Bronwyn Hancock December 1998

Comment on the following paragraph included in a statement by the Australian Homoeopathic Association on homoeopathic prophylaxis:

"While a healthy child will rarely be adversely affected by most infectious diseases (such as measles, mumps, rubella) other diseases such as pertussis, tetanus and polio have more serious consequences in susceptible children. Such diseases are worth preventing."

Whilst I myself believe that I have been helped by homoeopathy, the above statement is an indication of a belief in the germ theory of disease, conditioned into us by modern medicine. Ironically this theory was itself retracted by its main proponent himself, Louis Pasteur, before he died, with his famous words: "The seed is nothing, the soil is everything."

I am surprised at the statement, and feel that it is not very representative, as a significant proportion of homoeopaths do not believe in trying to practise homoeopathic prophylaxis (which is actually isopathy,
not homoeopathy).

Regardless of the particular germ involved, susceptibility STILL depends on the HEALTH of the host. The immune system is far more sophisticated and clever than it is given credit for. With sufficient support it can even cope with man-made germs, including even the mutant viruses in vaccines which can be more virulent than their wild counterparts (though it is certainly not designed to cater for them entering via an injection!).

There is no need to target specific infections and try to avoid them. We never can avoid all infections anyway – we are constantly being exposed to countless numbers of them in our daily lives, but are just not conscious of it because in normal circumstances the immune system is more than strong enough to deal with them quite easily. We only need to eat, breath, exercise, sun, sleep, manage stress, etc sufficiently to nourish our body so that it can do the job it is designed to do. These childhood infections will not kill or cause lasting damage to a sufficiently healthy body. Unfortunately we can't cheat on Nature, and expect to be able escape any suffering without being healthy, but on the positive side, health is something we do have control over.

The occasionally heard claim by the medical profession that healthy children still suffer complications and die "from" these infections is illogical – a contradiction in terms, because "health" by definition means strength and resistance to suffering from infections! This claim simply reflects:-

a) their poor diagnostic methods, compared to many alternative methods, when it comes to picking up the more subtle indications of less than perfect health, and/or 

b) their poor, usually counterproductive, methods of management of illness. 

Interestingly it has been documented around the world that whenever the medical profession goes on strike the death rate drops (see http://www.vaccination.inoz.com/doctordeathrate.html)! So I would like to say to the medicos (those, that is, who think in such a way as to make such a claim), and to the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry driving it, thank you for your contribution, but if you don’t mind we’ll just bypass you and get on with living and healing ourselves.

On the subject of management of illness, once you ARE suffering (due to imperfect health), whether you just fast, drink water and rest (as a Natural Hygienist would say), or add extra nourishment such as Vitamin C (further whether it must be natural via fruit/vegetable juice or if it can be synthetic), or further whether you also use homoeopathic treatment to help the body restore balance, is an area where there is quite a divergence of philosophy.

However few homoeopaths would agree with the statement that it is important to try, in a specific way, to prevent certain infections, particularly childhood diseases such as pertussis (whooping cough). Indeed medical research has found that those who go through childhood infections develop stronger immune systems, evidenced by the fact that they suffer less in later years from cancer, skin and bone diseases, etc (for the benefits of measles, see Lancet 1985, 1996 and 1999; mumps - see Cancer 1966; chickenpox - see Am J Epidemiology 2001). Pertussis itself has been found to be protective against the development of asthma (Pediatr Infect Dis J 1996).

Even Isaac Golden, a prominent proponent of homoeopathic prophylaxis (probably THE most prominent today), says that it is a valid option not to use it. Further, Dr Scheibner found that babies who had been given homoeopathic prophylaxis still were found to react with some stress-induced breathing when monitored on the Cotwatch breathing monitor developed by her late husband, Leif Karlsson (though obviously there is no comparison between the effect of homoeopathic prophylaxis and that of the highly toxic conventional vaccines).

Polio, specifically mentioned above as "worth preventing", is in its wild form an extremely harmless virus, probably even easier to deal with than a cold. A healthy, totally unvaccinated child will not suffer at all from exposure to this virus, as evidenced by the fact that the first recorded outbreak did not occur until intensified (smallpox) vaccination began a century ago.

What has given polio its normally undeserved bad reputation is the fact that it can be provoked by artificial procedures such as vaccines, tonsillectomies and antibiotics which interfere with the proper functioning of the immune system. The mutant polio virus which we can get from polio vaccines also appears to be more virulent, ironically, than the wild one. However with proper management, even these problems are not life threatening.

For more on polio, and also on tetanus, see Tetanus and Polio Vaccines