Words: Dr Julian JONAS
The outbreak of measles in California, USA, was reported with great alacrity in the mass media. This was a useful punctuation point for a campaign of the national medical and pharmaceutical industries to force multiple mandatory vaccinations nationwide as well as stigmatise those who withstood the pressure to participate.
People are increasingly faced with the prospect of losing jobs, or educational opportunities, based on their vaccination status. The FDA is currently unveiling a ‘Mandatory Adult Vaccination and Electronic Tracking Program,’ and supposedly social media will be monitored for ‘anti-vaccine chatter.’ Word has it that an alarm system is in the works which will identify non-vaccinated individuals and send out ‘Bio-Safety Alerts’ via text messages to cell phones in their vicinity.
California just passed a law that removed philosophical and religious exemptions to compulsory vaccines. Vermont too passed a law removing the philosophical exemption.
Lost in all the frenzy is some historical perspective, a reasoned dialogue on the pros and cons of vaccinations, and the possibility of an effective alternative to vaccinations.
It all began with Dr Samuel Hahnemann, MD, the founder of homeopathy, over two centuries ago; thereafter, it has been a long history of homeopathic remedies being used to not only cure, but also prevent illness. To highlight a case in point: Dr Hahnemann successfully used the homeopathic remedy, Belladonna, early on in his career, as a prophylactic against scarlet fever. Thirty years later, he was similarly successful in preventing cholera with Cuprum metallicum, the homeopathically-prepared copper.
Contemporaneous with Dr Hahnemann’s work, Dr Edward Jenner introduced the first vaccination for smallpox in 1798. Unlike the homeopathic prophylactics, vaccinated individuals often developed acute reactions, such as fevers or pustular eruptions, and in some cases, more chronic illnesses including migraine, neuralgia, and acne.
Vaccinosis
The homeopaths of that era, observing these reactions in their patients, coined the term ‘vaccinosis’ to describe the long-term disruptions of health induced by the smallpox vaccination. In subsequent eras, as more vaccinations were introduced, the application of the term was broadened to include chronic illness brought on by any vaccination.
Vaccinosis has become much more widespread and severe in the modern era, because not only are the number of vaccines increasing, but also the age at which people are exposed to them has decreased. Most individuals are now welcomed into the world with a vaccination. And, the development of multivalent vaccines that introduce multiple disease agents into the organism simultaneously creates an even greater challenge to the integrity of the immune system, especially in the still immature immune systems of the very young.
In fact, it would be reasonable to argue that vaccinosis is pervasive in our society — and, largely unrecognised because it has become so commonplace [Of course, the fact that the public health establishment is highly invested in promoting vaccinations is also an important factor]. While we have generally accepted it as a new ‘normal,’ the prevalence of illness due to malfunctioning immune systems — from environmental and food allergies to asthma and to the ever burgeoning number of autoimmune illnesses — is an indication of some widespread pernicious influence.
Another vector of vaccinosis relates to neurological disorders, from dyslexia and hyperactivity to autistic spectrum disorders too.
Fortunately, preventing the outbreak of specific epidemic diseases via prophylactic interventions is neither limited to the use of vaccines nor a discarded relic of 19th century homeopathic practice. Around the world contemporary homeopaths have met with great success when afforded the opportunity to treat on an individual basis, or larger populations.
Feather In The Cap
For instance, in 2007 a campaign was conducted in an area of Brazil to prevent the outbreak of dengue fever, a disease caused by a virus transmitted by mosquitoes that affects some 50 to 100 million throughout the world annually. 156,000 doses of a homeopathic remedy were freely distributed to the population in April and May. By early 2008, the incidence of dengue had fallen by 93 per cent compared to the previous year.
In the same year, another highly effective campaign to control a carried out in Cuba against an infectious bacterial disease called leptospirosis. Carried by rats and affecting both humans as well as animals, such epidemics usually occur in the late summer.
The disease agent is a form of spirochete; other species of which are also disease causing [for instance, Borrelia burgdorferi causing Lyme disease and Treponema pallidum causing syphilis]. Untreated, it produces a wide variety of symptoms from fever to liver failure and death.
Because of financial constraints, previous to 2007, the Cuban Ministry of Health distributed conventional forms of vaccination only to the most vulnerable of its population, but not to the entire population. Even so, it cost the government US$3 million annually and thousands of cases, some fatal, still occurred.
But, in 2007, the entire population of two provinces, some 2.5 million people, were given prophylactic doses of the homeopathic nosode of Leptospirosis at the cost of US$2,000. And, more importantly, the effects were superlative: only 10 cases of the disease and no deaths were reported. And, of course, there were no side-effects — no vaccinosis.
These are just two of a number of campaigns undertaken by forward-looking governmental agencies. Unfortunately, it is more than unlikely that any American governmental agency, like the FDA or Center for Disease Control [CDC], will take a serious look at the research and results of homeopathic prophylaxis campaigns.
Imagine the benefits of the widespread availability of doses homeopathic Borrelia burgdorferi [the Lyme causing spirochete] throughout the North-east, or the entire country for that matter. That isn’t going to happen. Instead, with their revolving door, hand-in-glove relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and the American Medical Association [AMA], the public health establishment will press onwards with its effort to make conventional vaccines compulsory everywhere, ignoring the collateral damage of vaccinosis.
But, while there won’t be campaigns here as in Cuba, or Brazil, individuals/people still have another option. ‘Homeoprophylaxis’ is a contemporary system, both well researched and successful, that entails the use of homeopathy preventatively against the common infectious diseases for which people — especially children — are now being inoculated.
Golden Effect
About 30 years ago, an Australian accountant named Isaac Golden became interested in vaccinations after one of his children was vaccine damaged. Golden had seen how with each set of vaccinations his child experienced increasingly severe reactions and despite the denial of any correlation by the physicians, he knew that, wittingly or unwittingly, they were themselves in denial.
Like many parents of similar children, this was a life-changing event for Golden. He began to research into vaccinations and their possible side-effects. Eventually, he made a career change, studying naturopathic medicine and finally taking a diploma in homeopathy. Through his homeopathic education, he learned that there was a long history of using homeopathic remedies as effective prophylactic medicines — similar to vaccines, but without the side-effects.
Since the mid-1980’s, Golden has specialised in the design, implementation and research of programmes to use homeopathy to prevent the onset of disease, or what is called ‘homeoprophylaxis.’ A year after taking his homeopathic licence in 1984, Golden created a regimen of homeopathic doses to be taken monthly over a five-year period for parents who wished to avoid conventional immunisations. The programme was based on what Golden had gathered from his research into the literature about how earlier homeopaths had prescribed remedies prophylactically.
Over the next twenty years, there were some modifications to the original protocol to improve the results, but overall the changes have been relatively minor and, since 2004, the regimen has remained the same. Eight homeopathic remedies, each one relating to a particular infectious disease, are given monthly on a rotating basis.
With the exception of one remedy, they are all ‘nosodes’ — or, homeopathic dilutions of a substance secreted during the course of a disease that is prescribed to prevent against that same disease. More specifically, the remedies and their related diseases are as follows:
- Pertussinum, for whooping cough
- Pneumococcinum for pneumonia
- Haemophilus [influenzae] for haemophilus B influenza
- Meningococcinum for meningitis
- Tetanus Toxin for tetanus,
- Parotidinum for mumps
- Morbillinum for measles
- Lathyrus sativus [chickpea], the only non-nosode remedy, for polio.
One remedy is given in a single dose and followed up with a triple dose of the same strength, or potency one month later. Then the next month after that another remedy is given in a single dose with the follow-up triple dose the following month and so on. It takes 16 months for the cycle to complete.
This is followed by a rest month with no remedy and, thereafter, a new cycle of eight months is begun where the same sequence of remedies is repeated as a triple dose at a higher potency for one month each. This is again followed by a rest month, and then the same cycle of triple doses is repeated, but this time every other month. The complete protocol takes 44 months.
It is Golden’s experience that the first round of remedies confers protection for about 12 months for each disease, the second cycle for approximately 5-10 years, and the third cycles for over ten years.
Having created this rather elaborate, systematic protocol, Golden was naturally interested in how well it worked. Parents of each children treated homeoprophylactically was asked to give feedback about its efficacy. As a former accountant, he had the interest in the numbers and the expertise to carry out a statistical analysis of the programme. Between 1985 and 2004, he collected 2,342 responses from parents who had used the protocol with their children.
The results of this clinical study, which formed the core of his doctoral research at an Australian university from 2000-2004 [the first ever PhD awarded in Australia for homeopathic research], showed an effectiveness of 90.04 per cent. At first glance, this might not seem to be such impressive statistics, but when compared to the efficacy of standard vaccinations it is none too shabby. The most definitive statistics from Australia published in 2013 indicate that, depending on the vaccine, the effectiveness of standard inoculations ranges from 44 per cent to 99 per cent [Ibid]. These are, in fact, estimates derived from clinical trials, and, as Golden writes, “even vaccines which are shown to be highly effective vaccines in trials are often shown to be less effective in real-world outbreaks.” To support Golden’s findings, similar results were found in Brazil where 65,000 children were immunised with the homeopathic nosode for meningococcal meningitis type B. The efficacy was 95 per cent after six months and 91 per cent after a year.
Conclusion
What is significant with homeoprophylaxis is there are no lasting toxic side-effect, no ‘collateral damage’ of neurological, or immunological, dysfunction among sensitive individuals. In addition, as part of his dissertation, Golden researched the long-term health of the children who participated in the homeoprophylaxis programme compared to three other populations: vaccinated children, unvaccinated, but constitutionally treated children, and children who were not vaccinated nor treated with homeopathy. It was his findings that of all the groups, the homeoprophylaxis children had the lowest long-term occurrence of five illnesses that he was following [Ibid].
This would seem to address questions that are raised within the homeopathic community itself about the appropriateness of addressing illness prophylactically as opposed to more traditional methods of prescribing.
Homeoprophylaxis gives parents concerned about vaccination safety — a valuable option. For those who are interested in looking into it further, inquiries are welcome.
