Autoimmune Disease. The Cause of Serious Illness and Disease. The Dilemma of Pharmaceutical Medicine

Our immune system keeps us well, free from illness and disease. At least this is what all natural medical therapies believe, and what Conventional Medicine used to tell us. But Conventional Medicine now seems increasingly to want to distance itself from this understanding. It now seems intent to devalue our confidence in the immune system. Rob Verkerk PhD, founder, Alliance for Natural Health, described our immune system thus:

   “Our immune systems, a complex network of organs, cells and proteins, work tirelessly, every millisecond of every day, defending our bodies from infection, protecting our own cells, as well as the microbes our bodies decide are good for us. This is an incredibly complex and skilful operation that we tend to take for granted—until it stops working as it should.”

Autoimmune Disease

I awoke recently to yet another "ground-breaking medical treatment", this time for Lupus. Read about it here, in this ITV article, 'Groundbreaking trial offers new lupus treatment'. Conventional medicine prides itself in its ability to diagnose serious illnesses and diseases, like Lupus, however when it come to identifying causation it is much less confident. When I was writing my Iatrogenic Disease e-Book I discovered so many serious illnesses and diseases where Conventional Medicine states, very clearly, that the cause was "unknown" or "uncertain"; and goes on to offer either (i) no causal reason, (ii) a description of what is happening, see here for example, or more recently blames (iii) our genetics, or the failure of our immune system, and similar.

One example of this failure to distinguish between 'description' and 'causation' can be found in most conventional medical explanations of Alzheimer's Disease. This is how the British NHS website described the 'cause' of Alzheimer's Disease.

        "Alzheimer's disease is thought to be caused by the abnormal build-up of proteins in and around brain cells. One of the proteins involved is called amyloid, deposits of which form plaques around brain cells. The other protein is called tau, deposits of which form tangles within brain cells".

The formation of "plaques" and "tangles" in the chemistry of the brain is NOT the cause of the disease. The healthy brain does not have them, so the cause would describe why those "plaques" and "tangles" formed in the first place. I have written about many more examples of conventional medicine using 'description' as a 'cause' here.

This is a real problem for conventional medicine - because without knowing the cause of illness it cannot possible hope to treat it successfully.

The ITV article on lupus, above, also provided no causal explanation of lupus, just an unsupported, un-evidenced statement that it is an 'autoimmune disease'. This is what the British NHS website tells us about its cause.

        "(Lupus) is an autoimmune condition, which means it is caused by problems with the immune system. For reasons not yet understood, the immune system in people with (lupus) starts to attack and inflame healthy cells, tissue and organs".

So this is not even a description of lupus masquerading as the cause! It is an unsubstantiated statement of a cause - one which offers no explanation as to why the immune system has acted in this way; it even admits that it does not know why it has acted in this way!

Conventional medicine now routinely underestimates, or even dismisses the role of our immune system, whose job has always been to ensure that the body is functioning normally, free of illness. If it is not functioning properly, something is wrong, something is causing it!

Infection is often used as a 'cause' of illness: it's the germ, bacteria, or virus that causes the illness. Or could it be that the germ is the result of a condition, something we find, in over-abundance, in an already sick patient? If it is the cause, why has the immune system been able to recognise and deal with it? Natural medicine understands that it is a compromised immune system that causes illness. The bacteria or virus is one that usually co-exists with us, part of us, we are made up of 'germs', with whom we usually live in harmony.

Autoimmune disease goes one stage further in conventional medicine's understanding of causation. The immune system is turning in on itself, it is "too active". So why has it decided to harm rather than protect us? Conventional medicine does not have explanation. Wikipedia's explanation of autoimmune diseases demonstrates this:

        "The exact causes of autoimmune diseases remain unclear and are likely multifactorial, involving both genetic and environmental influences. While some diseases like lupus exhibit familial aggregation, suggesting a genetic predisposition, other cases have been associated with infectious triggers or exposure to environmental factors, implying a complex interplay between genes and environment in their etiology".

It is these 'genetic' explanations of autoimmune disease that has led to the the new 'ground breaking' method of treating Lupus - leading to the "genetic engineering of cells".

        "The therapy works by genetically modifying cells to enable the body’s own immune system to recognise and attack problem cells, offering people a possible cure".

However, yet again, the proper response should have been to ask another question - why is the immune system doing this? What has caused the immune system to malfunction? Is the genetics of cells responsible for the condition? If it is not the cause, it might not be any part of the solution!

Could it just possible be pharmaceutical drugs? The result of more "adverse drug reactions"? Are 'autoimmune diseases' really iatrogenic? Conventional medicine already knows that many of its pharmaceutical drugs cause autoimmune diseases, notably antibiotics, painkillers, anti-inflammatory drugs, steroids, as wel as most vaccines. So, in order to prevent and treat autoimmune diseases, like lupus, would it not be more sensible to look at these drugs as, at least, part of the causation?

There is a group of pharmaceutical drugs called "immunosuppressants"? Their name provides a clue to the impact they have on the body. They suppress the immune system! And if the immune system is suppressed we get ill! Even conventional medicine knows this. It really is as simple as this! Most explanations of the role of these immunosuppressants drugs are similar, but this is taken from the Cleveland Clinic, and is perhaps the most honest about their usage, and the impact on the immune system.

        "Immunosuppressants are drugs that prevent your immune system from attacking healthy cells and tissues by mistake. Healthcare providers prescribe immunosuppressants to treat certain autoimmune diseases and prevent organ or stem cell transplant rejection. These medications also increase your risk of infection because your immune system isn’t working as it should".

Conventional medicine appears to be somewhat confused. It believes that the immune system is 'overactive' and attacks 'healthy cells and tissues by mistake'. It does not say why the immune system is making such mistakes! So drugs are used that suppress the immune system - they admit that this increases the risk of infection 'because your immune system isn't working as it should'. So the immune system is now suppressed, it is not overactive.

Conventional, drug-based medicine has done something that it always does - it has interfered with the normal functioning of the body.

We should note that Conventional Medicine never evidences why the immune system has become 'overactive'. Usually most websites just make a statement - that the immune system can be overactive, and that certain diseases (more than 120 of them) are caused by its inability to recognise 'the good' from 'the bad'. Statements are not evidence! At best the idea of an 'over-active immune system' is an opinion, a theory.   

This 'pain assist' website tries to inform us about the cause of an over-active immune system - but again fails to do so.

        "The exact cause of overactive immune system is not clearly understood but certain factors are known to precipitate it. Genetic changes can be one of the major reasons of autoimmune diseases. There can be various other factors such as stress, hormonal changes, infections and chemical toxic that could lead to these problems".

The Cleveland Clinic website is no more informative, and under the heading "Causes of an over-active immune system states that:

        "Doctors still don't know exactly why the immune system sometimes fails. But there are clues to how it happens. The immune system is an integrated network that’s hard-wired into your central nervous system.... so, when it’s healthy, everything works automatically. But things go haywire when the system starts to crumble. For example, if you don’t sleep well and get stressed out, your body will produce more of the stress hormone cortisol. Over time, high cortisol levels can have a degenerative effect on your body. Healthy bone and muscle break down and slow the healing process. Cortisol can interfere with digestion and metabolism, as well as adversely affecting your mental functions”.

So once again conventional medicine is making claims about disease causation, that it is a faulty immune system, but without giving us any evidence, or being able to say what is causing the fault. Is there really such a thing as an 'overactive' immune system? Or is it just an excuse, an attempt to deflect the real cause?

The cause of a malfunction immune system is most likely to be pharmaceutical drugs. Perhaps it is just too embarrassing for conventional medicine to admit this. Or perhaps the pharmaceutical industry is just so powerful within conventional medicine that our doctors dare not do so.

The Plague of Auto-Immune Disease

The functioning of our immune system is complex, and most descriptions of how it functions are usually difficult for the layman or non-medic to understand. I include myself in that! However, there are five things we should all know and understand about our immune system.

• Our health and well-being depends on our immune system working efficiently and well. It is what keeps us healthy, and allows us to fight off infection and disease.
• Increasingly it is not doing so. Auto-immune disease, that is diseases caused by our immune system turning against us, are rapidly expanding in number and increasing in incidence.
• Conventional medicine usually tells us that the reason for the explosion of auto-immune diseases is 'ideopathic' - that is, the causes are 'spontaneous', or unknown.
• Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to adversely effect the functioning of our immune system, and although rarely admitted, can often be the cause of auto-immune diseases.
• Immunotherpy is a conventional treatment of many conditions and diseases. It does so by 'inducing', 'enhancing', or 'suppressing' the body's immune response. In other words, conventional medicine actually seeks to interfere with the immune system.

In seeking to interfere with the immune system, conventional medicine is the only medical therapy to do so. In traditional or alternative medicine, in all its many forms, there is a recognition that the body will stay healthy, or will regain health, only through the its own healing mechanism, that is, through the immune system. For this reason, they all seek to support the immune system, not to change it in any way, and certainly not to outguess, to out-think or manipulate it in any way.

Autoimmune Disease

Many people will suffer from auto-immune disease without knowing it is an auto-immune disease! It can affect almost any part of the body, including the heart, brain, nerves, muscles, skin, eyes, joints, lungs, kidneys, glands, the digestive tract, and blood vessels. The sheer number of diseases that are now known to fall into this category has now reached over 100, is this number is rising, year on year! For a comprehensive list of this diseases, go to Auto-immune Disease List website. Just a few of the most common ones below demonstrates how important they are, and how much they are increasing.

• Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis
• Addison's disease
• Alopecia Areata
• Ankylosing spondylitis
• Autoimmune hepatitis
• Autoimmune inner ear disease
• Bullous pemphigoid
• Coeliac disease
• Chagas disease
• Dermatomyositis
• Diabetes (Type 1)
• Endometriosis
• Goodpasture's syndrome
• Graves Disease
• Guillain-Barre syndrome
• Hashimoto's thyroiditis
• Hidradenitis suppurativa
• Interstitial cystitis
• Lupus
• Morphea
• Multiple sclerosis
• Myasthenia gravis
• Narcolepsy
• Necrotizing Fascitis
• Neuromyotonia
• Pemphigus Vulgaris
• Pernicious anaemia
• Polymyositis
• Prader-Willi Syndrome
• Primary biliary cirrhosis
• Psoriasis
• Retts Syndrome
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Schizophrenia
• Scleroderma
• Sjögren's syndrome
• Temporal arteritis ('giant cell arteritis')
• Vasculitis
• Vitiligo
• Wegener's granulomatosis

The Cause of Autoimmune Disease

Conventional medicine tells us that the reason for the explosion of auto-immune diseases is 'ideopathic'. In other words, its causes are 'spontaneous', or unknown. This HealthLine website is fairly typical of what conventional medicine tells us. It says that autoimmune disease may be caused by bacteria, or viruses, or by chemical and environmental irritants, or by drugs. But it is the explanation of autoimmune disease that is typically cited as the cause.

               "An autoimmune disease develops when your immune system, which defends your body against disease, decides your healthy cells are foreign. As a result, your immune system attacks healthy cells. Depending on the type, an autoimmune disease can affect one or many different types of body tissue. It can also cause abnormal organ growth and changes in organ function."

As a description this is adequate, but as an explanation of the causes of autoimmune disease it is not. The cause is about why our immune system makes this elemental mistake? Why is it attacking healthy cells? 

Any research on conventional medical websites, such as NHS Choices, will demonstrate that there is an acceptance that the cause of autoimmune disease is 'unknown'. Many forms called 'idiopathic', which now link automaticallywith the description 'iatrogenic'!

They are doctor-induced, that is, they are caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Many of the diseases were unknown before the 'Age of Drugs' that began around of middle of the mid-20th century. The rise of these diseases has mirrored the rise in our consumption of prescription drugs.

Pharmaceutical Drugs and the Immune System

Yet it is well known that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines adversely effect the functioning of our immune system. Conventional doctors know this, although they rarely admit it, or warn us before prescribing them. Certain drugs are known to cause autoimmune disease through knowledge of their 'side effects.

• Antibiotics. Many autoimmune diseases, like allergies, psoriasis, irritable bowl, et al., are known to start in the gut, where the bacteria residing there are needed to undertake important functions in digesting food. They have been compromised, targeted by antibiotics, whose task is to kill bacteria, good and bad, useful and necessary, and usually do so quite indescriminently.

• Vaccines. Vaccines, of all kinds, introduce toxins that are known to destroy the functioning of the immune system. This is achieved by injecting poisonous substances, like embalming fluid, and toxic heavy metals like mercury or aluminium, into the muscle tissue, whilst at the same time introducing genetically modified bacteria, live viruses, chicken embryos and aborted fetal proteins into the body! Scientists have known about the connection between autoimmune diseases and vaccination for many years. In the February 2000 issue of the magazine Autoimmunity, ten research articles evaluated the causal link between vaccinations and autoimmune disease.

• Other Drugs. There are several specific pharmaceutical drugs that are known to upset the immune system. These include Alferon N, Inerferon Alfa, Infergen, Intron A, PegIntron, Roferon-A. Yet it is likely that most pharmaceutical drugs can cause autoimmune disease, and to discover which ones are responsible it is probably better to look at the specific autoimmune condition involved.

• Other causes. There are many other factors known to compromise our immune system, including a diet high in sugar, fluoride in our water supply, and pesticides in our food.

Maybe these drugs and vaccines affect our immune system by accident rather than design, they are the 'unintended consequence', they cause 'collateral damage' to patients when doctors are treating other conditions! Perhaps they are a 'side effect', in the way conventional medicine always uses that rather ineffectual and inadequate term! But the failure of conventional medicine to diagnose the problem leads to even more problems.

Immunotherapy

The conventional medical establishment knowingly, willingly, intentionally targets the immune system in order to combat autoimmune disease. Immunotherapy treats cancer, through drugs that attempt to 'stimulate' the immune system to destroy tumours. Immuno-suppressive drugs are used following organ transplants, and to treat a variety of autoimmune diseases. Immunotherapy is used to treat allergies by seeking to 'reduce the sensitivity' of the immune system to allergens.

Immunotherapy is used mainly to reduce or suppress the immune response. The reason for doing so is that the immune system is seen to be attacking the body, in one way or another. Unfortunately conventional medicine does not ask 'why' the immune system is doing so? Indeed, it usually says it does not know why! It is deemed good enough that they have observed that the immune system is not working correctly, so it needs to be suppressed!

Immunotherapy drugs are an attempt to treat illnesses and diseases that have been caused by a faulty immune system - to stop the development of cancerous cells, to respond to allergens that an already compromised immune system is failing to recognise, to replace organs that no longer function properly, usually after many years of treatment with pharmaceutical drugs.

Yet the suppression of the immune system by powerful drugs absolutely fails to address the root cause, which is a faulty immune system! It is a strategy akin to taking a painkiller because of a painful foot after we have stood on a nail that is penetrating in it. Logically, the first thing to do is to remove the nail, not to prescribe painkillers! The first reaction to autoimmune disease, and a faulty immune system, is not to suppress it, but to find out why it is not working properly!

Conventional medicine has many pharmaceutical drugs that are specifically designed to suppress the immune system, including azathioprine, chlorambucil, cyclophosphamide, cyclosporine, mycophenolate, methotrexate and many others. Corticosteroids, such as prednisone, are immunosuppressants drugs, used to relieve inflammatory illnesses, but which, when taken over a long period, have many serious side effects. They all seek to undermine the body's ability to defend itself against foreign substances and microorganisms. As a result they increase the risk of serious infections and cancer.

So, pharmaceutical drugs are not only a cause of autoimmune diseases, but faced with them, conventional medicine introduces more pharmaceutical drugs to treat them! This demonstrates that conventional medicine is not just an ineffective medical system, but one that actually creates disease, and then profits from the new disease by introducing more drugs!

Vaccination is immunotherapy too, this time by introducing infectious agents to artificially activate the immune system. In this sense, vaccines are used by a medical system that has no confidence in the immune system to cope with the rigours of staying healthy, of protecting itself from infectious disease, without the direct intervention of doctors, who (of course) know better is needed than our own bodies!

There are many non-medical ways of boosting our immunity, and supporting our immune system. They include regular exercise, exposure to sunlight, vitamin D supplements, and a good diet, rich in herbs and spices, reducing stress, and getting plenty of rest and good sleep.

But perhaps the best way of supporting our immune system is to avoid conventional medicine, and pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. If you are already on conventional medication, insist that your doctor works with you to get you off them. Then seek a homeopath, or a naturopath, or some other traditional therapist, to support your immune system.


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