Positive Health Online

The obscenity of feeding gentle vegetarian ruminants with minced up bits of other animals has resulted, not at all surprisingly – in ecological disaster, with the worst of it being experienced by the animals themselves but with a satisfactory degree of economic hardship being experienced by those who believed that they could bend the laws of nature with impunity.

The story of Creutzfeldt-Jacob (C-J) disease is littered with similar deviations from rational behaviour from which we might learn something, although that’s probably wishful thinking.

The pituitary gland contains tiny amounts of hypophysical growth hormone – HGH, and in an effort to gather as much of this rare substance (before synthetic forms were available, just a few years ago) mortuary workers (in the UK and USA) were offered a bonus for each gland they illegally harvested from the corpses passing through these establishments to be funnelled to the pharmaceutical houses who were extracting HGH.

One of the main groups of recipients of this were children with growth problems. Once HGH was provided growth was enhanced to normal levels, however, because of the completely uncontrolled way in which the pituitaries had been gathered, from diseased and healthy brains alike, it is not too surprising that much of the HGH was contaminated with the prion protein factor which is responsible for Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease. Many of these children have now died miserable deaths as their brains turned to sponge.

The shocking way in which, without anyone being asked or told, bits of dead bodies were removed and used in this way, flagrantly ignoring common decency or respect for the dead or their relatives, is yet another example of short-term thinking leading to long-term harm.

In the distant South Sea islands a little more than half a century ago, natives adopted a peculiar ritual in which the brains of their recently deceased relatives were mashed into a paste and ceremoniously eaten. The mashing process was performed by hand by women and children and it was not too long before strange ailments began to afflict many of these people – they developed kuru – which is identical with C-J disease – and for that matter BSE and Scrapie – all of which involve the mysterious replication of distorted prion proteins in the brains, turning them to sponge. The Australian authorities who administered the region at that time put a stop to this cannibalistic practice and the disease slowly began to vanish, although because of the length of the incubation period new cases still emerge. Here again we have a grotesque form of behaviour, not harvesting bits of human brain for therapeutic use but actually eating bits of departed relatives – leading to repercussions of a deadly nature.

It may not have been possible to predict precisely what the outcome of either of these two sets of behaviour would be, but it was almost certain that in the long run harm would come to those involved.

This reminder of what has been previously recorded and discussed is of value only if we learn from it, and in this instance I am not suggesting that any readers are in the habit of ingesting late Uncle Joe’s bits and pieces or that surreptitious secretions takes place of any corpse parts, at present.

What concerns me is that on a larger scale we continue to play with forces which we believe we have controlled, in the hope that good will come from what are patently undesirable practices in the moral sense.

I am speaking of the current vogue for human, animal and plant genetic engineering and the continuing lunacy of mass immunisation of vulnerable immune systems with cocktails of viral and other detritus.

Space does not permit me to let rip on the genetic engineering front, except to say that with tomatoes now in the stores of some countries containing fish genes, and with other indecent modifications of nature’s products about to appear, the sooner I escape to my Greek organic sanctuary the better.

As for immunisation, hopefully this comment will draw an energetic response – because the whole topic needs to be aired yet again.

A few years ago I wrote a book Vaccination and Immunisation – Dangers, Delusions and Alternatives (C.W. Daniel 1991) in response to requests from patients for a definitive exposition of the reasons for and against this process. My research then, and my reading and research since has convinced me that few practices in modern medicine carry more danger than immunisation of infants. That some degree of protection emerges is not in question – it is the potential cost, short and long term that terrifies me with the strong possibility of AIDS having emerged from this process (see chapter 7 of the book for evidence of both contamination of polio vaccine in the late 50s and early 60s and for compelling evidence of a link between compromised immune function resulting from excessive immunisation practices).

I will close this month’s diatribe with words used in that chapter – “AIDS may or may not be the result, in total or partially, of vaccination/immunisation procedures, past and present. However, the horrific scenario . . . . based on completely verifiable data from numerous medical authorities. . . . should at the very least alert us to the risks we are taking when mixtures of killed or partially deactivated viral and bacterial particles are pumped into delicate, undeveloped, immune systems. The long term effects of the transmission of such noxious materials are unknown (although short term dangers are clear) and should at least call into doubt this whole practice, for the consequences could make AIDS look mild in comparison as new and more monstrous viral mutants evolve.”