Smallpox & Other Poisons

PART I I hadn’t heard from him in quite a while, but as soon as I answered the phone and heard the voice at the other end, there was little doubt who it was. The combination of the thick Eastern European accent, breathy smoker’s tone and the plaintive quality brought instant recognition.

“Dr. Jonas, it seems we’re having a problem and we were wondering if you could help.” “Alexi, I haven’t heard from you in years,” I replied. “What’s going on?” “Dr. Jonas, it’s Irina. You see, last month she was feeling very weak and was complaining of dizziness. We took her to the doctor here, and after many tests they diagnosed her with diabetes...” “Wow! She just suddenly developed juvenile diabetes?” “Yes, it appears that way. Nina and I want to know if there is anything you can do to help.” “There might be... It only just happened, maybe there is something we can do. But it’s important to find out what pushed her body into that state. Was there anything unusual happening? Any illnesses or stresses?” “No, not that we can think of... The only thing that was any different was that Irina was given a flu shot a month before this all happened. The doctor assures me there is no connection.” “No connection, my ass!” I couldn’t contain my frustration. “Didn’t we talk about giving Irina vaccinations? Her medical history makes her the most vulnerable type of person to suffer side effects from them.” “I know that you had told us. But she had been doing well and her pediatrician wanted her to get the shot. She even showed us all this information about it and said it was absolutely safe.”

Irina (not her real name - nor are Alexi’s and Nina’s) is a 10 year old girl who I began treating four years earlier for chronic recurring pneumonias and gastric reflux as a result of an esophageal fistula (an abnormal hole in the esophagus which usually opens into the trachea and is present at birth). In point of fact, I had never met Irina nor her parents face to face. Living too far away for office visits, we had consulted on a consistent basis for several years over the phone. In spite of her delicate constitution, Irina made steady progress over that time until regular consultations were no longer necessary.

This made the news of her latest problem all the more disheartening — especially in the light of the fact that her parents had been duly warned against her vulnerability to the possible side-effects of vaccinations.

If this were the only story I have to tell about vaccine related illness, perhaps it wouldn’t disturb me so much. But it isn’t. This week a woman related to me how she developed chronic fatigue syndrome within weeks of a rubella vaccine. Two weeks before that I saw a 13 month old child who broke out with eczema within days of his first immunizations. The pediatrician swore there was no connection and insisted that the child continue with the series of scheduled shots. After each subsequent vaccination, the eczema would flare up again and his mother would be reassured that it had nothing to do with the shots. Now, unless he is lathered in cortisone creams, his intolerably itching and burning skin condition rages out of control.

Day in and day out, these stories are so commonplace in my practice. And that doesn’t include the patients who, although not consciously aware of it, have a hidden “vaccine connection” as a factor in their illness which becomes apparent either through careful review of their medical history or by energetic testing such as electro-dermal screening.

One would think that these complications would be generallly recognized by the medical establishment. Instead, they are either dismissed as an acceptable rate of “collateral damage” or, more frequentely” pointedly denied. Patients and parents of patients suspicious that a vaccination has caused a medical problem rarely are taken seriously.

But there is clear data that indicates otherwise. For instance, Dr. J. Bart Classen, an immunologist working at his own private laboratory, has presented data showing that, in his words, “80% of cases of insulin dependent diabetes in children who have received multiple vaccines starting after 2 month of life.”

Classen made a public presentation September 11, 2000 - of all dates - revealing that his research showed “causal relationship between many different vaccines and the development of insulin diabetes. “1 The data indicated that it was not a problem with a specific vaccine per se, but was connected with a broad range of them such as pertussis, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, hemophilus influenza and others. This indicates that the entire concept of immunization shots needs to be reconsidered. What makes the problem even more insidious is that his data indicated it may take 4 or more years after the vaccination for people to develop vaccine induced diabetes.

And now in the wake of our concern over biological terrorism we are faced with the spectra a host of other vaccinations such as smallpox and anthrax being forced on us. Several persons have already died from heart attacks after receiving the smallpox vaccine. And that is surely only the tip of the iceberg.

Nearly 4 years ago, the Dr. Classen tesified in front of the Committee on Government Reform of the United States House of Representatives that his research indicated “an increased risk of autoimmunity following immunization in the military and the link between vaccines and diabetes.”2

How long will it be until the “see no evil, hear no evil” attitude toward vaccinations of most medical authorities is replaced with the clear recognition that they pose a severe threat to the well being of a large number of people. This is especially, the true of the most vulnerable and valuable segment of our population — the immunologically undeveloped infants who on the receiving end of an ever increasing number of vaccine insults.

PART II

The notion that vaccinations are the the magic bullet of preventative medicine is deeply ingrained in both philosophy of the public hygiene establishment and the public imagination. When there is a perceived threat from any biological agent, the implementation of preventative vaccinations is often the first - and perhaps only - strategy that is either suggested or enacted.

Yet, there is far too little recognition that we are paying a price for our reliance on this strategy. There are widespread side-effects associated with the ever increasing number of vaccinations that have become part of the standard healthcare protocol for infants, children, the elderly and military personnel.

The deleterious side-effects go far beyond the acute distress, sometimes fatal, that develop in a relatively small percentage of immunized persons. There is evidence that vaccinations compromise our immune and nervous systems, leading to increased incidence of autoimmune disease, behavioral disorders and mental impairment. Research has linked diabetes, rheumatism, autism and other conditions to vaccinations. Recent reports of several deaths from heart attacks suffered after smallpox vaccinations suggests that the cardiovascular system is not immune from similar damaging consequences.

How much of a “vaccination load” can the immune system bear? The numbers of suggested vaccinations keeps on growing every year. The three or four childhood vaccinations of my youth have blossomed into many times that number. Over the past few years, vaccinating for various strains of hepatitis has become standard, vaccinating for various forms of the flu has become an annual autumnal ritual amongst the geriatric population and our concern with a terrorist attack using biological agents such as anthrax or smallpox has once again stimulated renewed interest in adding yet another series to the regimen. No doubt, a vaccine for SARS is in the pipeline...

It is easy to dismiss the negative consequences of vaccines as the inevitable collateral damage, a necessary evil so to speak, associated with a successful public hygiene policy. Yet, the widespread and severe nature of these side-effects suggests that this policy is perhaps neither successful nor wise, and that the risks may outweigh the benefits. In other words, the possibility of conferred immunity is too high a price to pay for the long term - and, in some cases, immediate - problems associated with vaccinations.

Consider the case of Kathy (nor her real name), a 26 year old woman who consulted with me in the fall of 2002. She has been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and fibromyalgia, suffering from joint and muscle pains, inability to concentrate, disturbed sleep, and recurring respiratory infections for over 2 years.

Her problems are clearly related to a vaccination for hepatitis C. The day after receiving the shot, Kathy had for the first time what she refers to a ‘seizure’. In her own words, she described the experience thus: “I know they are coming and I lose the ability to focus on anything. I begin to feel numb. This numbness passes through me, from my nose to my back, from my shoulders down my arms and fingers. It goes into my lips. The right side of my body will start shaking first and I’ll need to lie down and just concentrate on my breathing”. This used to occur several times a day, but with time had diminished in frequency. Along with this phenomena, Kathy also developed an inflamed liver with internal bleeding.

It was after the resolution of the acute liver inflammation and hemorrhage that the chronic symptoms of fatigue, pain, respiratory infection and so on began. Fortunately, in Kathy’s case, she has responded well so far to a regimen of homeopathic cleansing where quite literally the information and energetic grip of the vaccines on her system has been neutralized and the related toxins expunged from her body. The process is by no means completed, but many of her most troubling symptoms have abated.

Although there are healthcare practitioners who, through various protocols involving homeopathics, vitamin and mineral supplementation, diet, botanical medicines and other modalities, are able to assist people who have suffered the negative consequences of vaccinations, their efforts are no match for the size and depth of the problem.

For one, the number of practitioners is miniscule in comparison to the number of persons affected by the vaccinations. Secondly, the general population is for the most part unaware that these remedial therapies exist and, to a great extent, unaware that there is a connection between the problems they or their children suffer and the vaccinations that caused them.

This situation will not change unless several things happen. People on the front lines of the healthcare delivery system - healthcare providers of every type - need to understand how serious the problem is, how widespread it is and learn to recognize it in individual cases. Only then will the “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude of denial in the medical profession begin to disappear.

Secondly, the coercive tactics of the medical establishment to force infants, school aged children, healthcare works and the elderly to be vaccinated needs to stop. No mother ought to be scolded, belittled or otherwise made to feel guilty for questioning the wisdom of vaccinations for her child. People, both professional and lay person alike, need to be educated about the pros and cons in order to make informed recommendations and decisions.

As a corollary, the grip of the pharmaceutical industry, which obviously has a very strong economic incentive to encourage widespread immunization campaigns, must be loosened. Of course, immunizations are only one aspect of the much large issue concerning the undue influence of drug companies on the way medicine is currently practiced in this country.

Finally, it is important for us to recognize that true preventive medicine does not necessarily rely on this prophylactic tinkering with our immune system which has so many known and unknown consequences. Proper hygiene, nutrition, and lifestyle, along with cohesive family and societal structures are the foundations upon which health is preserved and disease avoided.

http://www.909shot.com http://www.cure-guide.com> http://www.vaccines.net http://www.access1.net/via/ http://www.mercola.com/forms/vaccine_teleconference.htm

The Pill

A few years back I consulted with a young woman who had a number of problems related to her menstrual cycle. By far the most distressing symptom she experienced was an extreme swing in her moods that turned her into a cynical, despairing and nearly violent individual for nearly half the month. Her mother, who I had already seen as a patient for a number of years, had referred her to me. The mother had responded nicely to homeopathic treatment, and because her daughter seemed to share a number of personality and physical traits, I was confident that the daughter, too, would do quite well. Unfortunately, that was not to be the case – at least, for the first several years of treatment.

It wasn’t that she didn’t respond to treatment at all, otherwise I am quite certain she would not have had the patience to continued working with me for the length of time that she did. But the responses to the remedies I prescribed for her would not last. She would feel much better for a month or two, then her symptoms would reappear and subsequent doses of the remedy would only produce diminishing returns.

We tried a few remedies – all of them well indicated by her symptoms and constitutional traits, but each one acted temporarily and the treatment itself began to reflect the cyclical swing of her labile moods. The addition of nutritional supplements and a dietary regimen, although helpful to a certain degree, also proved to have a minimum effect.

One of the best and most challenging qualities of homeopathic treatment is that the practitioner has, for all practical purposes, an endless variety of choices when determining the most appropriate prescription in any particular case. Thousands of remedies, each of which can be selected in a variety of potencies and dosing frequencies, provides us with the opportunity to tailor the treatment to the needs of the individual. If a case is not showing signs of adequate improvement, there are options upon options available to change the treatment.

So, on the one hand, there are always ways to adjust the treatment to improve on the results, and on the other, one can embark on a seemingly endless quest for the solution. Depending on the person and the situation, sometimes one is given leeway to ‘work through’ the case and sometimes one isn’t.

But in this case, we got lucky, so to speak. The adjustment came not via a new homeopathic remedy, but rather by the patient herself. She heeded a piece of advice that I had offered when we first met: stop the Birth Control Pill. Within a week she was a changed person and, now looking back with a few years retrospect, that simple act changed her life.

The extreme mood swings were a thing of the past. The same homeopathic remedies that previously had seemed to work only partially and temporarily had a more enduring and positive action. The extreme cynicism and suppressed hostility toward the people in her life – be it colleagues, bosses, friends or her boyfriend, was greatly reduced. Over time, the ambivalent indecisiveness toward vocation and relationship that had paralyzed her for years gave way to a focused and determined career path and a commitment to her partner.

It is always difficult to advise a young, sexually active woman to consider stopping the birth control pill, but the consequences of using it are too serious to ignore. I have seen too many instances where young women just feel awful from it. Mood changes, digestive disorders, weight gain, headaches, bloating, lethargy, sleep disturbances… Oddly enough, often they don’t make the correlation between using the pill and their symptoms. Perhaps that is the case because they usually assured by the prescribing physician that it is a perfectly harmless medication.

It is especially important to educate these patients when they have been put on the pill for non-pregnancy related problems like menstrual disorders. Not only do they suffer from side effects, but also the pill is not a fundamental solution to their problem. It acts merely on a symptomatic level to band-aid the problem.

And this isn’t even the worst of it. No one is absolutely clear what the long term side effects of hormonal treatments are. But the role of estrogen mimicking substances found in plastics, foods, drugs and other synthetics is becoming clearer over time. The potential risks are deadly – from endometriosis, a disease that hardly existed 50 years ago to heart attacks and strokes to various forms of cancers.

There are healthier ways to prevent pregnancies and to treat gynecological issues.

Vitalism

My neighbors used to be devotees of the “X Files". Aware of the deprivation our family suffers having neither cable nor satellite television, they sometimes invited us over to view their favorite program or even lend us a tape of one of the latest episodes. We usually accepted their gracious offer — though our enthusiasm ran higher for the neighborly socializing and the crystal clear images of their satellite system on a big screen TV than for the actual program itself. The last time we indulged ourselves, I was somewhat surprised to find that the episode we viewed was in theme and plot almost exactly the same as the one we saw the previous time. To wit, they were both about some highly sophisticated computer which had developed an independence and intelligence beyond anything that its creators had programmed. The shows revolve around the efforts of the expressionless male and the brainy female leads to subdue the computer which has run amuck on a violent path of self-protection.

Not that this is an especially inventive story line. Endowing a computer with consciousness like Hal in “2001” and even Big Blue of the Kasparov versus IBM chess battles of recent years are cinematic and real life antecedents. Yet, methinks the reason for the recurring allure of this theme lies embedded in a much larger issue.

If nothing else, contemporary civilization is marked by our capacity to explore and exploit the mechanics of physical reality. As the ability of human beings to create objects that in some cases mimic and in other cases supersede certain parameters of performance found in the creatures of natural world, we find ourselves fascinated, consciously or subconsciously, with what actually separates us and other life forms from the things we create. Rephrased, the question refers to the distinction between the mechanism of life and life itself.

Intuitively, we understand there indeed is a distinction. Yet, it is hard to put a finger on exactly what that may be. The short answer is “consciousness” — but what in fact is that? For the moment, let us give a name to whatever separates a living being from other things. Call it the “X Factor”.

Although unfamiliar to most modern people, there actually is a very old belief in the intangible “X Factor”. Discredited and discarded long ago along the road to modern scientific thinking, it adds a dimension to life that goes beyond the laws of chemistry and physics. It is a force of nature that animates living beings.

This concept or the philosophy related to it is called “Vitalism”. The dictionary tells us that the word refers to “a doctrine that the life in living organisms is caused and sustained by a vital force that is distinct from all physical and chemical forces...”1

Our ever more sophisticated mastery of the mechanics of physical reality encourages us to all but ignore vitalistic thinking. We are apt to try to explain away all phenomena — even those related to the experiences of human life — in mechanistic terms. This certainly is the foundation of modern medicine. Whether speaking of a flu, a headache, an ulcer, cancer or depression, the conventional medical understanding inevitably returns us to a model of human beings as a complex conglomerate of tissues and chemicals.

But to define life and life processes exclusively in these terms can be quite limiting. For instance, our medico-legalistic quandries concerning the definition of death based on physical functions alone is a prime example. When is it appropriate to declare a person dead? When is it permissible to withdraw life support systems?

The experts must determine which organ and what physiological function holds the kernel of life. Is it the brain, and if so what part of the brain? Or is it the heart and circulatory function or the lungs and respiration? Actually the determination is impossible and, ultimately, the decision is arbitrary.

Yet, apart from the sophistication of our knowledge about how the body functions, we can often sense when the real life has gone out of a body. It is not a matter of whether the brain or heart is still functioning. It is a matter of whether or not the animating force — our “X-factor” — is still present in the body that lies before us. If absent, then we may sense an instinctual repugnance toward artificially supporting the physical tissues when in fact ‘no one is home’.

While the contemporary person may find it difficult to shake free of our contemporary common sense, vitalism is a useful outlook that sustained ancient peoples as well as traditional cultures and religions. Even today in Japan, one can barely have a convesation without using language which refers to vitalistic thinking. Weird as it may sound to our ears, Japanese for “hello” is literally “How is your fundamental vital energy?”. The common term for weather is translatable as “the vital energy of the sky (or heaven)”.

Vitalism and vital energy is also a principle fundamental to many medical systems that lie outside of the dominant, conventional model. Oriental medicine and philosophy dubs it “Qi” (pronounce ‘chee’). East Indian thought and medicine calls it “prana”. Western thinkers and physicians of vitalistic medicine use a variety of terms such as ‘vital force’ , ‘vital energy’, or ‘dynamic principle’.

Amongst other systems, homeopathy is founded in vitalistic thinking. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, in his writing gave a lucid expression of his understanding:

“In the healthy human state, the spirit-like life force that enlivens the material organism as dynamis, governs without restriction and keeps all parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both feelings and functions, so that our indwelling, rational spirit can freely avail itself of this living, healthy instrument for the purposes of our existence.

The material organism, thought of without life force, is capable of no sensibility, no activity, no self-preservation. It derives all sensibility and produces its life functions solely by means of the immaterial life force that enlivens the material organism in health and in disease.”2

Thus, to the acupuncturist, ayurvedic practitioner, osteopath or homeopathy (amongst others), since the essential nature of a living being is not to be found in physical tissues and organs of the body, neither is the essential nature of illness, nor the avenue to cure. True cure results from rectifying a disturbed or weakened vitality.

Symptoms are merely an expression of the disurbance in a person’s vital force. They surface as an attempt by the vital force to stabilize or cleanse the entire system when it becomes disordered, but they are not the disorder itself. Elimination of the symptoms alone does not bring cure anymore than clipping off the dandelion flower will uproot the plant.

The endeavour of vitalistic medicine provides great challenge and great satisfaction. There are few short cuts. It demands that each person be understood and treated according to the uniqueness of his or her personal vital energy. It calls upon both practitioner and patient to possess patience and clarity of purpose.

1. Guralnik, David, Ed. “Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language”, World Publishing Company, New York. 1970.

2. Hahnemann, Samuel. “Organon of the Medical Art”, edited by Wenda O’Reilly, translated by Steven Decker; pg. 65; Birdcage Books; Emonds, Washington. 1996.