of society of the day, they had access to a statistically significant number of patients. Because these reports were created centuries ago, the information is open to interpretation. Reading the information in the chart above, different people will have different perspectives on the information presented depending on a person’s prior knowledge, beliefs and filters that can affect the conclusions (Fuller, 2003). A person educated in homeopathy (presumable already believing that homeopathy works) might ask ‘what remedies did they use?’ while a person not knowing homeopathy might simply ask the question ‘how’.

The homeopathic physicians had the same or similar access to clinical surroundings and tools available to the allopathic physicians. During the 1918 Influenza in California, Elsa Engle was a nurse practitioner using homeopathic remedies under instruction from Dr. Engle. As Malthouse (2010) wrote from an interview that was conducted by Frances Kalfus in 1992, the then 97 year old Elsa Engle explains their success at Hahnemann Hospital; “They all had about the same symptoms. You didn't have to do anything else but give them a bottle of Gelsemium, followed with a bottle of Eupatorium perfoliatum... In five days practically all of them were well”. Gelsemium and Eupatorium perfoliatum are homeopathic remedies that are still commonly used for influenza. The CBC report (Puri, 2009) explained to viewers during the many homeopathic clients were turning to the remedy Gelsemium that was “used extensively during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918” for the H1N1 flu. However, with information or data and its style of presentation, each person will come to a different conclusion depending on prior experiences and beliefs. In order for something like homeopathy, because it might be in contrast with a strong belief, even the highest quality of research won’t suffice to change that belief despite what a study shows. Rutten (2008) describes the problem that “Prior beliefs are updated in the Bayesian process, but the first prior belief has a special position. This first prior belief is very strong, we need to consider how strong and why. It is in fact paradigmatic and might not be susceptible to Bayes’ theorum”. Perhaps only a strong personal experience (seeing is believing) might be the only thing that can change a strong prior belief.

RCTs Japanese Encephalitis (JE):

Looking at two Random Control Trials (RCTs) in a clinical laboratory where studies were done with the infectious disease Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and doses of the homeopathic remedy, Belladonna. The authors Bandyopadhyay et al. (2010 and 2011) found statistically significant success showing that Belladonna is effective in preventing disease indicators. This is a chart from Bandyopadhyay et al. (2010) showing decreased viral infection found in the Choriallontoic Membrane (CAM) of unhatched chicks dosed with Belladonna in the four different potencies of 3, 6, 30 and 200;

For the RCT done on suckling mice by Bandyopadhyay et al. (2011), average survival rates of the infected suckling mice treated with Belladonna 200C daily for 14 days had almost double the survival rate than those not treated with Belladonna 200C. 47% survival rate for untreated mice versus 79.24% and 80.60% for the Belladonna treated mice for 7 and 14 days. In the discussion of this successful study, the authors Bandyopadhyay et al. (2011) state that homeopathic practitioners have historically been using the homeopathic remedy Belladonna for the prevention of JE without any RCT experimental proof of how it works and therefore there is further need to test how it is that the homeopathic remedy Belladonna has showed an ability to prevent JE. This study has successfully shown a specific outcome. However, the question of the properties of Belladonna that made it work is what the authors chose to recommend as required further study.

Population Studies: Swine Flu in India:

In India 2009 a Swine Flu patient study involving 23 Homeopaths and 1146 patients was conducted by Mathie et al. (2013) which took a set of previous agreed upon (by the Centre for Clinical Research of Homeopathy (CCRH)) group of symptoms defining Swine Flu by Homeopaths working in government approved health centres in India. The Homeopaths agreed to record their results in a formatted excel chart between October, 2009 and February, 2010. The most frequently prescribed remedy that helped the patients as the primary care for the Swine Flu was Arsenicum album; the very same remedy that the CCRH had identified as the as a prophylactic Genus Epidemicus for this pandemic. Results like this can tempt the enthusiast to proclaim at this as proof that homeopathy can be used in epidemics.

However, the overarching challenge in demonstrating the proof that homeopathy can be successful for epidemics and pandemics through research and information is that it contrasts the current prevailing paradigm. To express this idea Rutten (2008) quotes Vandenbroucke (2001) “Accepting that infinite dilutions work would subvert more than conventional medicine; it wrecks a whole edifice of chemistry and physics”. With this in mind, the work shown in this study could present to different conclusions to people with different prior beliefs. If accepting the validity of homeopathic remedies is not a possibility within the belief system than accepting this study as successfully demonstrating that homeopathy can help in epidemics is also not a possibility.

Leptospirosis in Cuba:

A study by Bracho et al. (2009) was conducted with 2.3 million people in Cuba. The population above 1 year of age was given two oral doses of the Leptospirosis Nosode in the 200C and 10M potencies with an interval of 7-9 days between doses. Then ten to twelve months later, they were given another two oral doses of the 10M potency 7-9 days apart. These homeopathic remedies were administered by approximately 5000 Cuban public health system personnel using five drops (250-300 µL) under the tongue (sublingually) 20 minutes away from eating or drinking or smoking. One year of comparison between the area that received doses (the Intervention Region, IR) and the Rest of the Country (RC) showed a significant decrease of cases of Leptospirosis in the IR. This study looked at the numbers generated by the same institutions that are responsible for managing epidemic disease diagnosis and prognosis in Cuba (the national weekly report based on provincial data generated by the Trend Analysis Unit from the Minister of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba). According to Bracho (2009) their prediction of number of cases of Leptrospirosis was 111-461 in the Intervention Region in the most precarious 3 week period (weeks 47-52 of 2007 because of number of days between the start of the increased rainfalls and infection rates) when only actually 38 confirmed cases showed up. This was a reduction of 91.8% to 65.8% in the IR. Despite that there were increased risks of Leptospirosis infection that year due to extreme rainfall in October-November in the IR, the annual number of cases decreased by 84% while in the RC there was an increase of 21.7%. The authors conclude that these findings lend to a high degree of confidence that using homeopathic remedies to prevent disease in populations is a useful tool for epidemics and pandemics.

This study shows successful implementation of homeopathy for a population during an actual epidemic and demonstrates that homeopathy is successful in preventing illness during epidemics or pandemics. Whether this study will model a way that homeopathy can show success in preventing disease amongst a population for epidemic or pandemic disease outbreaks is still in question (Roniger, 2010). The positive aspect of this study is that there were millions of Cubans who willingly experienced homeopathy by taking those remedies in compliance with their predominant health professionals. As Rutton (2008) points out, changing towards a belief in homeopathic medicine might require a turning point such as a personal experience. What that has been shown to do is “We may accept evidence that we did not accept before. We may abandon the first prior, rearrange and re-interpret the evidence and then the process of sequential updating can start”. That way a previous belief that contradicts the idea that homeopathic remedies will not continue to stand in the way of some possible data or information being presented in research of various types.

Conclusions:

In this essay I’ve brought to attention various types of demonstrations of the use of homeopathy for epidemics and pandemics, including some that are the accepted standard for medical science. Using these examples it seems to be possible to demonstrate the specific success with RCT studies, population studies plus historical records on the use of homeopathy during epidemics/pandemics. As Bracho says (2010) it is also possible to conduct further studies with a significant level of confidence that homeopathy will prove itself as a valid way to address the health of populations during epidemics/pandemics. However, the criteria required in order to conduct this type of research isn’t always easily available to homeopaths in various parts of the world. So far it seems that there is a facility in Cuba that has opportunity to do this plus certain homeopaths in certain clinics of India are also already established for these types of studies.

There are challenges to the understanding and acceptance of use of homeopathic remedies for epidemics and pandemics. Part of it lies within the current paradigm that predominates. The disbelief that highly diluted substances such as homeopathic remedies could have a therapeutic action is the paradigm that limits the acceptance of studies on homeopathy despite their success in showing specific outcomes. With a prior acceptance of biochemical medicine combined with an expectation that homeopathy would act in the same manner, there is not a certain type of research that would qualify to change that disbelief that homeopathic remedies work because the prior belief is too many steps away from the new belief. It is recommended from this overview that any further studies to address the ability to use homeopathy for epidemics and pandemics should acknowledge that whether the reader concludes the study acceptable or not has to do with the challenge of the paradigm surrounding how homeopathic remedies work. Do not use this publication or any part of this publication without permission from the author © Elena Cecchetto CCH, NSHom(NA), MSc(cand)

REFERENCES:

Bandyopadhyay, B. (2010) Decreased intensity of japanese encephalitis virus infection in chick chorioallantoic membrane under influence of ultradilutions of belladonna extract. American Journal of Infectious Diseases 6 (2): 24-28.

Bandyopadhyay, B. (2011) Suckling mice of “belladonna 200” fed mothers evade virulent nakayama strain japanese encephalitis virus infection. International Journal of Microbiological Research 2 (3): 252-257.

Billings, M. (1997) The Medical and Scientific Conceptions of Influenza. Last accessed December 16th, 2013 at http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/fluscimed.html

Bodman, F. (1975) The quest for specifics. British Homoeopathic Journal. 64 (1): 30-39.

Bracho, G., Varela, E., Ferna ́ndez, R., Ordaz, B., Marzoa, N., Mene ́ndez, J., Garc ́ıa, L., Gilling, E., … Campa, C. (2010) Large-scale application of highly-diluted bacteria for leptospirosis epidemic control. Homeopathy 99, 156-166. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2010.05.009

Fuller, S. (2003) Kuhn vs. Popper. Duxford, Cambridge, UK: Icon Books Ltd.

Golden, I. (2007) Vaccination & homeoprophylaxis? A review of risks and alternatives (6th edition), Canberra: National Library

Hahnemann, S. (1996). Organon of the medical art (6th Edition) edited and annotated by W.B. O’Rielly. Redmond, Washington: Birdcage Books.

Hahnemann, S. (1852) Lesser writings of Samuel Hahnemann last accessed Dec 2, 2013 at http://books.google.ca/books?id=YwTZzl_fk74C&dq=lesser%20writings%20by%20samuel%20hahnemann&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=lesser%20writings%20by%20samuel%20hahnemann&f=false

Mathie, R., Baitson, E., Frye, J., Nayak, C., Manchanda, R, and Fisher, P. (2013) Homeopathic treatment of patients with influenza-like illness during the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic in india. Homeopathy 102, 187-192. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.homp.2013.04.001

Malthouse, S., (2010) Homeopathy and Influenze; The Spanish Flu experience. The Immunity Challenge Conference Presentation. last accessed December 2, 2013 at http://www.cmcgc.com/media/handouts/061035/040_Malthouse.pdf

Navab, I. (2012) Lives saved by homeopathy in epidemics and pandemics. last accessed November 23, 2013 at http://drnancymalik.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/epidemics-and-pandemics/

Puri, B. (2009) Last accessed Dec 12-13 at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/some-seek-alternative-swine-flu-therapies-1.833973

Roniger, H & Jacobs. (2010) Prophylaxis against leptospirosis using a nosode: Can this cohort study serve as a model for future replications?. The Faculty of homeopathy 99, 152-155. doi.10.1016/j.homp.2010.06.004

Rutton, A. (2008) How can we change beliefs? A bayesian perspective. The Faculty of Homeopathy 97, 214-219. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2008.09.007

Vandenbroucke, JP & de Crean. (2001) Alternative medicine “a mirror image” for scientific reasoning in conventional medicine. Ann Intern Med 135, 507-513

Webster’s online dictionary. Last accessed November 23rd, 2013 at http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/epidemic

Webster’s online dictionary. Last accessed November 23rd, 2013 at http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/pandemic Do not use this publication or any part of this publication without permission from the author © Elena Cecchetto CCH, NSHom(NA), MSc(cand)

Homeoprophylaxis – Can you believe it? © Elena Cecchetto

AUDIENCE: Myself, my professors, other students, other homeopaths, other interested parties. PURPOSE: To critically challenge the epistemology of an element of Homeopathic Practice; specifically the idea that Homeopathy can be successful in preventing disease amongst a population for epidemic or pandemic disease outbreaks.

ABSTRACT:

I have written this essay to deconstruct an aspect of my clinical practice. There is controversy around the use of homeoprophylaxis in preventing disease during epidemics and pandemics. I wanted to see if there was research that could demonstrate the ability to use homeopathy in epidemics/pandemics. If so, what type of research and can it be recognized as valid. If it is not, why not? I explored and gathered information, interviews with practitioners, charts, essays, population studies and Random Controlled Trials. These helped to see the various levels of ability for homeopathic remedies to be used to prevent infectious diseases in a laboratory and in actual contemporary populations. However, these studies are in contrast within the prevailing paradigm to do with how homeopathic remedies work. Since there is an underlying disbelief in the idea that highly diluted substances could work, there is a difficulty in accepting the studies that demonstrate success for homeopathic remedies.

Introduction:

Can homeopathy help for prevention of disease in epidemics or pandemics? I have been using Dr. Isaac Golden’s (2007) homeoprophylaxis (HP) program for children in my homeopathic clinical practice for 7 years. However, when clients and others ask for the scientific evidence, my reference to historical accounts of the use of homeopathy during actual epidemics doesn’t always seem to satisfy them. As I am questioning what is science and what is knowledge, I am also unsure. The purpose of this essay is to identify and come to an understanding of the idea behind using homeopathy for the prevention of illness in epidemic or pandemic diseases and addressing whether there is valid demonstration of the successful use of homeopathy for epidemics/pandemic diseases. Ranging from historical references, Random Control Trials (RCTs) and population studies, and provings; are these sufficient to demonstrate the premise that homeopathic treatment can be used to have an impact on infectious diseases? Are there factors limiting the research or use of the information generated?

Important aspects of this essay defined:

According to Webster’s online dictionary (2013), Epidemics and pandemics refer to an outbreak of an infections disease where many people are affected in a wide geographic area. A pandemic is the same except it is affecting a larger geographic area that can occur beyond borders of one region or even country. The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann explains in the Organon (1996), that homeopathy is most simply defined as a medical art relying on two main principles being the law of minimum dose and the law of similars. Homeoprophylaxis is the use of homeopathic remedies to prevent ahead of time a specific disease. A homeopathic remedy proving is a collection of observed and recorded signs and symptoms conducted according to the instructions outlined in Hahnemann’s (1996) Organon. The material medica is the resource where these provings and other useful sources are compiled for organized reference of each remedy’s therapeutic uses.

How did the use of homeopathy for epidemics start?

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann and homeopaths inspired by him and his writings in the Organon have seemed to make good use of homeopathic treatment to help people who have succumbed to infectious diseases or to help prevent them from succumbing to them. It was Hahnemann’s discriminating observation in 1789 that began the exploration of prevention of disease with homeopathic remedies. In his Lesser Writings (1852), he first described his experience preventing Scarlet Fever by giving them all doses of Belladonna in addition to the members of the family who had contracted it. Using the principles of homeopathic medicine combined with knowledge of homeopathic remedies from provings or other material medica resources has granted the use remedies homeoprophylactically.

Physician’s records:

Historical references of hospital reports are one way a direct comparison can be made between homeopathy and non-homeopathic treatment. In the chart below compiled by Navab (2012), numbers of patient deaths in hospitals are compared to allopathic numbers of deaths. In these reports the rate of success for homeopaths in specific hospitals is shown as a mortality rate of less than 10% for the treatment of scarlet fever, cholera, typhus fever, pneumonia, yellow fever and Spanish influenza. The mortality rates for the conventional doctors of the time (termed allopaths) are over 10% for each of these diseases. The treatments the allopaths had for the 1918 flu were limited to aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid according to Billings (1997) compared to what is available now. It is also very plausible that the results in charts are simply lower for allopaths because the allopathic medicines used between 1798 and 1918 were not as sophisticated as the ones in the present.

Year Location Disease Treatment by Homeopathy Treatment by Allopathy Treatment with No Medicine 1799 Königslütter, Germany Scarlet Fever Mortality <5% 1830 ~ ‘31* Russia Cholera Mortality 11 %Reported by Imperial Council & Foreign Ministry of Russia. Mortality 63 %Reported by Imperial Council & Foreign Ministry of Russia. Not recorded. 1830 ~ 1832 Vienna, Prague, Hungary and Moravia Cholera Mortality 7 %Reported by Dr. Kath, appointed by King of Bavaria. Mortality 31 %Reported by Dr. Kath, appointed by King of Bavaria. Not recorded. 1836** Vienna Cholera Mortality 33 %Lead Homeopath in charge was Dr. Fleischmann Mortality 66 % 1847 Ireland Typhus fever Mortality 2 %Lead Homeopath in charge was Dr. Joseph Kidd Mortality 13 %Lead Allopath in charge was Dr. Abraham Tuckey Not recorded. 1847 England Typhus fever Mortality 2 % Mortality 13 % Mortality 10 % 1848 Edinburgh, Scotland Cholera Mortality 24 %Reported by Edinburgh Dispensary. Mortality 68 %Reported by Edinburgh Dispensary. Not recorded. mid 1800’s Austria Pneumonia Mortality 5 %Lead Homeopath in charge was Dr. Fleischmann Mortality 20 %Lead Allopath in charge was Dr. Dietl Not recorded. 1853 ~ 1855 South of America Yellow fever Mortality 5.4 %Lead Homeopaths in charge were Dr. F. Davis and Dr. W. Holconibe Not Available. Not recorded. 1854 London, England Cholera Mortality 16.4 %Reported by Royal College of Physicians. Mortality 59.2 %Reported by Royal College of Physicians. Not recorded. 1878 New Orleans, USA Yellow fever Mortality 5.6 %Special Commission reported the statistics. Mortality 17 %Special Commission reported the statistics. Not recorded. 1918*** Pittsburgh, USA Spanish Influenza Mortality 1.05 %Reported by Dean, Pittsburgh Hospital Mortality 30 %Reported by Dean, Pittsburgh Hospital Not recorded.

In the 1800’s and early 1900’s when homeopaths were working as physicians within the medical system of society of the day, they had access to a statistically significant number of patients. Because these reports were created centuries ago, the information is open to interpretation. Reading the information in the chart above, different people will have different perspectives on the information presented depending on a person’s prior knowledge, beliefs and filters that can affect the conclusions (Fuller, 2003). A person educated in homeopathy (presumable already believing that homeopathy works) might ask ‘what remedies did they use?’ while a person not knowing homeopathy might simply ask the question ‘how’.

The homeopathic physicians had the same or similar access to clinical surroundings and tools available to the allopathic physicians. During the 1918 Influenza in California, Elsa Engle was a nurse practitioner using homeopathic remedies under instruction from Dr. Engle. As Malthouse (2010) wrote from an interview that was conducted by Frances Kalfus in 1992, the then 97 year old Elsa Engle explains their success at Hahnemann Hospital; “They all had about the same symptoms. You didn't have to do anything else but give them a bottle of Gelsemium, followed with a bottle of Eupatorium perfoliatum... In five days practically all of them were well”. Gelsemium and Eupatorium perfoliatum are homeopathic remedies that are still commonly used for influenza. The CBC report (Puri, 2009) explained to viewers during the many homeopathic clients were turning to the remedy Gelsemium that was “used extensively during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918” for the H1N1 flu. However, with information or data and its style of presentation, each person will come to a different conclusion depending on prior experiences and beliefs. In order for something like homeopathy, because it might be in contrast with a strong belief, even the highest quality of research won’t suffice to change that belief despite what a study shows. Rutten (2008) describes the problem that “Prior beliefs are updated in the Bayesian process, but the first prior belief has a special position. This first prior belief is very strong, we need to consider how strong and why. It is in fact paradigmatic and might not be susceptible to Bayes’ theorum”. Perhaps only a strong personal experience (seeing is believing) might be the only thing that can change a strong prior belief.

RCTs Japanese Encephalitis (JE):

Looking at two Random Control Trials (RCTs) in a clinical laboratory where studies were done with the infectious disease Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and doses of the homeopathic remedy, Belladonna. The authors Bandyopadhyay et al. (2010 and 2011) found statistically significant success showing that Belladonna is effective in preventing disease indicators. This is a chart from Bandyopadhyay et al. (2010) showing decreased viral infection found in the Choriallontoic Membrane (CAM) of unhatched chicks dosed with Belladonna in the four different potencies of 3, 6, 30 and 200;

For the RCT done on suckling mice by Bandyopadhyay et al. (2011), average survival rates of the infected suckling mice treated with Belladonna 200C daily for 14 days had almost double the survival rate than those not treated with Belladonna 200C. 47% survival rate for untreated mice versus 79.24% and 80.60% for the Belladonna treated mice for 7 and 14 days. In the discussion of this successful study, the authors Bandyopadhyay et al. (2011) state that homeopathic practitioners have historically been using the homeopathic remedy Belladonna for the prevention of JE without any RCT experimental proof of how it works and therefore there is further need to test how it is that the homeopathic remedy Belladonna has showed an ability to prevent JE. This study has successfully shown a specific outcome. However, the question of the properties of Belladonna that made it work is what the authors chose to recommend as required further study.

Population Studies: Swine Flu in India:

In India 2009 a Swine Flu patient study involving 23 Homeopaths and 1146 patients was conducted by Mathie et al. (2013) which took a set of previous agreed upon (by the Centre for Clinical Research of Homeopathy (CCRH)) group of symptoms defining Swine Flu by Homeopaths working in government approved health centres in India. The Homeopaths agreed to record their results in a formatted excel chart between October, 2009 and February, 2010. The most frequently prescribed remedy that helped the patients as the primary care for the Swine Flu was Arsenicum album; the very same remedy that the CCRH had identified as the as a prophylactic Genus Epidemicus for this pandemic. Results like this can tempt the enthusiast to proclaim at this as proof that homeopathy can be used in epidemics.

However, the overarching challenge in demonstrating the proof that homeopathy can be successful for epidemics and pandemics through research and information is that it contrasts the current prevailing paradigm. To express this idea Rutten (2008) quotes Vandenbroucke (2001) “Accepting that infinite dilutions work would subvert more than conventional medicine; it wrecks a whole edifice of chemistry and physics”. With this in mind, the work shown in this study could present to different conclusions to people with different prior beliefs. If accepting the validity of homeopathic remedies is not a possibility within the belief system than accepting this study as successfully demonstrating that homeopathy can help in epidemics is also not a possibility.

Leptospirosis in Cuba:

A study by Bracho et al. (2009) was conducted with 2.3 million people in Cuba. The population above 1 year of age was given two oral doses of the Leptospirosis Nosode in the 200C and 10M potencies with an interval of 7-9 days between doses. Then ten to twelve months later, they were given another two oral doses of the 10M potency 7-9 days apart. These homeopathic remedies were administered by approximately 5000 Cuban public health system personnel using five drops (250-300 µL) under the tongue (sublingually) 20 minutes away from eating or drinking or smoking. One year of comparison between the area that received doses (the Intervention Region, IR) and the Rest of the Country (RC) showed a significant decrease of cases of Leptospirosis in the IR. This study looked at the numbers generated by the same institutions that are responsible for managing epidemic disease diagnosis and prognosis in Cuba (the national weekly report based on provincial data generated by the Trend Analysis Unit from the Minister of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba). According to Bracho (2009) their prediction of number of cases of Leptrospirosis was 111-461 in the Intervention Region in the most precarious 3 week period (weeks 47-52 of 2007 because of number of days between the start of the increased rainfalls and infection rates) when only actually 38 confirmed cases showed up. This was a reduction of 91.8% to 65.8% in the IR. Despite that there were increased risks of Leptospirosis infection that year due to extreme rainfall in October-November in the IR, the annual number of cases decreased by 84% while in the RC there was an increase of 21.7%. The authors conclude that these findings lend to a high degree of confidence that using homeopathic remedies to prevent disease in populations is a useful tool for epidemics and pandemics.

This study shows successful implementation of homeopathy for a population during an actual epidemic and demonstrates that homeopathy is successful in preventing illness during epidemics or pandemics. Whether this study will model a way that homeopathy can show success in preventing disease amongst a population for epidemic or pandemic disease outbreaks is still in question (Roniger, 2010). The positive aspect of this study is that there were millions of Cubans who willingly experienced homeopathy by taking those remedies in compliance with their predominant health professionals. As Rutton (2008) points out, changing towards a belief in homeopathic medicine might require a turning point such as a personal experience. What that has been shown to do is “We may accept evidence that we did not accept before. We may abandon the first prior, rearrange and re-interpret the evidence and then the process of sequential updating can start”. That way a previous belief that contradicts the idea that homeopathic remedies will not continue to stand in the way of some possible data or information being presented in research of various types.

Conclusions:

In this essay I’ve brought to attention various types of demonstrations of the use of homeopathy for epidemics and pandemics, including some that are the accepted standard for medical science. Using these examples it seems to be possible to demonstrate the specific success with RCT studies, population studies plus historical records on the use of homeopathy during epidemics/pandemics. As Bracho says (2010) it is also possible to conduct further studies with a significant level of confidence that homeopathy will prove itself as a valid way to address the health of populations during epidemics/pandemics. However, the criteria required in order to conduct this type of research isn’t always easily available to homeopaths in various parts of the world. So far it seems that there is a facility in Cuba that has opportunity to do this plus certain homeopaths in certain clinics of India are also already established for these types of studies.

There are challenges to the understanding and acceptance of use of homeopathic remedies for epidemics and pandemics. Part of it lies within the current paradigm that predominates. The disbelief that highly diluted substances such as homeopathic remedies could have a therapeutic action is the paradigm that limits the acceptance of studies on homeopathy despite their success in showing specific outcomes. With a prior acceptance of biochemical medicine combined with an expectation that homeopathy would act in the same manner, there is not a certain type of research that would qualify to change that disbelief that homeopathic remedies work because the prior belief is too many steps away from the new belief. It is recommended from this overview that any further studies to address the ability to use homeopathy for epidemics and pandemics should acknowledge that whether the reader concludes the study acceptable or not has to do with the challenge of the paradigm surrounding how homeopathic remedies work.

REFERENCES:

Bandyopadhyay, B. (2010) Decreased intensity of japanese encephalitis virus infection in chick chorioallantoic membrane under influence of ultradilutions of belladonna extract. American Journal of Infectious Diseases 6 (2): 24-28.

Bandyopadhyay, B. (2011) Suckling mice of “belladonna 200” fed mothers evade virulent nakayama strain japanese encephalitis virus infection. International Journal of Microbiological Research 2 (3): 252-257.

Billings, M. (1997) The Medical and Scientific Conceptions of Influenza. Last accessed December 16th, 2013 at http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/fluscimed.html

Bodman, F. (1975) The quest for specifics. British Homoeopathic Journal. 64 (1): 30-39.

Bracho, G., Varela, E., Ferna ́ndez, R., Ordaz, B., Marzoa, N., Mene ́ndez, J., Garc ́ıa, L., Gilling, E., … Campa, C. (2010) Large-scale application of highly-diluted bacteria for leptospirosis epidemic control. Homeopathy 99, 156-166. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2010.05.009

Fuller, S. (2003) Kuhn vs. Popper. Duxford, Cambridge, UK: Icon Books Ltd.

Golden, I. (2007) Vaccination & homeoprophylaxis? A review of risks and alternatives (6th edition), Canberra: National Library

Hahnemann, S. (1996). Organon of the medical art (6th Edition) edited and annotated by W.B. O’Rielly. Redmond, Washington: Birdcage Books.

Hahnemann, S. (1852) Lesser writings of Samuel Hahnemann last accessed Dec 2, 2013 at http://books.google.ca/books?id=YwTZzl_fk74C&dq=lesser%20writings%20by%20samuel%20hahnemann&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=lesser%20writings%20by%20samuel%20hahnemann&f=false

Mathie, R., Baitson, E., Frye, J., Nayak, C., Manchanda, R, and Fisher, P. (2013) Homeopathic treatment of patients with influenza-like illness during the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic in india. Homeopathy 102, 187-192. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.homp.2013.04.001

Malthouse, S., (2010) Homeopathy and Influenze; The Spanish Flu experience. The Immunity Challenge Conference Presentation. last accessed December 2, 2013 at http://www.cmcgc.com/media/handouts/061035/040_Malthouse.pdf

Navab, I. (2012) Lives saved by homeopathy in epidemics and pandemics. last accessed November 23, 2013 at http://drnancymalik.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/epidemics-and-pandemics/

Puri, B. (2009) Last accessed Dec 12-13 at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/some-seek-alternative-swine-flu-therapies-1.833973

Roniger, H & Jacobs. (2010) Prophylaxis against leptospirosis using a nosode: Can this cohort study serve as a model for future replications?. The Faculty of homeopathy 99, 152-155. doi.10.1016/j.homp.2010.06.004

Rutton, A. (2008) How can we change beliefs? A bayesian perspective. The Faculty of Homeopathy 97, 214-219. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2008.09.007

Vandenbroucke, JP & de Crean. (2001) Alternative medicine “a mirror image” for scientific reasoning in conventional medicine. Ann Intern Med 135, 507-513

Webster’s online dictionary. Last accessed November 23rd, 2013 at http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/epidemic

Webster’s online dictionary. Last accessed November 23rd, 2013 at http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/pandemic