Articles
Principles of Vaccination
by Sylvie Simon
Translated by Harry Clarke
"We are still living with a deceitful government, a compliant press, corruption and an overriding cynicism."
Jim Garrison (1988) – American Prosecutor who led the enquiry into the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The history of vaccination is full of implausibilities and errors. Everything has been said on the subject except what would have discredited it in the eyes of the world and questioned its fundamental basis. From the beginning, when Jenner wanted to vaccinate instead of “variolate”, right up to the present time, everything depended on the conditioning of minds.
Vaccinations are favoured today, for we have become dependent consumers, always “wanting more” and manufacturers have well understood this dependency. Vaccinations reflect the concept of having the disease, the role of the doctor and the control of individual and collective health, a concept that leads to reliance on others as opposed to taking responsibility for oneself.
Vaccination was practised at a time when nothing was known about microbes, viruses or the immune system. Nevertheless, it was soon promoted to the first rank of general medical practice, routinely applied and unquestioned. It took on the aspects of a faith rather than of a science.
Convinced that in this practice they had a panacea, supporters imposed it worldwide in mass campaigns, expanded programmes and laws making it compulsory. It became an ideology to which a few had to be sacrificed in order to protect the many.
An apparently easy solution, notionally simple, vaccination offers a convenience unlike that of any other medical practice and, if its development required a measure of investment, the compensation was profit and commercial success.
It began at the end of the 18th century, to protect against smallpox. The English doctor, Edward Jenner, experimented with inoculation of the bovine disease, cowpox, which was considered similar to variola (or small pox, as opposed to the great pox, syphilis), a disease of man.
Vaccination´s fascination, with upper-class notables lauding it, masked the reality since there was lively opposition from the very beginning.
What did Jenner do? He simply replaced the pus of smallpox, which was transferred from arm to arm (variolation), by the pus from the lesions on the cow (vaccination). In time this pus was put through several stages before administration but Jenner´s first vaccine, crude and empirical though it was, was given to millions across the globe. Variolation was spreading smallpox. Vaccination stopped the spread by replacing one pus with another, and by halting the multiplication of sources.
But it was no great advance for all that because it opened the way for a more complex infection. For the first time an element of another species was introduced, directly into the body, this being DNA from the genes of another animal and, moreover, a sick animal. Thus the consequences may be measurable only after several decades or longer.
At the end of the 18th century man had enabled the passage of micro-organisms from one species to another. The species barrier had been crossed, beginning the animalisation of man, or the “minotaurisation of the human species”, according to Pierre Darmon in La Longue Traque de la Variole (Pierre Darmon, Perrin, 1986). This aspect, though unremarked by the public, should not have escaped the attention of scientists, because it determined an ensemble of unnatural phenomena which called for caution. Jenner introduced the era of the apprentice sorcerers.
Observation had often shown that when an infectious disease is contracted it is not contracted again – hence the idea of inoculation of microbes or viruses whose toxicity had been weakened so as to provoke a benign form of the disease capable of producing a reaction and thus protect the organism against a future serious attack.
The concept was not without substance, for the procedure favoured prevention, although the basis and harmlessness of the practice remained unclear. That an organism could accustom itself to a poison and thus acquire resistance to it is a principle recognised since antiquity. It was immortalised by King Mithridate, who, according to legend, had acquired immunity to poisons from stronger and stronger doses. Each syringe contains a concentrated dose of vaccine, including added material. VIDAL, the professional´s dictionary of medicine notes the components for each vaccine.
What´s in a Vaccine?
Standard manufacture uses a bacterial or viral antigen, e.g. a germ, bacterium or virus, which may be killed, generally with formol or great heat, or may be living but attenuated. The attenuation can be obtained by heat (e.g. the whooping-cough vaccine) or by rapid passage in a culture (BCG by 230 passages in potatoes mixed with beef bile; or measles by 85 passages in chicken fibroblasts – cells derived from eyelid mucus).
Bacterial vaccines can contain all of the bacterium (whooping-cough vaccine) or can be acellular (only antigenic fragments). Diphtheria and tetanus vaccines are “anatoxins” – they contain only the toxin (attenuated) produced by the bacteria and supposed to be responsible for the disease.
Cell cultures are required for viral vaccines since viruses lack autonomy – they can exist only in a cell. The prerequisites are often obtained from animals: from monkey kidneys for polio vaccine; from hamster ovaries for hepatitis-B vaccine; from rabbit brain for rabies vaccine; from chicken embryos for mumps vaccine; and from foetuses for rubella vaccine.
Industrial production of vaccines requires cell lines from a vaccine strain (e.g. Vero strain for polio vaccine) that is cancerised for reproduction to infinity. The use of these continuous lines raises problems of purity. World Health Orgainisation report 747 (1986) raised objections to cellular substrates for vaccine manufacture since they could be contaminated with unknown viruses such as SV40, which has been associated with cancer, by DNA contamination or by mutagenic proteins.
Culture cells can grow only if nourished, generally by calf serum containing growth factors (cf. National Cancer Institute Monograph,29 December 1968, pp 63-70). We may wonder if there is not a risk of prion propagation. In the context of an evaluation of microbial safety of medicines the French Medicines Agency has just withdrawn five homeopathic remedies derived from human microbial strains. In addition, by decree, 28 October 1998, the Health Minister has banned “any homeopathic preparation from human strains, particularly when ready-made or prepared specially” (Journal Officiel, 5 November 1998). But vaccines escape this precautionary measure...
To avoid bacterial contamination of culture cells, which occurs frequently, the laboratories use antibiotics, e.g. Neomycin, which is to be feared by those who are allergic to Pentacoq vaccine, for example. Hence Dr. Jean Pilette, the Belgian doctor who has studied the polio vaccine in particular: “Any product from living matter presents unknown factors”. (See his La Poliomyélite... Which Vaccine? Which Risk? L´Aronde).
To make these vaccines more active an adjuvant is introduced, with the aim of augmenting the immune response, which might otherwise fail to occur. Hence we deduce that the efficacy of these vaccines is such that that their advocates are forced to adopt such tricks as adding chemical toxins to their soups.
At present the adjuvant mainly used is aluminium hydroxide, and this is a product that often causes serious allergies. And for a number of years aluminium has been linked to Alzheimer´s Disease. In VIDAL we find that each dose of the hepatitis-B vaccine (Engerix or Genhevac) – as also the DTP-polio – contains “not more than” 1250 µg of aluminium hydroxide, whereas the official non-toxic dose is 15 µg/litre of blood, and more than 150 µg is definitely toxic for the nerve cells. Most vaccinations contain a preservative based on mercury, and VIDAL refers to stabilisers and excipients in its less-than-expansive remarks on vaccine ingredients. We learn also that a unidose of the Pasteur DTP contains 0.5 ml of vaccine, of which 0. 005 ml is phenoxyethanol (excipient) and 0.1 mg formic aldehyde for 1.25 mg of aluminium hydroxide (preservative).
In other words, vaccines contain several potentially dangerous toxic products that oblige the body to recognise and neutralise them, if possible. These mechanisms are different from those called into play in the natural response to disease. Thus vaccination puts different demands on the immune system from those that apply when the real thing comes along.
Vaccines are currently produced by gene techniques, i.e. instead of using a virus or bacterium, certain segments of its chromosomes are isolated and grafted on to others to obtain hybrid elements that do not exist in nature. The result is not a synthetic but a recombinant vaccine – a manipulation of live material. The antigen fragments are then cultivated in substrates (e.g. yeast for the hepatitis-B vaccine). Adjuvants, preservatives, antibiotics, etc are then added as for traditional vaccines. We are told – untruthfully – that these new vaccines are purer, therefore less dangerous. But they can activate oncogenes, repress anti-oncogenes or modify genes in one way or another. Hence they can be factors in the process of cancerisation.
Vaccines Adsorbed on Aluminium Hydroxide
Where tetanus is concerned, for example, the procedure to alter its toxin requires precipitation on sulphate of ammonium, or an adsorption (fixation of a substrate, molecule, atom or ion at the surface of another substance). This operation provides a toxin that is attenuated but possessing enhanced antigenic power by virtue of the new chemical component.
Pasteur BCG contains 800,000 to 3,200,000 units of Koch bacilli – hardly negligible doses. Then, even attenuated or killed vaccines are not dead or neutral, since they must retain immunising power if they are to produce a reaction from the immune system. Their active principle is therefore to cause disease and insofar as the sought-after effect is to provoke the malady, vaccines represent a traumatising jolt to the organism. Thus they entail permanent modifications to the cells, for the product that is injected is not a simple poison, which the body´s elimination processes can clear, filter and purify via the liver, kidneys, etc. It is not a matter of Mithridisation for vaccination brings into play infinitely more complex mechanisms. Our knowledge of these is very imperfect, immunity as a science being only 50 years old.
Vaccination and The Immune System
Vaccinations are supposed to confer immunity, but what is immunity? It is our capacity to resist disease, the outcome of the activity of our immune system, which regulates our defences to protect our biological identity, just as the function of the blood system is to irrigate the body, bringing nourishment and oxygen to the cells. But the body is a whole and its different control systems operate in close collaboration in that damage to one entails some effect on others. Thus when pathogenic agents or physical or psychological shocks threaten our equilibrium, the immune system organises and sets in motion a chain of reactions each with an important role to play at its own level. The mobilisation of all these reactions will be proportional to the nature of the attack. Sometimes our defences are overwhelmed and serious danger threatens, but our immune system is a powerful mechanism of great precision and surprising efficiency: it can withstand any assault so long as it is enabled to function optimally.
At birth, the system is not fully developed and it will be some years before it is self-sufficient. During the first months the baby is protected by the immunity passed on by the mother – it does not yet have its own identity. Gradually, this “passive” immunity will be replaced by its own, created by virtue of the germs encountered from day to day. In time this acquired immunity will provide a stout armour that will enable the infant to withstand the tests that life will impose, such as childhood disease, the problems of growth and the psychological crises that will help form the personality, different for each individual. Vaccinations intrude on this process as uncontrollable disturbances. In his 3-volume Constitution of Animal and Vegetable Organisms; Causes of Diseases that Affect Them (Published by Laboratoire de physiologie générale (3 volumes), Paris 1926,1936,1946), J. Tissot, Professor of Physiology at the Natural History Museum, who had done experimental studies of microbes in vivo and in vitro, puts us on guard: “Immunity by vaccination is acquired only when it confers the chronic phase of the disease – which is really to be avoided – a phase that entails fearsome complications in the short or long term.”
We live in symbiosis with microbes. They surround us and are part of us. We should not forget that they are living and, perforce, need to feed and reproduce. Taking advantage of the opportunity provided by humans, they try for a niche in which to exist. They do not seek to attack us; they only want to live and are no more deadly pathogens than any other cohabitants. To treat them as enemies is to adopt the logic of war and runs counter to natural processes and imperils the ecosystem.
The work of Antoine Béchamp, Jean Tissot, R R Rife, Léon Grigoraki, and Gaston Naessens, to mention a very few, direct us to the same theory: the smallest elements that govern life are endowed with powers of transformation that allow them to take on various forms and have diverse effects on our bodies.
It is not the germs that provoke disease; it is breakdown of metabolic equilibrium. The germs begin to proliferate when the organism changes and disorganisation sets in. Certain pathogenic agents can persist without causing damage; others can trigger disease without the presence of antibodies. Man is obsessed with the idea that polio can kill or handicap endlessly, whereas millions of infants are infected with the virus with no sign of the disease, the microbe being a “table companion” in the intestines.
In nature nothing is lost, nothing is created, nothing dies, all is transformed. The infinitely small changes unceasingly. A virus can become a bacillus, then a mould (fungus), and inversely. Most of life´s elements undergo cycles and are protean. Man himself evolved from fish to mammal. The Russian biologist, Bochian, has shown that elements in the filtrate in tuberculin can revert to bacilli and become pathogenic (Soviet Studies, July 1950). Micro-organisms are principally endogenous and are compounds of more complex vital elements. Their function is to participate in the maintenance of life.
In his article, A Possible Cause of Aids and Other Diseases, published in 1984, Professor Richard Delong, Virologist at Toledo (USA) University, wrote: “Everything supports the belief that that there is a definite equilibrium between the human immune system and natural viruses. Breaking this state could have unforeseeable consequences”. (Medical Hypotheses,Vol 395, No 13, 1984).
In 1983 John Shaw Billings, the public-health specialist, had said: “It is important to note that simply introducing microbes into a living organism does not automatically provoke their multiplication and the disease. The condition of the organism itself has a great bearing on the result.”
True and False Heroes
"It seems to me a service to reveal the means employed by the immoral to corrupt the moral." Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Many a famous man hides a very different face behind the image he likes to present. Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895) is an example. Adopted as a hero, a model scientific researcher and a benefactor of humanity, he has inspired a cult, a myth, a legend. Are the many honours merited? Has his promotion to the halls of fame been to the detriment of some of his contemporaries, whose work and discoveries were of greater use to mankind? And if so, why?
Historians like Dr. Philippe Decourt, Ethyl Douglas Hume, G Gerald Geison, Xavier Raspail, Daniel Raichvarg and others have provided answers. By close re-reading of the past they have breached the myth and highlighted the real Pasteur. Like Pierre Thuillier, for example, in "La science existait-il", we can acknowledge that “contrary to the golden legend, science advances thanks to extremely daring conjectures, clever but often very doubtful experiments, and attempts at success as diverse as irrational.”
Nevertheless, Pasteur has not honoured science, imperfect though it might be. Probity required that he recognise his mistakes and be open to criticism, as any rigorous researcher would. But Pasteur was too vain, too attracted by honours and too partial to glory, and he sacrificed honour and truth to it all. He claimed for himself discoveries made by others. Like a real con man and with the help of accomplices he doctored unfavourable experimental results and tyrannically refused to discuss them.
Over some years, Ethyl Douglas Hume consulted the Pasteur archives and, in a book published in 1947, Béchamp ou Pasteur – A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology, he came down against the celebrated founder of microbiology and vaccination: “Pasteur, ambitious man, opportunistic a genius at self-promotion, plagiarised then vulgarised Béchamp´s work.
“He stole his concept of small organisms but revealed only part of Béchamp´s discoveries, Pasteur declared that these organisms came only from outside. He omitted to say that, in the open air, microbes and other morbid microzymes (anormal) soon lose their virulence, and the lie is perpetuated today..”.
All these facts are reported in well-authenticated writings and should be enough to diminish Pasteur and knock him off his pedestal. But not at all; so well-anchored is the Pasteur myth in the public mind that nothing has yet succeeded in shaking it loose. With chauvinism at work from one year to the next France adds to Pasteur´s laurels, but the sad reality is that the French are adulating an impostor. For imposture it certainly is. He usurped honours and amassed a considerable fortune in doing so, as numerous episodes in his life will illustrate. Let us look at three of these.
Rabies Vaccine
History has recorded it only as a success but forgotten that it increased rabies deaths. Rather than a success it was a failure. No-one has been able to prove its efficacy, at first because it was practically impossible to prove that the dogs involved were rabid and then because so many vaccinees died that nobody wanted to take account of them. The deaths of six Russian peasants bitten by a wolf and vaccinated by Pasteur makes one shudder, such was their suffering. In Souvenirs des milieux littéraires, politiques, artistiques et médicaux de 1880 à 1905, Léon Daudet relates the story and conveys something of their agony.
Not many are familiar with this episode, but everyone has heard of Joseph Meister, bitten on the hand by a dog. Pasteur “saved” him by his Méthode pour Prévenir La Rage aprcs Morsure (title of his communication to the Académie des Sciences, 26 October 1885) but he had no trumpet to blow. Firstly, it was not certain that the dog was rabid. Secondly, if it had been, the risk for the boy was small because a truly rabid animal – a rare event – transmits the disease in only 5 - 15 per cent of cases. Where Joseph Meister was concerned, the degree of risk was no more than 5 per cent if the dog was definitely infected. And to proclaim the efficacy of a treatment on the basis of one subject has no scientific value.
What was most serious in this affair were Pasteur´s lies. Contrary to all that we are taught, the rabies vaccine was not created by Pasteur but by a professor at Toulouse Veterinary School, Henri Toussaint, whose name has not gone down in history. Toussaint succeeded in high attenuation of the virulence by heating the preparation and by adding an antiseptic, phenolic acid, at one per cent (and/or potassium bichromate). Pasteur´s vaccine, based on dried marrow, was highly dangerous and was quickly abandoned – his collaborator, Emile Roux, had concluded that the vaccine was hazardous and refused to associate himself with the initial “intensive treatment”. Young Meister was fortunate to escape the vaccine.
Pasteur´s collaborator, Emile Roux, had decided that it was hazardous to use his colleague´s vaccine and he had refused to be associated with the first so-called “intensive treatment”.
The drama of a 12-year-old child who died as a consequence of the vaccination revealed the dishonesty of Pasteur and his colleagues. The boy Rouyer was bitten on 8 October 1886 by an unknown dog. Pasteur inoculated him by the intensive method (seven injections over 12 days). On 16 October the child died. An inquiry under Professor Brouardel sought the cause but the lofty, titled, professor was a friend of Pasteur. In Emile Roux´s laboratory they inoculated part of the cervical bulb from the boy into the brains of rabbits. Some days later the rabbits died of rabies, which proved that the child clearly had the disease but Brouardel, in agreement with Roux, decided to falsify the evidence before the inquiry. In Les Vérités Indésirables – Le Cas Pasteur, Philippe Decourt records that it was a matter of avoiding official acknowledgement of a failure that would entail, according to Brouardel, “an immediate step backwards in the progress of science” as well as dishonour to Pasteur.
The report to the coroner confirmed that: “These two rabbits are in good health today, 9 January 1887, i. e. 48 hours after the inoculation. The negative results of the inoculations on the bulb of this child enables us to discount the hypothesis that the young Rouyer had succumbed to rabies”. In collusion with Roux and Brouardel, Pasteur declared that death was due to uraemia.
Not content with falsification, Pasteur and his accomplices sought to silence those who knew the truth. One lie leads to another, for Brouardel went on to affirm that none of 50 people given the intensive treatment had died. “He knew that it wasn´t true but no matter since they would believe it”, Decourt noted.
In 1886 the number of deaths where liability attached to the Pasteur method had risen to 74, 34 in France and 40 abroad. Certain of these were attributable to rabies but others were associated with “laboratory rabies”, as it came to be known. These laboratory cases presented symptoms of rabiform paraplegia as observed in the rabbits used to cultivate the Pasteur virus (see Raspail et Pasteur: 30 ans de Critiques Médicales et Scientifique -1884 – 1914, Vigot Frcres, Paris 1916). Pasteur himself indicated that from 9 November 1885 to 30 December 1986 nine of 18 vaccinees died in the three weeks after being bitten.
In March 1886 he told Dr. Navarre: “From now on I won´t accept discussion of my theories and my method. I won´t have anyone coming to monitor my experiments”.
We see here a practice that was to become institutionalised – the scientific lie. What confidence can we have in hallowed men of science who make off-hand statements like this?
Pouilly-le-Fort Experiment
The anti-rabies vaccine was Pasteur´s first great triumph, although it was preceded by the vaccine against anthrax, which was rampant in cattle. Pasteur vigorously opposed Henry Toussaint´s theories and practices, which he said were ineffective and dangerous.
To prove that his vaccine was better he agreed a protocol of experiments that would come to fruition on 28 August at Pouilly-le-Fort, near Melun. They would select 50 sheep, only 25 of which would be vaccinated and all the animals would be inoculated with virulent anthrax 15 days later.
Pasteur said that the unvaccinated sheep would die. On the appointed day Pasteur confided to his associates that he would not use his own vaccine but Toussaint´s, which contained an antiseptic capable of attenuating the virulence of the anthrax bacteria. (For some considerable time Pasteur had tried to achieve comparable attenuation with oxygen). The sheep received the Toussaint vaccine, containing potassium bichromate, a powerful poison that kills microbes (and provokes cancer). These facts are recorded by Adrien Loir in A l´ombre de Pasteur (Le Mouvement sanitaire, 1938). So these 25 sheep survived and Pasteur triumphed.
Who today is aware that the Pouilly le Fort experiment was no more than a hoax?
Silk-Worm Disease
One could multiply examples of Pasteur´s tricks. His method was simple, while deploring the methods of others he proceeded to appropriate them and thus garnered further laurels. Another example that well illustrates his technique is the silk-worm episode, where he was directly opposed to Antoine Béchamp. Hostile to the theory of parasitism, carefully developed by Béchamp, Pasteur turned the situation to his advantage by letting it appear that the theory was his, thus relegating Béchamp´s work to the shade.
The affair of the soluble ferments in 1878 was similar. This gave rise to a controversy which lasted 18 months between Pasteur and the chemist, Berthelot. Pasteur refused to acknowledge the evidence and maintained his belief in spontaneous generation, which he later repudiated, whilst shamelessly plundering Béchamp´s work when he saw that the other man was right.
But these scientists´ quarrels were relatively unimportant against the backdrop of a development, stimulated at the time by the economic boom born out of the industrial revolution: the vaccine industry.
How has it come about that the world has suffered the imposition of a doctrine whose basis is so contestable? In his “La Felure du Monde” (Flammarion 1995) André Glucksmann tried to explain these Pasteurian mirages: “The vanity of Pasteurism discloses more than a sure science and less than an effective art – a religion. Pasteur has expressed, in terms of biopower, the constituent equation of modern nations, cujus regio ejus religio... Without Pasteurian blinkers AIDS seems less unthinkable than one would have believed”.
Pasteur pushed scientists down a false road by his three postulates, and these are still the foundation of vaccination. They were developed by Pasteur and recorded in his submissions to a commission of the Académie de Médicine between 1869 and 1872:
- Asepsis reigns in the cells. The cell is clean; all the microbes are exogenous.
- For each germ (specific agent) there is a corresponding disease, against which we can protect with a vaccine. The disease has only a single cause, therefore a single remedy.
- Immunity is obtained by production of antibodies in reaction to the introduction of antigens (substances in the vaccine). The antigen-antibody combination is sufficient to confer protection.
We have long known that disease is never the result of a single cause, a single culprit. It is always multifactorial
Numerous mechanisms, sometimes very sophisticated, come into play and lead to dysfunction expressed in clinical symptoms. If the germs were the only cause every contact would fall ill. But that does not happen, so “one germ, one disease, one vaccine” is simplistic and reductionist.
As regards microbes, viruses or bacteria as invading aggressors bent on doing us harm – are they really our enemies? Recent research in molecular biology suggests otherwise. And the work of Antoine Béchamp and, later, Professsor Jean Tissot, has already shown the endogenous origin (internal) of micro-organisms (Les Mycrozymas, Antione Béchamp, out of print).
“Microbe” is imprecise in respect of bacteria. A bacterium is the more promiscuous form of the living cell, whereas a virus reproduces itselffrom its own genetic material and is an absolute parasite on the cell.
Biologist Gaston Naessens has recently invented a microscope by which Béchamp´s work has been corroborated and completed. As mentioned earlier, viruses are cell constituents and if they become pathogenic it is because there is disequilibrium. Hence when an infant has measles we find the virus specific to measles. But if the virus is expressed it is because the organism is enfeebled.
And, as with all viruses, rather than being the cause they are a consequence of the disease.
As regards bacteria, we see a similar phenomenon. In nature bacteria appear where there is decomposition. In the body, bacteria are found where there is disequilibrium, accumulation of residues and dead cells, where they find nourishment – and they are capable of degrading and ingesting everything. In fact, humans have ten times more bacteria than cells.
They maintain biological equilibrium; without them we die, and they become pathogenic only with change in physiological equilibrium or breakdown of the immune system. For example, the intestines are full of colibacilli and many saprophytic bacteria (that live on the organism by feeding on decomposing matter). These bacteria contribute to fermentation of digestive residues and to the synthesis of vitamins. But, in the event of disequilibrium, they precipitate diarrhoea, appendicitis and other problems. That is why it is much more sensible to rebalance and clean the body than to kill the microbe.
“If, on return from holiday, you find your house full of dirt, you need to clean it thoroughly. If you squirt insecticide everywhere the house will still be dirty and even worse than before, since you have added toxic substances to the dirt,” is the good advice from Dr. Lourdes Tornos in El Mundo de los Microbes. (Article in the Spanish review, Natura Medicatrix No 46-47, Spring 1997).
In the 1890s when the Nobel prizewinner, Robert Koch, returned triumphant from the Indies as a hero, a spoilsport awaited him at Munich in the person of the old professor of hygiene, Max Pettenkofer, who had made Munich the cleanest city in Europe by means of effective sanitary services. “Your bacillus can do nothing, my dear Koch. What matters is the organism. If your theory were correct I should be a dead man in 24 hours,” he said, snatching from Koch´s hands a test tube containing a pure culture of cholera germs. In front of his horrified colleagues he swallowed the lot! Koch was the only one to fall ill.
When we speak of health we need to broach the notion of “terrain”, a fundamental notion for those who want to practise true medicine. Let us remember Claude Bernard´s summary: “The microbe is nothing; the terrain is everything!”
The terrain defines our immunity. It establishes itself gradually, during nine month´s gestation and it is unique to the individual. Regular routine vaccinations conflict with Bernard´s axiom and lead to disequilibrium. The supposition that mass vaccination has eliminated disease does a great disservice to mankind and the ecosystem since we are all so intimately linked one to the other.
Antoine Béchamp
Antoine Béchamp (1816-1908) was one of the great savants of the 19th century. Doctor, chemist, biologist, naturalist, he was Professor of Medical Chemistry and Pharmacology at the Montpellier Faculty, Professor of Biological Chemistry and Physiology at Paris University, then Dean of Liberal Studies at Lille. He verified Claude Bernard´s concept of individual terrain and was the first to understand the microbial basis of infectious pathology. Nevertheless, his work is almost unknown nowadays because it has been systematically discredited and falsified in favour of Pasteur.
Béchamp thought that microbes were a “process”, “deriving from a single strain (prebacterialparticles – microzymes – present in all organic structures) which could change size and form according to the health of the host”. His theses have since been confirmed by many other researchers and, in 1980, certain bacteriologists (Sorin, Sonea, Panisset, Naessens) confirmed that bacterial polymorphism was an irrefutable scientific fact. “If we upset the bacterial world by our interference, the point may reached at which life on earth is compromised”, they said.
It has also been shown that a bacterium can transform into a virus according to the substrate (nutrient culture medium) provided (Introduction a la Nouvelle Bactériologie,S Sonea and M Panisset, Montreal University Press, 1980).
Béchamp, founder of enzymology, identified minuscule corpuscles, microzymes, smaller than cells. These are at the origin of life and are found in both man and animal and in plants and micro-organisms. In humans their form varies with the general state of their home terrain and their nutrition. Disease occurs when disequilibrium disturbs their normal functioning. When there is change in the normal state of health, from malnutrition, poisoning, or physical or psychological stress, the microzymes can transform into pathogenic germs or microbes. To Antoine Béchamp the same microbes could take several forms relative to their milieu – the theory of polymorphism, which, had it been widely recognised, would have revolutionised general perceptions of health and disease. The key, say it supporters, is reinforcing health, which enables the germs to recover their original microzyme form and their protective function. Recreate the right milieu and the mcrobes disappear and hence the disease also.
In Pasteur´s view the microbe causes the disease whereas in Béchamp´s opinion the disease generates the microbe, and this argument has continued for more than a 100 years. According to the 250 pages that pharmacist Dr. Marie Nonclerq devoted to Béchamp: “In this fight Béchamp was beaten – not because his arguments were mistaken but because Pasteur benefited from circumstances at the time, from his experiments and results, falsified to favour his primary notions. Today this doctoring seems unbelievable.
Serious examination in the realm of bacteria showed that the facts simply did not support his ideas. Pasteur had deliberately ignored the work of Béchamp, one of the great 19th-century French scientists, whose considerable oeuvre in chemical synthesis, in biochemistry and pathology of infections goes unrecognised today, having been degraded in favour of the illustrious Pasteur who, unlike Béchamp, had a genius for publicity and for what we now call public relations. Ten years previously in Médecine et Hygicne, Geneva, 23 March 1983, Dr. Rentschnick, whose medical orthodoxy goes without saying, wrote: “I don´t believe it was an empty historical quarrel. We are not barred from reflecting on the past when a great man abuses power. We have known other examples, even all the way to the Nobel prize...”
On his death bed Pasteur declared that Claude Bernard was right, that the microbe was nothing, the terrain everything. If the microbe alone were responsible, how was it that nurses caring for the tuberculous were not infected whereas others, much less exposed to the bacillus, rapidly fell ill with the disease? On this question Claude Bernard came to develop the theory of susceptibility – an innate or acquired tendency to develop certain pathologies.
On 17 June 1906, the Medecin published a letter from Professor Béchamp to his confrere, Dr. Vindevogel: “You know better than I that all traditional medicine from smallpox and tuberculosis to common enteritis is the prey of preconceived notions that, to be sustained, require facts imagined as need dictates. Whatever you do they vaccinate, they inject – against all good sense – to kill the microbe and the thoughtless masses will thoroughly approve. Whatever you write to prove that they are mistaken and misled is a waste of time. Poor souls!”
Childhood Diseases
"Man will discover a vaccine that could, from early life, via the body, destroy the tendency to spirituality.
In the future we will use a poorly balanced product, which they could very well manufacture, that will prevent spiritual ‘folly´ – in the material sense, of course." Rudolph Steiner, 27 October 1917
“Childhood diseases are clear evidence of the struggles between the I and hereditary forces,” suggests Dr. Victor Bott in Medecine Anthroposophic (Triades, 1976). Micro-organisms that today can be responsible for certain pathologies are the result of species evolution. We are composed of millions of micro-organisms which, at first, are capable of aggression but which, with time, become beneficent to the point where we cannot live without them. Thus by constant mutation there is constant natural adaptation.
Thus man has gradually acquired and consolidated his immunity. The prime consideration is a symbiosis, an equilibrium, the proof of good health. We exist thanks to our adaptive processes, and childhood diseases are probably a necessary stage in the life of the individual. They enable us to build the personality. Fever expresses a salutary reaction of the body to eliminate toxins, after which episode – a test of the immune system – the child has changed, is strengthened. Surmounting one infection from ones own resources provides for increase in resistance to other diseases.
There is no doubt that disease plays an important role in reinforcing our defences, in the consolidation of the terrain. Traditional medicine is directed only at suppressing symptoms by strong medicaments that assault the system as, for example, in the regular suppression of fever. Worse, by vaccination it professes protection of the individual by preventing emergence of natural disease. In other words it kills, for a sterile microbeless world is synonymous with death.
There has always been a balance between childhood disease, viruses and the environment and it is important to foresee, in the long term, what would upset this equilibrium by vaccinations. At all events, these artificial provocations do not provide the same degree of protection as do the natural processes, antibody levels after an injection generally being lower than those after the disease.
Moreover, immunity acquired naturally is long term; that from vaccination, if any, is time-limited. (For confirmation refer to La Presse Médicale, Vol 17, Supplement No 1, May 1998).
The importance of childhood infections should be acknowledged and their development monitored. Poor nutrition or hygiene, or overtaxing of resources can lead to problems where the child is weak or predisposed to certain maladies. For these children there are various effective therapies in the pharmacopsia of alternative medicine.
A child is born with maximum potential. Gradually he develops, forges ahead, but not without the occasional rough passage. However, he has all he needs to defend himself against the diseases of childhood. In this regard we do not need to paint a bleak picture. Fear is not a wise councillor. Anxious parents think that vaccinations are the answer, that they save their offspring from many ills. Unfortunately, they only cloud the issue and weaken the terrain. The disease is hindered in expressing itself, but can, nevertheless, develop insidiously into a chronic condition, often incurable. We don´t need to dread these diseases. Remaining calm and attentive is the best way to help the child over the hurdle.
In "Mon Enfant et les Vaccins" (Vivez Soleil, 1994), Dr. Françoise Berthoud cites John D Goetelen: “A disease is an important moment in a child´s life. It is the first test of conscious distress, the first experience, a crisis to resolve. This crisis has several objectives: the first is to stimulate the natural defences, for let us not forget that we possess the forces to cure ourselves – humans cured themselves before needing medicines, even the natural kind. The second objective is to provoke elimination of accumulated toxic deposits. The third is to correct physical functions, and the fourth is to put the system under test, forcing it to find an answer. Often parents feel powerless, lacking confidence, panicking even. The doctors contribute to the situation with such comments as ‘Your child is in danger´, or ‘There may be complications. ´
Too often parents, acting from fear rather than confidence, agree to suppressive treatment”. Like death, disease is part of life.
A child´s immune system doesn´t behave like a computer. It cannot confront several pathogens at the same time and assimilate them without consequences. The situation promotes mother-child bonding, the disease providing the opportunity for close dependency and intimacy and this emotional dimension plays a part in the building of personality and should not be avoided, according to sociologist C Marenco (Majeur et vacciné: prevention et idéologie, in Science Sociales et Santé, Vol II, No 3 and 4, pp. 136-165, 1984).
If we believe Dr. Mendelsohn, the American pcdiatrist, we should not vaccinate young children: “Much of what we are told about vaccinations is simply not true. If I am to abide by deep conviction I would recommend rejection of all vaccination of your child. I have become a fierce opponent of mass immunisation because of its numerous dangers. We blindly inject foreign proteins into children without knowing what harmful effects they may cause” (Des Enfants Sains Meme Sans Médecin, Vivez Soleil, 1987).
Next: "Principles of Vaccination," Part 2
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