As we move into part 6 of this series, new readers to this column should be aware that we’ve covered many questions over the last several months.

1. Are vaccinated children healthier than non-vaccinated children?
2. Do the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks?
3. What are the real numbers of children being hurt?
4. Are vaccinations “effective”?
5. Are vaccine doses personalized?
6. Can vaccines cause damage that may not surface for years?
7. Can vaccines cause crib death (SIDS)?
8. Did vaccines eliminate diseases?
9. What if we stopped vaccinating?
10. How many people are really getting diseases?
11. What’s in a vaccine?

Please review any of the previous articles you may have missed at www.NeighborsNewspaper.com or at my website www.DonohoeChiropractic.com.

This month our discussion centers on how natural diseases can contribute to immune response and how artificial immunity may detract from it.

12. Are there benefits to acute illness?

Do childhood diseases and acute diseases in general, serve a purpose? The Vitalistic school, which dates back thousands of years, has always looked upon symptoms as the body’s way of detoxifying and cleansing. Hippocrates, known as “The father of Medicine” said:

“Diseases are crises of purification, of toxic elimination. Symptoms are the natural defenses of the body. We call them diseases, but in fact they are the cure of diseases.”

He was a Greek physician born in 460 BC on the island of Cos, Greece. Hippocrates was regarded as the greatest physician of his time. He based his medical practice on observations and on the study of the human body. Hippocrates held the belief that the body must be treated as a whole and not just a series of parts. He believed in the natural healing process of rest, a good diet, fresh air and cleanliness. He noted that there were individual differences in the severity of disease symptoms and that some individuals were better able to cope with their disease and illness than others. I tend to believe that those who had higher resistance or recovery rates were that segment of the population that had a more efficiently functioning nervous system. In other words, they had fewer subluxations!

As a chiropractor specializing in pediatric care, I see many children in my office with parents who ask me what to do for their child with a fever. They wonder whether they should use Tylenol or baby aspirin or ice baths to bring down the fever. My answer is to simply embrace the fever as an essential part of the recovery process. What most parents don’t understand is that the fever actually creates a very inhospitable environment for the viruses and bacteria to reproduce in. It also activates parts of the immune system that otherwise never get turned on. In essence, artificially bringing down the fever actually prolongs the infection!

A medical physician by the name of Philip Incao says this on the subject of acute illness:

“One of the best ways to ensure your children's health is to allow them to get sick. At first hearing, this concept may sound outrageous. Yet childhood illnesses, such as measles, mumps, and even whooping cough, may be of key benefit to a child's developing immune system and it may be inadvisable to suppress these illnesses with immunizations. Evidence is also accumulating that routine childhood vaccinations may directly contribute to the emergence of chronic problems such as eczema, ear infections, asthma, and bowel inflammations.”

Harris Coulter, Ph.D., the medical historian whom we’ve met earlier in our discussions, says this:

“Contracting and overcoming childhood diseases are part of a developmental process that actually helps develop a healthy, robust, adult immune system able to meet the challenges that inevitable encounters with viruses and bacteria will present later on.”

In the British medical journal, The Lancet, a study was published in 1999 which demonstrated that acute illness may actually help protect children from allergies.

“Relatively few cases of hay fever, asthma and eczema [were found] in those from large families or from small families that used day care before the child’s first birthday. They credit the lack of these conditions to early exposure to normal childhood diseases.”

Childhood illnesses protect children from hay fever, asthma and eczema. Are we protecting our children from being sick for a week in exchange for their being sick for the rest of their lives?

13. What’s the difference between natural immunity and artificial immunity?

Viral diseases contracted naturally are ordinarily filtered through a series of immune system defenses (i.e. skin and mucous membranes). Along the way, different aspects of the immune system are triggered and begin the process of identifying and responding to the particular pathogens (germs). But when the vaccine virus and chemicals are injected directly into the child’s blood stream they have access to all of the major tissues and organs of the body without the body’s normal advantage of a total immune response. Some say that when children are vaccinated the disease is milder; there’s less rash, discomfort and fever. However, that may not be a beneficial occurrence as it may mean that the child is less able to externalize the poisons.

Andrew Wakefield, the British MD and gastroenterologist, puts it this way…

“[Vaccination] subverts the immune response, the ability to clear that virus. The rash is the body’s eradication of the virus. If you do not have a typical measles rash you are not invoking an adequate cellular immune response…measles [may] persist in the body…children who do not develop the rash…have an excess risk of delayed mortality.”

The result of natural disease onset is a natural and more effective and complete immune response. When we subvert the natural defenses of the body through the direct injection of vaccine virus into the bloodstream, we are significantly impairing the body’s ability to do its job as it was designed to.

Stay tuned for next month’s segment and lots more information on the vaccination dilemma.

Dr. Donohoe is a family practice chiropractor who specializes in the unique needs of pregnant women and children. His office is located at 41880 Kalmia St., Suite 135 in Murrieta. He can be reached at 951-677-6500 or through his website at www.DonohoeChiropractic.com.