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Agriculture : A Vision for the
Future - Bio-Ag Enews Letter
Bio-Ag Enews#3 ....Part #1........Immunization
(Part #2 of Series)
This is the first of a series dealing with Immunization.
There is increasing pressure being placed on the agricultural
sector to adopt what have become known as "conventional" farming practices.
Those being the extravagant use of toxic herbicides, pesticides and soil
stripping fertilizers to exploit arable lands. With livestock vast amounts
of antibiotics, modified hormones, steroids and questionable feed
supplements are entering a food chain that leads directly back to we the
people. One might find it ironic to imagine that this endless array of
chemicals is somehow conventional. Long term studies haven't begun to tell
what the results of these complex chemicals might be. However evidence
is mounting, in both human and animal populations, that the overuse of
antibiotics has both a negative effect on our immune systems and at the
same time has helped spawn what might be called "super bugs", resistant
to known treatment.
As a culture we have bought into the notion of better
living through chemistry. We believe the conglomerates when they tell us
that we can smell better, eat better, live better and happier lives if
we douse ourselves, our homes and our foods with an ever increasing number
of potions. Among the many notions we have come to accept at face value
is the idea that we must each be introduced to potentially dangerous disease
cultures for immunization, to build "natural" immunities. What are the
real repercussions of these treatments? For generations now we have been
exposing our children, pets and livestock to a witches brew of bugs in
the name of preventive medicine. Over the past few generations we have
witnessed alarming increases in the incidence of environmental illnesses,
allergies, asthma and numerous related conditions. Are there causal links
between these conditions and modern practices?
Catherine J. M. Diodati explores the history of vaccination,
from its origins through to modern times and compulsory vaccination policies.
Her book, "Immunization - History, Ethics, Law and Health" is an exhaustive
look at this almost universal health practice. Diodati manages to convey
a wealth of information about her subject and manages to express herself
in a readable and often fascinating manner. We include the following extract
from the book as a primer on the topics of immunization and vaccination,
with the recommendation that you seek out this book for a thorough exposition
of the subject.
Future issues of the enews will detail the controversy
surrounding animal vaccinations and the alternative procedures used in
homeopathic medicines.
IMMUNIZATION, History, Ethics, Law and Health....by....Catherine
J.M. Diodati, M.A. .... ISBN 0-9685080-0-6
THE HISTORY OF VACCINES
For centuries. people have tried to find means to induce
immunity prior to infection thereby escaping the potentially debilitating
or fatal consequences of disease. Early therapeutic measures and "cures"
often proved to be at the least, if not more, detrimental to patients than
the disease itself. Understandably, preventive medicine arose out of a
genuine desire to halt infection from occurring in the first place.
Although the technological developments, needed to understand
the true nature of disease. did not become available until the 16th century
discovery of the compound microscope, ancient manuscripts demonstrate a
very basic understanding of natural immunity. The Greek historian Thucydides
(c 460-400 BCE) noted that, during a plague that virtually wiped out one
quarter of the Greek population, some people escaped infection despite
exposure and others, who recovered from the plague, were never again infected
by the disease.' Thucydides and the ancients may not have been able to
explain how immunity was acquired, but this very basic understanding of
disease etiology is the foundation upon which the practice of immunization
has been built: if an individual survives exposure to a disease, that individual
would then be protected from subsequent infections from the same disease.
The notion that disease was caused by imperceptible particles
had been postulated since ancient times but it wasn't until the 19th century
that scientists had both the technology and the willingness to consider
the parasitic (vs humoraI) theory of infection. Long before scientists
could observe invasive organisms through microscopes, people attempted
to acquire immunity through various modes of controlled exposure to diseases
and poisons. Many early attempts to acquire immunity proved fruitless,
if not downright lethal. For example, historical records indicate that
people attempted to acquire immunity to dangerous diseases and substances
through processes such as: drinking the blood of poisoned ducks, eating
the liver of mad dogs as a rabies preventative, and inhaling powdered smallpox
crusts. The first attempt at inoculation appears to have come out of the
Middle East where physicians inoculated individuals with a serum derived
from smallpox lesions. This process, called variolation, was extremely
unreliable: sometimes it would induce immunity and sometimes it would infect
the recipient with smallpox. Many early attempts at artificially acquiring
immunity were focussed upon smallpox. The disease appeared to be largely
endemic to Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It was imported into Europe
by returning Crusaders, to the Americas by slave ships and to South America
by the Spanish conquistadors.' The disease was at its peak during the eighteenth
century, claiming approximately fifteen million lives every twenty-five
years in Europe alone. It flourished largely due to the industrial revolution
which brought droves of people into cities and towns, searching for
sustainable employment, and forcing them to live in over crowded slums
without clean drinking water, adequate food or any proper means to dispose
of waste and sewage. NOTE: (most of these diseases were not from
the bug itself but from the situations of unsanitary conditions)
It was during this peak period that a physician named
Edward Jenner (1749-1823) attempted to make the practice of acquiring immunity
to smallpox more safe and effective As a boy, Jenner himself had been subjected
to a brutal method of variolation, preceded by intermittent bleedings,
starvation and purging, common in his day. As in Jenner's case, individuals
would present themselves at an inoculation stable - the local apothecary's
barn. The apothecary would scratch the patients' arms with a knife and
cover the wound, with bandages smeared with the dried scabs of smallpox
victims. Those variolated were generally kept isolated in the barn for
approximately 2-3 weeks, until fevers subsided and smallpox scabs dried
and fell off, when they were no longer capable of transmitting the virus
to others These live smallpox virus inoculations were intended to produce
a mild case of the disease, and permanent immunity upon recovery, but they
were often responsible for fatalities, scarring, blindness, outbreaks of
the disease, and donor-to-recipient transmission of syphilis, hepatitis
and tuberculosis. Since the small, pox matter used in variolation was derived
from other humans, there existed great opportunity to infect the recipient
with any number of diseases infecting the donor.
Although over 75% survived natural smallpox infection,
there was no real cure for the disease and many so called "cures" of the
day were poisonous, likely killing as many patients as the virus itself.
However, when a patient recovered, the "cure" was often lauded as the cause
of recovery and, conversely, when the patient died, the "cure" was not
implicated. Neither proposed cures, nor variolation, provided truly safe
means to address smallpox.
As an adult, Edward Jenner became ;interested in finding
an alternate mean to prevent smallpox. Local farmers, and patients of Jenner,
were known to deliberately infect themselves and their families with cowpox,
believing that recovery from this mild disease would protect them from
infection with smallpox. In 1796 Jenner formulated a vaccine derived from
a milkmaid's cowpox sores and introduced this into the blood, via two cuts
in the arm, of a young boy named James Phipps. After six weeks had passed,
Jenner introduced smallpox infected serum into Phipps' blood: the boy did
not contract smallpox. Jenner tested his inoculation on many more people.
with varying results, including vaccine-induced smallpox and tuberculosis.
In 1798, Jenner formulated a new vaccine, which combined
horse-grease and cowpox matter. He promoted the new vaccine as being superior
to the initial cowpox vaccine which, he said, "had no protective virtue."
Jenner's new formula was met with public disgust and his experiments met
with failure. Jenner once again promoted his initial cowpox vaccine. By
1807, he won the confidence of the Royal College of Physicians and the
British Parliament and mass inoculation campaigns began. Jenner's discovery
eventually led to the end of variolation: some countries banned the practice
immediately while other, notably England, waited for another few decades
to phase out the practice. Along with the international acceptance of Jenner's
vaccine came the initiation of compulsory mass vaccination laws, with Bavaria
leading the way in 1807. At various intervals throughout the 1800s, many
nations adopted compulsory vaccination laws, often requiring all citizens
to receive two doses of Jenner's vaccine. The smallpox vaccine was widely
used until 1979 when the World Health Organization declared smallpox to
be eradicated worldwide.
Approximately one hundred years after Jenner began his
experiments, Louis Pasteur addressed the problem of animal diseases, building
upon Jenner's methods. Pasteur formulated vaccines to prevent chicken cholera,
as well as sheep and bovine anthrax, derived from the isolation of specific
bacteria. Pasteur understood that different microorganisms caused different
diseases" but isolating the causative agents still proved problematic:
microscopes were capable of revealing bacteria, but they were not yet capable
of revealing viruses, which are much smaller.
During the 1930s numerous attempts were made to produce
a safe and effective pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine but it wasn't until
after WWlI thaI scientists were able to test candidate vaccines reliably
on laboratory mice, rather than on humans Until very recently, only formalin-inactivated
whole-cell pertussis vaccines were available but. because this vaccine
often caused severe adverse reactions in a portion of vaccinees, researchers
found it necessary to develop a safer, more refined, vaccine The new acellular
pertussis vaccine eliminates certain potentially non-immunogenic components
which are believed to be related to many severe reactions. However, the
vaccine is, in fact, somewhat of a stab in the dark in that scientists
still do not know which pertussis vaccine components may stimulate an appropriate
immune response. Some clinical studies have determined that the acellular
pertussis vaccine is more effective and causes fewer side effects than
its whole-cell counterpart but the incidence of post-vaccinal "SIDS. near-SIDS,
afebrile seizures, developmental delay, hospitalization and encephalopathy"
appears to be virtually the same following the administration of either
whole-cell or acellular pertussis vaccines.
This response has been interpreted to mean that these
conditions are only temporally (coincidentally) related to vaccine administration
rather than causally related. In Japan, however. an acellular pertussis
vaccine has been in use since 1981 This vaccine costs approximately $9
more per dose than the whole-cell vaccine but an 83% decline in minor reactions;
(eg fever and swelling) and a considerable decline in seizures, brain damage
and fatalities have been noted since Japan adopted its use. The acellular
pertussis vaccine was licensed for use in both Canada and the US in 1997.
Many scientific advances, which coincided with the long
trek taken to create a safe and effective poliomyelitis vaccine, were to
pave the way for the research and development of many subsequent vaccines.
Poliomyelitis was identified as a viral disease (c 19()8) by Karl Landsteiner
who induced poliomyelitis in monkeys using "germ' free filtrates of dilution's
of tissues from people with active cases of the disease." The fillers used
by Landsteiner were fine enough that they could block the passage of bacteria;
this indicated that a pathogen (ie a virus), much smaller than bacteria,
was responsible for causing poliomyelitis. Soon after, poliomyelitis was
found to be a very common enteric (pertaining to the intestines) disease
which is usually innocuous but, on rare occasions, may spread to the central
nervous system and cause paralysis. By 1910 investigations were under way
to develop a vaccine against polio.
Paul Hienrich Romer apparently developed the first inactivated
poliomyelitis vaccine in 1910. Early trials using heat-inactivated antigens
proved unsuccessful: heat simply did not kill all of the viruses and Romer's
test subjects (monkeys) contracted polio. Romer then tried to inactivate
the virus with formaldehyde and when that proved to be equally inadequate
he abandoned his work on polio vaccines. Finding a viable poliomyelitis
vaccine proved to be a costly and frustrating venture. During the 1930s
two vaccines, the Park Brodie inactivated vaccine and the Kolmer live attenuated
vaccines, promised to supply safe and effective prevention against poliomyelitis.
By 1935. however, reports began to surface indicating that both vaccines
were causing paralytic poliomyelitis in vaccinees. By the end of the year,
both vaccines had been withdrawn from use and remaining batches were destroyed.
ROUTINE AND MASS IMMUNIZATION
Compulsory mass immunizations appear to have originated
during the early 1800s. Laws were enacted in several jurisdictions to mandate
that all individuals targeted for immunization must comply or face legal
consequences. Today, immunization legislation varies widely depending upon
national and regional policies The most common types of immunizations may
be classified as either routine or mass immunizations. It has become common
practice to delineate these two types of immunization based upon why, where,
and by whom, the vaccines are administered.
Routine immunizations are those generally administered
by one's usual health care provider eg by the physician or nurse) at their
office or usual health care facility, to target populations (eg children)
by recommendation of public health departments, and with government approval
and/or mandate. Mass immunizations, on the other hand, are considered to
be those administered to target populations, usually by public health nurses,
physicians or others specially trained for this purpose, outside of one's
usual health care facility (eg schools). Mass immunization campaigns are
generally mandated by public health and government officials to prevent
or contain an epidemic and to quickly reduce the number of susceptible
people within a population. The difference between what is normally considered
to be mass immunizations, as opposed to routine immunizations, is important.
In mass campaigns vaccines are administered without the direct supervision
of ones regular health care professional and without the benefit of one's
medical records/history. Vaccinees generally are not screened, by the person(s)
administering the vaccine, for allergies, contraindications and relevant
family history matters that might affect their response to the vaccine.
(Part #2 of Series)
Yours Sincerely,
Patrick Wey
Bio-Ag Enews
Agriculture : A Vision for the Future -
Enews Letter....
www.bio-ag.com/
bioag@patrickwey.com
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