about how vaccines affect the immune system

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Supporting Children's Health - Part 1

by Philip Incao, M.D.

I would like to sincerely thank the editor and

publisher of Alternative Medicine Digest for

allowing us to reprint the following article from

their issue 19. This is an excellent publication

which I highly recommend to each and every one of

you. Part 2 will appear in the next issue of the

newsletter. If you would like to subscribe to

Alternative Medicine Digest ($36(US)/year from

Australia) or would like to contact them, their address is:

21 1/2 Main Street

Tiburon California 94920

USA

The rate of chronic illness in children has

tripled since 1960, possibly due in part to the

overuse of childhood vaccinations. The surprising

news is that the standard childhood illnesses

these vaccines suppress may actually benefit the immune system.

One of the best ways to ensure your

children's health is to allow them to get sick.

At first hearing, this concept may sound

outrageous. Yet standard childhood illnesses,

such as measles, mumps, and even whooping cough,

may be of key benefit to a child's developing

immune system and it may be inadvisable to

suppress these illnesses with immunisations.

Evidence is also accumulating that routine

childhood vaccinations may directly contribute to

the emergence of chronic problems such as eczema,

ear infections, asthma, and bowel inflammations.

It's a challenging medical proposition, but

ever since the 1920s, many European physicians

and a small band of American doctors (myself

included, for the past 23 years) have avoided

using most vaccinations, based on a medical

approach called Anthroposophic medicine.

In this field, we regard childhood

vaccinations as anything but routine; rather, we

consider them in most cases to be suspect,

dangerous, and worthy of exceedingly rigorous

review. Generally, we try to avoid giving most

vaccinations and rely instead on alternative,

more natural ways of helping the child cope with

what we contend are the necessary and beneficial illnesses of childhood.

The Immune System Benefits from Early Illness

Before these concepts make sense, it must be

pointed out that the immune system has two

different aspects. One aspect is called the

humoral immune system whereby antibodies

(specialised defence proteins) are produced to

recognise and neutralise antigens (foreign particles in the body).

The other aspect is called the cell-mediated

immune system, and involves white blood cells and

specialised immune cells called macrophages which

ÒeatÓ antigens. These also help drive the

antigens out of the body, causing skin rashes and

discharges of pus and mucus from the throat and

lungs. Both are typical signs of the beneficial

acute inflammatory illnesses of childhood.

These two poles of the immune system have a

reciprocal relationship. That means when the

humoral pole is overstimulated (for example, from

vaccines or allergies), the cell-mediated pole

tends to be relatively inactive. Vaccines do not

stimulate this pole, so their contents never get discharged from the body.

Polio and tetanus do not belong to this

group of beneficial standard childhood illnesses.

I use the word " standard " to denote acute

inflammatory illnesses (usually with rash and

fever) typical and common to children in Western,

industrialised nations. These illnesses are also

standard to childhood as a developmental phase,

something akin to the predictable change in teeth around age seven.

Many years ago, Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian

scientist and founder of the Anthroposophic

approach to medicine, argued that childhood

illnesses are a standard feature of childhood

because the young body needs them. Now let's see

how this plays out in a standard childhood

illness or its suppression with vaccinations.

An acute inflammatory childhood

illness--measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox,

scarlatina, or whooping cough--develops the

cell-mediated immune system, while a vaccine

activates the humoral immune system. The

difference here is crucial because it is the

cell-mediated response that protects the child

from future illness and that provides, in effect, the deeper immunity.

Physicians who practice Anthroposophical

medicine generally believe that having acute but

limited inflammatory diseases as a child helps

protect one as an adult against more serious,

long-term, chronic illnesses. Not having these

childhood illnesses (because of multiple

vaccinations) can lead to a greater incidence of

adult health problems. The same is true when

these childhood illnesses are routinely

suppressed with antibiotics rather than helping

the cell-mediated immune system to work out the

illness in a rash or mucous discharge.

Recent research in conventional medical

journals is now confirming this view. In early

1997, a team of British physicians writing in

Science made this provocative statement:

" Childhood infections may, therefore,

paradoxically protect against asthma. " In other

words, these infections have a purpose in building general immunity.

The British physicians noted that the

incidence of asthma has doubled since 1977 in

Western countries and in the U.S. it is

responsible for 33% of all paediatric

emergency-room visits. Yet this growing incidence

of asthma seems to be related more to the

suppression or absence of respiratory infections

than to the commonly perceived cause, air pollution.

Highly polluted European cities where the

use of antibiotics and immunisations is less than

in the U.S. have lower asthma rates than

comparable U.S. cities. Conversely, in Tucson,

Arizona, despite the dry heat and lack of

irritants (such as dust mites) in the air, the

rate of asthma is the same as elsewhere in the country.

The Science physicians suggested that

diseases such as tuberculosis and whooping cough

may permanently alter a child's immune system

such that they confer a lifetime protection

against asthma. Certainly they were not saying

children should have tuberculosis, but they noted

that the humoral immune system needs to be

tempered by the cell-mediated response, and this

best happens during an infectious childhood disease.

When a child undergoes an intense but

short-term lung infection, this provides the

necessary exercise of the cell-mediated immune

system. If this does not happen, the humoral

system is left unbridled and subject to

over-reaction to otherwise harmless pollen and

dust particles; eventually, this may lead to asthma.

Let's follow this idea in the case of

measles. When a child gets a measles rash, the

body excretes the virus through the skin, usually

within about four days after rash onset. If the

child does not get a measles rash, some of the

measles virus remains unneutralised in the body

where it can act as a chronic irritant to the

immune system and contribute to degenerative disease later.

The fever and rash of measles enable the

body to burn up the virus; having a measles

vaccine is like planting a seed of future

infection in the body and tricking the body not

to reject it. This is because a vaccine results

in only a partial immunity; ie., the humoral

system is triggered while the cell-mediated

system remains dormant or can even be inhibited

by the vaccine. This insight was first put

forward by Boston homoeopath Moskowitz, M.D., in the early 1980s.

Danish physician Tove Ronne stated it simply

in The Lancet in 1985: " Measles virus infection

without rash in childhood is related to disease

in adult life. " Among these, Dr. Ronne listed

skin disease, immune dysfunctions, degenerative

diseases of bone and cartilage, and certain

cancers. It's alarming to note that a few years

later, in 1991, the National Cancer Institute

announced that the rate of all cancers among

white American children grew by 4.1% between 1973

and 1988. More specifically, the rate of

childhood leukemia increased by 10.7% while brain cancers soared by 30.5%.

Predisposing Children to More Disease Later?

Put simply, the research suggests that if

children do not undergo some type of limited

respiratory infection, they are more at risk for

developing asthma, among other problems. Michel

R. Odent, M.D., and colleagues at the Primal

Health Research Centre in London, England,

documented this connection in a report on 448

children, published in the Journal of the

American Medical Association in 1994.

Out of this group, 243 children (average

age, eight years) had been immunised with the

pertussis vaccine for whooping cough. Of these,

26 (10%) had asthma compared to only four (1.9%)

of the 208 children not immunised. This suggests

that having the pertussis vaccine can increase a

child's risk of developing asthma by more than five times.

Similarly, in the vaccinated group, 130

children had ear infections compared to only 59

among the 208 non-vaccinated. Here the risk of

developing subsequent ear infections was

increased by almost two times in

pertussis-vaccinated children. The incidence of

other diseases (excluding asthma, ear infections,

eczema, and whooping cough) was also noticeably

higher in the vaccinated group--34.6% versus 24% for non-vaccinated children.

The measles vaccine has been linked with

higher rates of inflammatory bowel disease. Based

on a study of 3,545 people who received live

measles vaccine as children, their rate of

developing ulcerative colitis was

two-and-one-half times higher and three times

higher for Crohn's compared to an unvaccinated

group, as reported in The Lancet. The MMR

(measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine has also been

implicated in higher rates of diabetes (see

accompanying sidebar, " Do Vaccinations Cause Diabetes? " ).

There are still other data suggestive of a

vaccine link with disease. For example, for

largely " unexplained " reasons, between 1960 and

1981, the rate of activity-limiting chronic

conditions among children doubled from 1.8 to

3.8%, most noticeably in allergic and

mental/nervous system disorders. By 1995, this

figure had climbed again to 6.7%. In other words,

the rate more than tripled since 1960. I contend

the rise is not " unexplained; " rather, it is

explained by the fact that we have overused antibiotics and immunisations.

Certainly this evidence paints a picture,

and it confirms what Anthroposophic physicians

have contended for 75 years. It is healthier for

the child to undergo an acute upper respiratory

infection (with appropriate herbal and

homoeopathic support, described below) than to

suppress or preempt it with antibiotics and

vaccinations. The more you allow children to work

out their acute illnesses, to really exercise

their immune systems without suppressing the

process, the stronger the system will be and the

less prone the children will be to serious adult degenerative illnesses.

When an adult comes down with an infectious,

inflammatory disease, it is actually a blessing

because it might prevent them from developing a

more serious chronic problem. I've seen adults

who suppressed inflammatory diseases, such as

bronchitis or pneumonia, then five to ten years

later came down with cancer. Letting the

inflammations run their course instead (with

support, naturally), may have prevented the cancer from developing.

How Measles Can Cure Eczema

Now let's see how undergoing childhood

measles may actually improve a child's health,

both immediately and in the long-term. Consider

the case of Hans, whom I first treated for measles when he was nine.

Hans did not receive the measles vaccine

because he was allergic to eggs. The vaccine

contains an egg product and is not recommended

for children with this allergy. When he was nine,

he came down with measles, which is a bit late

for children. Of considerable interest here is

the fact that for years Hans had suffered from

severe eczema; his skin was dry and cracked,

particularly behind the elbows and knees, and

occasionally it bled. In fact, Hans often could

not straighten his legs because the eczema made it too painful.

His measles produced a strong rash and a

fever of 104 F, yet I did nothing to suppress

these reactions with Tylenol (Panadol) or Advil

(Ibuprofin), for example, as conventional

medicine would recommend. Instead, I gave Hans

Anthroposophic remedies to support him through

the measles process. Specifically, I gave him low

potencies of Apis, Belladonna, Argentum/

Carbo/Silicea, Ferrum Phosphate, Prunus Spinosa

(from the sloe plum), and Echinacea.

These remedies do not suppress the fever,

but allow the constitution to tolerate it better.

The temperature does not need to come down, but

the child needs to be able to tolerate it. Again,

the important concept is that the fever is a

natural, useful, necessary process for a child's

health. The child must be closely observed by a

medical professional during the illness process

to be sure the course the illness is taking is

benign. It is important to find out if

complications like encephalitis or pneumonia are

developing. These rarely occur and are not

directly linked to the degree of the fever.

The remedies we use for children make the

body more transparent or permeable to allow the

toxicity or fever process to flow through it

without getting stuck. Let me illustrate this principle with an analogy.

If you have a copper rod and you light a

candle at one end of it, the warmth of the flame

will flow quickly through the rod and you feel

the warmth at the other end. Similarly, if the

body is like a copper tube, the warmth of the

fever will flow through it but not cause a

complication such as a convulsion; but if the

body is more like lead, which is dense and does

not conduct heat well, complications are likely to arise.

The lead does not conduct or dissipate the

heat; rather, it starts to melt at the point of

contact with the heat. It remains cold at one end

and gets overheated at the other. This is

analogous to the undesirable situation of

children having cold feet and a hot head. Care

should always be taken that children have warm

feet, especially during a fever.

If you suppress the fever with drugs or

antibiotics, you block this flow and make the

body more like the lead in this analogy. How long

a child has the disease is not as important as

avoiding complications. The length of time

depends on how much toxicity the body needs to discharge through the fever.

When Hans' measles were over, his eczema had

almost completely disappeared. Hans is now in his

twenties and has never had a recurrence of eczema

since his measles. This is a typical example of

how stimulating the cell-mediated side of the

immune system can help the body overcome an

allergic problem. The measles process enabled

Hans' system to stop reacting allergically and

producing the eczema symptoms. In a sense, you

could say that the fever burned the allergic reaction out of his body.

His case also underscores the fact that

childhood measles in industrialised countries is

a benign disease if you understand how to treat

it. Hans' symptoms, the high fever and intense

rash, were not mild, but scientific studies have

shown that the stronger the initial symptoms, the

less likely it is that the child will get the

damaging or dangerous complications, such as encephalitis or pneumonia.

Do Vaccinations Cause Diabetes?

While the U.S. population has only doubled since

the 1940s, the number of Americans with diabetes

has increased 200 times, and it has increased by

300% in the last 15 years alone, representing

about 15% of all U.S. health-care costs. Routine

childhood vaccinations may be a prime cause of

the diabetes epidemic, according to testimony

presented before the U.S. House of

Representatives Committee on Appropriations on

April 16, 1997, by L. Coulter, Ph.D.,

medical history scholar and president of the

Center for Empirical Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Based on animal studies, the pertussis vaccine

(part of the DPT vaccination) is known to

stimulate overproduction of insulin by the

pancreas. This is followed by exhaustion of that

organ's " islets of Langerhans " (which make

insulin) and underproduction of insulin,

resulting in chronic low blood sugar

(hypoglycaemia) and eventually diabetes, says Dr. Coulter.

Both untreated rubella and the rubella vaccine

(part of the MMR inoculation) produce immune

complexes that can damage the pancreas and

significantly reduce the levels of insulin that

organ is able to secrete. As an untreated

disease, mumps can damage the pancreas. As a

vaccine, there are now many case reports directly

linking the onset of diabetes--sometimes within

only a month's time--with receipt of the mumps

vaccination. New Zealand researchers observed a

60% increase in the cases of juvenile diabetes

following a hepatitis-B vaccination program.

Despite the mounting evidence linking vaccines

with diabetes, the U.S. government refuses to

research the connection, says Dr. Coulter. " The

fact that the federal medical

establishment--which would be the major source of

funds for such an epidemiologic investigation--is

itself highly committed to the childhood

vaccination program, goes far to explain the

absence of any official interest in this connection. "

Washington, DC 20016. Available by e-mail: hlcoulter@....

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Copyright © 1998 Australian Vaccination Network, Inc.

Last modified: January 08, 2001

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Supporting Children’s Health ­ Part 2

By Dr. Philip Incao, M.D.

How a Fever Can Reverse the Effects of a Vaccination

It is increasingly noted that many of the routine

childhood vaccinations can produce a variety of

side effects and complications, posing both

immediate and long-term dangers. Todd, aged 19

months, had all his vaccinations, including DPT,

MMR, tetanus, polio, and Hib (Haemophilus influenza type .

After his first two DPT shots at two and four

months, Todd screamed every night for a week,

after which his parents and paediatrician

realised he had reacted to the shot and should

have no more DPT. At 18 months, Todd received his

MMR and polio immunisations, after which he slept

almost continually for two days; when he was

awake, he was lethargic and his breathing was

shallow. A week later, Todd had trouble standing

erect and did not want to walk on his own. About

two weeks later, Todd came down with a 104 F

fever and a rash. When both subsided, he was his normal self again.

To understand what happened with Todd, you need

to appreciate the documented fact that some

vaccines can produce a slight but significant

state of encephalitis, or brain inflammation.

While this is usually reversible, it may also

leave lingering effects such as dyslexia or

attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I

didn't get to treat Todd until after all this had

happened, so I focused on giving him remedies to

heal his post-encephalitic state. I gave him

Arnica, Belladonna, and Formica to take for the

next six to 12 months for the after-effects of

the brain inflammation caused by the vaccines.

Todd's fever and rash following his MMR

vaccination was his body's attempt to " burn " the

vaccine toxins out of his system. The first sign

that these materials irritated his system was

Todd's lethargy, two-day sleeping binge, and

inability to walk; these symptoms, in fact,

indicated a slight brain inflammation. The second

sign was the rash and fever which arose to

discharge these toxins from the body.

In Afghanistan, the common treatment for measles

is to wrap the child in blankets to produce a

rash. The idea is that the more the measles comes

out as a skin rash, the less likely the child is

to get encephalitis or pneumonia. Anthroposophic

physicians concur with the thinking behind this " folk remedy. "

In the months immediately following his MMR

injection and reaction, Todd developed

constipation (with movements only every 2-3 days)

and a spastic bowel. I regarded this as another

symptom of his vaccine reaction. Spastic colon is

often a symptom of food allergies and according

to research reported by L. Coulter, Ph.D.,

in Vaccination, Social Violence, and Criminality:

The Medical Assault on the American Brain (North

Atlantic Books, 1990), many of today's food

allergies are traceable to vaccines. Dr. Coulter

noted that encephalitis, especially derived from

vaccinations, can produce allergic states, adding

that " the interrelation among allergies,

vaccination, and encephalitis has been an active

topic of medical investigation since the 1930s. "

While conventional medicine sees no connection

between the digestive and nervous systems, the

interrelatedness of the two is strongly

acknowledged by practitioners of Anthroposophic,

Chinese, and homoeopathic medicine.

To correct Todd's intestinal problems, I started

him on ground flaxseed at the rate of two

teaspoons, twice daily. Six months later when I

saw him next, Todd was having daily bowel

movements; the stools were softer and were

eliminated without pain. He also had no problem

standing up or moving around on his own and by

all visible signs was developing normally.

Todd cured most of the brain inflammation himself

by getting the rash and fever. However, Todd is

still at risk for a learning disability such as

dyslexia--in effect, a third layer of reaction

and damage from the vaccines--when he eventually

attends school. Many of these relationships are

subtle and problems may not surface or become noticeable until years later.

Remedies for Dealing with Childhood Illnesses

Most of the illnesses common to childhood are the

standard upper respiratory tract conditions.

While in the view of physicians practicing

Anthroposophic medicine it is crucial to not

suppress the illness with drugs or antibiotics,

we offer many remedies to parents to support the

discharging--we call it " the expressing " --of the

illness, driving it out of the body.

Typically, I find that about 90% of the childhood

illnesses can be helped with about a dozen

low-potency home remedies. I often prescribe my

personalised home remedy " kit, " which contains 13

Anthroposophic or homoeopathic medicines, to

parents wishing to approach their children's

health in this way. For example, Ferrum phosphate

is effective for relieving colds, flu, sinusitis,

or any upper respiratory infection such as

bronchitis; Cinnabar is for sore throats and

swollen lymph glands; and Apis belladonna (a

homoeopathic combination of the honey bee and

deadly nightshade) works well for fevers and pain.

These are classical homoeopathic remedies, but

among specifically Anthroposophic medicines we

often use Infludo for flu, bronchitis, or

pneumonia. This formula contains phosphorus,

Aconite, Bryonia, eucalyptus, Eupatorium, and

Sabadilla. For earaches, my home remedy kit

includes capsicum (red pepper) and the herb

lovage, given orally or directly into the ear

where it has a gentle warming effect that

relieves the pain. The parents obtain the kits

(and other Anthroposophic medicines) from Weleda

Pharmacy which prepares the kit according to my

prescription for each child. Certain

old-fashioned remedies, including milk of

magnesia which cleanses the colon, are handy for

treating children with inflammatory diseases.

>From our medical perspective, it is often not

the type of childhood illness that determines the

mix of remedies, but rather the child you are

treating. You have to individualise, based on

symptoms and the child's particular constitution.

Two different children with the same illness may

require quite different treatments.

Anthroposophic, homoeopathic, and other natural

medicines have also enabled me for the last 20

years to avoid using antibiotics in treating

children. The aim of treatment is to support the

externalising and discharging of the illness

process--to get it out of the body--so that no

residual illness remains to become a chronic

problem later in life. The essential point is

that health is not merely the absence of illness,

as conventional medicine presumes. Rather, it is

the balance between acute inflammatory and

chronic illnesses; when you suppress the first in

childhood, you're likely to get much more chronic illness in adulthood.

Do Vaccines Delay Children's Development?

According to the U.S. Select Committee on

Children, Youth, and Families, 7.5 million

American children are considered developmentally

delayed, compared to 4.8 million in 1991. Of

these 7.5 million, an estimated 30% are autistic,

which is not surprising as autism has been linked with the MMR vaccine.

Children with developmental delays (based on a

survey of 696 children, aged 1-12) are 27% more

likely to have had at least three ear infections

and 50% more likely to have been on continuing

rounds of antibiotics (20 cycles or more),

according to the Developmental Delay Registry in

March 1995. Most important for this discussion,

the study also found that developmentally delayed

children were four times more likely than normal

children to have had a negative reaction to a vaccination.

Send mail to meryl@... with questions or comments about this web site.

Copyright © 1998 Australian Vaccination Network, Inc.

Last modified: January 08, 2001