The Myths of Conventional Medical Success: Antibiotics

Ask most people about what they believe has been the most important and successful pharmaceutical drug ever produced, and most people would say, without hesitation - Antibiotics. Yet is this popular belief just another result of successful pharmaceutical promotion?

The first myth concerning antibiotics is their origins. "Antibiotics have been used for millennia to treat infections, although until the last century or so people did not know the infections were caused by bacteria." So antibiotic substances have been used in medicine from very ancient times. In Egypt, for example, it is known that mouldy bread was applied to infected wounds. The ancient Egyptians may not have known what they were doing, or why doing it worked; but clearly they were empiricists rather than medical scientists, and this knowledge was available to them; and they used it. Modern medical 'science' is not the only source of wisdom about drugs!

Science discovered bacteria in the latter part of the 19th century. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. Penicillin was manufactured and used throughout the 1939-1945 World War, not least for battle injuries and infections, and thereby gained its reputation as a "wonder drug". Thereafter the progress of antibiotic treatment continued with other serious infectious diseases, like tuberculosis, for which, hitherto, there had been no conventional medical treatment. In addition antibiotics were used to control post-operative infections, making surgery less dangerous, and so more successful.

So, in less than 100 years, antibiotics drastically changed conventional medicine, and many believe that antibiotic drugs heralded "a golden age of medicine". They worked; they killed bacteria; they were a 'miracle' cure. The result is that many claims have been made for antibiotic drugs, not least have extended the average human lifespan by over 20 years. So what is the problem?

First, antibiotic drugs confirmed to conventional medicine, which had spent some 700 years looking for 'heroic' cures, that pharmaceutical drugs would be the future of modern medicine. Where there was illness there would be a chemical agent able to deal with it. Medical science would soon conquer all illness and disease. Conventional medicine has believed this ever since.

Yet the seeds of antibiotic failure had already been sown. Following the discovery of bacteria and other microbes in the late 19th century there had been an important scientific debate about how important germs generally were in causing ill-health and disease. For many scientists, led by Louis Pasteur, thought they were the central cause of illness; and they believed that illness could be overcome simply by killing the 'offending' organism. This belief was popular with the drugs industry, which would be the main agent for discovering new drugs that would do just this. The future of medicine would be pharmaceutical.

However this belief was strongly challenged by another group of scientists, led by Antoine Bechamp, who said that it was the host (the person, the individual, and his/her immune system) that was important, not the germ. If the host was healthy, if his/her immune system was strong, the germ was immaterial; it would not cause illness. The scientific world was divided over the issue, but eventually the germ theory of disease 'won' the argument. This led to the rise of the pharmaceutical industry, which had hitherto been small, and relatively insignificant. Drug companies spent the next century pursuing more and more elaborate ways of killing germs.

It was natural health therapies, like homeopathy, herbalism, naturopathy, acupuncture, et al, that continued to focus on 'the host', who believed, like Bechamp, that looking after the body, and notably its immune system, was the safest and most effective route to good health. But this approach was sidelined, marginalised, overtaken, by the new, burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, and its search for, and the promotion of 'wonder drugs' and 'magic bullets'.

There has been two results of the use, and over-use, of antibiotic drugs over the years that are sufficiently well known, recognised by most people, and even the drug industry. These are (i) antimicrobial resistance, and (ii) the rise of new 'superbugs'. Fewer people are aware that (iii) antibiotics can, and do, kill 'good' as well as 'bad' bacteria, thus causing serious illness, and that (iv) antibiotic drugs have always been known to cause serious (but rarely mentioned) adverse effects.

1. Antimicrobial Resistance

There is no life-form that does not seek to protect itself when it comes under attack. The natural world in its entirety, always seeks to defend itself against attack. Survival is an important instinct, not only for humanity, but for plants, and other animals. Indeed, each life-form have adopted mechanisms, deeply embedded within them, for protection; and bacteria and 'germs' are part and parcel of this natural process. 

So it should be no surprise that when bacteria come into contact with antibiotic drugs they resist. It is what they are supposed to do!

The only surprise, perhaps, is that conventional medical science has never appeared to recognise that this universal response might happen as a result of their drugs - perhaps they have been too busy with their adulation of 'wonder drug'. Nor did conventional medical practitioners help themselves by selling antibiotics to patients, in ever-increasing quantities, including many who did neither needed them, or benefitted from them. Doctors have regularly prescribed antibiotics for "non-bacterial" illnesses for which they could not an effective!

Nor should it have been a surprise that patients increasingly demanded antibiotic drugs from their doctor. Over the decades antibiotics were sold as 'wonder drugs', 'miracle cures', and patients soon began to believe this constant drug promotion, reinforced as it was by government, conventional medicine, and the mainstream media - without question. Sick patients wanted to get better; and they insisted that they should be given antibiotics - regardless!

So resistance means that antibiotic drugs, that once had seemed helpful in overcoming the 'germs' associated with ill-health, have become increasingly ineffective, that no longer had even the most transitory beneficial effect of killing bacteria. Diseases once thought to be 'conquered' by them, are beginning to return. For instance, the return of tuberculosis (TB) after decades of medical claims that antibiotics had eradicated it, is now a reality. The return of this, and other diseases, confirms that any success antibiotic drugs may have had were little more than a (rather long-lasting but nonetheless) temporary illusion.

Even the conventional medical establishment began to realise that in time there would be no effective antibiotics left that would kill the germs they believed caused disease.

2. The Rise of Superbugs

A 'superbug' is a term for organisms that have developed the ability to resist commonly prescribed drugs, and have arisen entirely as the result of antibiotic drug treatment. The bugs were not just resistant, they have transformed themselves into germs that now causes serious illness. Many people will know about MRSA, Candida, and C-Difficile. But as this Healthline article reports, the USA's CDC now lists 18 bacteria that endangers human health. 

    Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter

    Candida auris

    Clostridioides difficile

    Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae

    Drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae

    Drug-resistant Campylobacter

    Drug-resistant Candida

    ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae

    Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE)

    Multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

    Drug-resistant nontyphoidal Salmonella

    Drug-resistant Salmonella serotype Typhi

    Drug-resistant Shigella

    Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

    Drug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae

    Drug-resistant Tuberculosis

So in recent years conventional medicine has realised that it can no longer develop new antibiotic drugs, in part because the pharmaceutical industry now understands it cannot produce drugs that kill germs but do not lead to resistance; but mainly because doctors are now under pressure not to prescribe antibiotics, which reduces demand for them, and undermines the profitability of developing new antibiotic drugs.

3. Antibiotic drugs kill 'good' bacteria

Antibiotics are indiscriminate killers. They do no target the bacteria doctors want to destroy, they cause collateral damage which devastates the bacterial balance that exists normally within the body. Our bodies are made up of a multitude of so-called 'germs'; so when someone takes a course of antibiotics no-one (including drug companies and medical doctors) can be entirely sure which germs will be killed, which will survive, and how the bacterial balance will be compromised.

For instance, most antibiotics are taken by mouth, which means they pass quickly through to our stomach, and the digestive system. This immediately threatens the gut microbiome, which is a highly complex system of bacteria and other organisms that digests our food. So antibiotics interfere with the digestion of food, with serious implications for our health.

Recent research has linked the compromised microbiome with some of the most serious diseases. Notably, all these diseases have reached epidemic levels during the antibiotic 'bonanza' of the last 80 plus years, yet they have never before been associated with antibiotic drugs. This 2022 paper, "Impact of antibiotics on the human microbiome and consequences for host health" has investigated the long term effects of antibiotics on "the healthy state microbial composition problem" in some detail.

        "More recently, scientists have uncovered the detrimental impact of broad‐spectrum antibiotics on the gut microbiota. Home to bacteria, archaea, microeukaryotes, and viruses, the gut microbiota plays a fundamental role in human health. It prevents pathogen colonization, regulates gut immunity, provides essential nutrients and bioactive metabolites, and is involved in energy homeostasis (Mills et al., 2019). In infants, the gut microbiota is acquired during birth and thereafter plays an essential role in the development of infant gut immunity. Evidence to date strongly suggests that balanced microbiota composition and rich species diversity are essential to its optimal functioning (Heiman & Greenway, 2016), which can be compromised in disease states (Mosca et al., 2016). Likewise, reduced diversity and imbalanced microbiota composition in the infant's gut are associated with intestinal illnesses and a predisposition to certain diseases later in life (Milani et al., 2017; Volkova et al., 2021)

This seems to be one of those honest scientific papers that rarely (if ever) finds itself discussed, outside a small scientific medical elite within the conventional medical establishment. So the vast majority of people are not aware of what they describe, namely "the detrimental impact of broad-spectrum antibiotics on the gut microbiota". The usual wall of denial has greeted the paper: governments fails to inform us, the conventional medical establishment (as usual) continues to insist that antibiotics are "safe and effective"; and the mainstream media does not bother to investigate!

Chapter 5 of the paper outlines a multitude of studies that have linked antibiotic use with conditions such as obesity, diabetes, asthma, diarrhoea, allergy, atopic dermatitis and more. It outlines other studies which show how antibiotics, during pregnancy and infancy, can affect a child's immune system, and lead to "disease in later life, both directly and indirectly". Most serious, perhaps, is the section on 'Changes in the Immune System" which outlines several studies that "demonstrate the complex relationship between the microbiota and the host immune response, and the impact of antibiotics on this interaction which needs to be further studied. It can also impact the effectiveness of vaccines used postantibiotic treatment." 

The paper has this conclusion:

        "Antibiotics disrupt the microbial balance and hence the networking within the bacterial community, and that with the host. The resulting resistant bacteria make clinical treatment difficult. Due to this complex link between the host and microbiota, the current usage of antibiotics requires careful stewardship, with an emphasis on the application of antibiotic alternatives, while limiting collateral damage".

Obviously the paper is written by medical scientists who continue to believe that antibiotics, in some shape or form, will still have a part to play in conventional medical treatment. This is an honest position; but it is not one on which I can agree. Antibiotic drugs have been prescribed by conventional medical doctors for 80 years. They are still routinely described to patients as "safe and effective", and prescribed in ever-increasing quantities. And conventional medicine has continued to do so without any apparent awareness that antibiotic drugs could cause an increase in the diseases mentioned in the study. This makes drug-based medicine (not just antibiotics, but especially antibiotics) a inherently dangerous medical system, unaware of the dangers to which it is exposing patients. It is a medical system that can experiment with patient, giving them drugs whose 'side effects' can remain unknown 80 years!

This situation is getting worse. In a study published in October 2024, a link has been found between antibiotic drugs, the microbiome, and Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's has, to my knowledge, never been linked with antibiotic drugs before, and like most revelations about adverse drug reactions it is still being played down. 

        "In a large UK-representative population, the risk of PD was modestly lower among adults who had previously received multiple courses of penicillins in the last 15 years and modestly higher among those exposed to antifungal medicines in recent years".

I suspect the significance of this link between antibiotic drugs and serious illness and disease will only develop over time, and require many more studies. It is not possible to interfere with the human body, not least by compromising the gut microbiome which digests our food, and not cause serious damage to our health. And it is becoming clear that this is what antibiotics have been doing - for many decades.

This is probably one of the reasons that pharmaceutical companies are now talking about the development of more 'targeted' antibiotics - but again, this seems more to do with drug promotion than reality. Medical science has always proved itself to be less clever than its propaganda! And 'targeted antibiotics' would still be based upon the same failed understanding of health - that in order to be healthy we have to kill germs!

4. The other 'side effects' of antibiotic drugs

Conventional medicine still refuses to accept that antibiotic drugs have serious adverse reactions which are just as harmful as any other pharmaceutical drugs. But they do. For instance, the Drugs.com website outlines that they can commonly cause skin rash, allergic reactions, soft or watery stools, short-term diarrhoea, upset stomach, nausea, loss of appetite, Fungal (yeast) vaginal infections, oral thrush; and more seriously severe allergic reaction that results in difficulty breathing, facial swelling, severe watery or bloody diarrhoea; Clostridium difficile infection, stomach cramps, and yeast infections in the mouth or vagina. These 'side effects' have been known for decades, but they are routinely discounted.

The British NHS website says that "these side effects are usually mild and should pass once you finish your course of treatment". And even the Drugs.com website fails to list the side effects discussed in this blog. So even now the conventional medical establishment shows itself to be reluctant to disclose about weight gain, diabetes, et al, which they must know about, but clearly are not sufficiently honest to disclose. Informed patient choice is impossible within such secrecy, and lack of transparency.

So if we look at antibiotics from outside the closed walls of pharmaceutical propaganda, they cannot be described as a success. And as conventional medicine continues to describe them as "safe and effective" it is difficult for them to admit that their most acclaimed 'wonder drug' has failed. In the fullness of time, antibiotic drugs will be seen as a failure, not just because of resistance, or the development of superbugs, or serious adverse effects, but because most of the diseases they were supposed to have eradicated are now returning.

If we are to regain our health we need to revisit the Pasteur-Bechamp debate, and recognise that what is most important is the host, and its immune system; and that the body is not made well by attacking the bacteria that, far from being a threat, are an important part of staying healthy. 

Pharmaceutical medicine will refuse to do so; its enormous wealth, power and influence is based on pursuing the failed 'germ theory' of disease, and its belief in the need to control and kill the very things that keep us healthy.

This blog is one of a series of blogs that examines the myths of conventional medical success. Others in the series include:

    Eradicating Smallpox.

    Conquering Polio.

    Conquering Measles.

    Whooping Cough (Pertussin)

    The Covid-19 Pandemic

Coronavirus COVID-19. Germ Theory and Disease. The difference between a natural health approach & a pharmaceutical approach goes back 150 years

Science is the measure of all things. This is the age of science - it is all-knowing - it is not to be challenged - it has become God. Our government admits that it has no policy on coronavirus COVID-19 - above or beyond the advice given to them by medical science. It is science that drives medical strategy, all policy is driven by it. Government can do nothing without the express permission of these medical experts.

Medical science, of course, is drawn exclusively from within the confines of the pharmaceutical medical establishment. It is the science that has been bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical companies, and so is intent on promoting the value and importance of drugs and vaccines to our health.

But this particular criticism is not what this blog is about. What needs to be recognised is that governments around the world are reacting to the COVID-19 pandemic in accordance with a scientific 'decision' that was taken between 130 to 150 years ago. This 'decision' was calamitous, and in large measure has driven the subsequent emergence of the pharmaceutical industry, its dominance within health provision, and what most people believe 'health' is all about.

Most people will have heard about Louis Pasteur, and his 'germ theory' of illness and disease. Very few people have heard about Antoine Béchamp, a highly respected scientist whose position on 'germs' differed from, and was a rival to Pasteurs. The subsequent 'triumph' of Pasteur's position, although now over 130 years ago, is one of the main reasons for conventional medicine's current reaction to the coronavirus COTID-19 pandemic. So what did the two scientists believe?

Louis Pasteur.

Pasteur's germ theory stated that “specific microscopic organisms are the cause of specific diseases,” a statement few people in the pharmaceutical medical establishment would now disagree. The threat of  'germs' to our health has become an all-pervasive belief, considered to be self-evidently true. It is, we are told, a scientific fact.

The germ theory pre-dated Pasteur, but he popularised the concept, and it gained widespread acceptance in the late 19th century. It reduced the idea of disease to a single, simple interaction between specific microorganisms and a host. It has minimized the role of what is often called 'the environment' in which these germs operate, such as life-style factors and the impact they have on our health. The problem is bacteria, and viruses; it has nothing to do with us, and what we do to our bodies. So Pasteur's theory also freed us from personal and social responsibility for creation of disease. 

Importantly, it also led to the idea, now dominant within conventional medicine, that health provision should be about protecting us from these germs - not least by vaccines.

This is why we are now engaged in a frantic war with coronavirus COVID-19. It is difficult because  we cannot see it. We don't know where it is. And it is difficult to kill. This is why governments around the world are so desperate, thrashing around like headless chickens, developing senseless policies that are not working, and why thousands of people are still dying around the world. 

The strategy of conventional medical is to focus on the germ, the bacteria, the virus; and to fight it, to hunt it down, to kill it - almost at any cost. This is why we are being urged

• to spray and disinfect anything that moves, and many things that does not move too,
• to wash our hands, for at least 20 seconds, frequently

This germ-centric view of health also means that we all have to defend and protect ourselves from an invisible enemy, to isolate ourselves from potential carriers of the germ, and to prevent its transmission. We believe that the germ can strike anywhere, at any time, and that it can affect everyone. We do not know who is infected, or who is carrying the germ. So everyone must be considered to be a carier, and it becomes essential for everyone to

• avoid all social contact and maintain social distance,
• wear masks, gloves, gowns in order to protect ourselves from the transmission of the germ,
• impose strict social and economic lockdowns.

And we must do all this even though in doing so we might undermine the social fabric, destroy the national economy, jeopardise our mental health, and lose our jobs. This is all worthwhile - for as long as we believe that germs are so powerful.

This is what Pasteur thought, and what germ-based medicine believes. This is what medical science is at this very moment telling governments, what is forming policy, and why we are being subjected to the nonsense responses to coronavirus COVID-19.

Antoine Béchamp.

Béchamp’s view was quite different, and have been summed up under these eight headings: (with my emphasis).

1. Disease arises from micro-organisms within the cells of the body
2. These intracellular microorganisms normally function to build and assist in the metabolic processes of the body
3. The function of these organisms changes to assist in the disintegration processes of the host organism when that organism dies or is injured, which may be chemical as well as mechanical
4. Microrganisms change their shapes and colours to reflect the medium
5. Every disease is associated with a particular condition
6. Microorganisms become “pathogenic” as the health of the host organism deteriorates. Hence, the condition of the host organism is the primary causal agent
7. Disease is built by unhealthy conditions
8. To prevent disease we have to create health.

               “The microzyma (a term describing minute particles common to all living things) is at the beginning and end of all organization. It is the fundamental anatomical element whereby the cellules, the tissues, the organs, the whole of an organism are constituted".

In brief, Béchamp believed that disease developed within an unhealthy environment, caused by a body that was in an unbalanced state. He taught that disease could not take hold without a pre-existing weakness in the host, that germs did not cause disease, but instead gravitated to weaker, or diseased people. Essentially, germs were scavengers that fed on dead tissue.

As Rudolf Virchow, a contemporary German physician, often known as 'the father of modern pathology', stated 

               “If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat - diseased tissues - rather than causing disease.”

So Béchamp's focus was not invisible germs, it was the weakened hosts on which they preyed. If the body was not in a weakened state the germs would not cause disease. This view continues to be the basis of all natural medical therapies. The centre of medical concern is NOT the germ, it is the host upon which the germ is able to prey. 

Moreover, the host is observable, its state of health known. The focus is moved from the germ to the body's immune system, which is ultimately the best, perhaps the only protection we have from an invasion of germs.

It is noticeable that in the present pandemic there is little mention of the need to support the immune system.

• little mention of the importance of good diet and nutrition,
• the importance to the immune system of vitamin C, and D, and zinc - et al,
• exercise is something we want to do, not something we need to do because it is protective,
• no mention of the harm caused by life-style factors such as smoking, and drinking too much alcohol,
• no mention of natural medical therapists who are treating their patients,
• little mention whatever of the 'underlying health conditions' that are actually killing people,
• absolutely no mention that some of these 'underlying health conditions are actually caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines,
• no mention that the conventional medical experts who are dictating government policy favour 'immunosupressive' treatments' that intentionally undermine our immune system.

Instead, governments, advised by medical science, seems to believe that the only solution to COVID-19 is the development of a vaccine, so it is ploughing £millions$ into the pharmaceutical industry to deliver one. 

Béchamp's view of germs, if he had prevailed, would have led to a different kind of health service, one that was not so desperate to destroy bacteria and viruses, but which focused instead on helping us defend ourselves. We would have a health service that supported the immune system, emphasised its importance, and advised us about all the things we can do - the importance of underlying health, a strong immune system, healthy life-style habits, the role of diet, nutrition, exercise, the use of natural medical therapies like homeopathy, naturopathy, herbal medicine, and many

Although this is now beginning to happen in a few countries, like Cuba and India, they have been heavily criticised for doing so - by the pharmaceutical medical establishment!

The problem with such an approach is, of course, that the pharmaceutical industry would not make £billions$ from vaccine research, and vaccine sales - or getting indemnity from government for the damage all vaccines do to patients.

Wherever conventional medicine is dominant, government policies are not working. The medical experts on whom they rely have no treatment to offer. Hence, the main reason given for the hugely damaging social and economic lockdown is the need to 'protect' health services from the pressure of sick patients!
 
The pharmaceutical industry is a hopeless monopoly whose only role is to oversee the process of patients dying, whilst using its medical 'expertise' to advise the governments on policy. 

• What can we expect of a medical system that kills the cow, and its herd, when it contracts TB, or Food & Mouth? 
• What can we expect of a medical system that responds to bird influenza by killing the entire flock? 
• What can we expect from a medical system that diagnosis a tree with a disease and chops it down? 

Pasteur's triumph over Béchamp was a pyrrhic victory, one that has inflicted a devastating toll on the quality and relevance of health provision. The victor, and his 'science' has directed us to where we are. It is time Béchamp was reinstated. It is his insight that reflects more accurately the world in which we live, and which we are now observing. His reinstatement would transform our thinking about what health is (and what is not), and bring back a vestige on sanity into the operation of our health system.

 

 

For those who wish to know more about Bechamp, and see a discussion on the whole issue of germ theory and 'terrraine', this Facebook site is recommended.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/germtheory.vs.terraintheory