Science: Measles Outbreak Traced to Fully Vaccinated Patient for First Time

[anciendaze]

...What are the ways that antibiotics manipulate the immune system? This is pretty interesting to me, I never thought there was much to them other then a function as a high anti bacterial but with adverse effects of killing beneficial bacteria and throwing off flora balance, among other things.

First, let me discuss natural antibodies. We often think of these a poisons targeting particular microbes, but they are not. All natural antibodies do is mark an organism for attack by other components of immune systems. If all antibacterials we call antibiotics behaved this way there would be fewer problems with them. Except for monoclonal antibodies, for which drug names typically end in -mab, common antibiotics are derived from natural defensive measures one kind of microbe uses against others, not host antibodies.

One irony in this is that many of these are toxins produced by fungi, mycotoxins. You can find other threads on sensitivity to mycotoxins in ME/CFS patients. Others are toxins produced by beneficial bacteria to fight competition. It is far too easy for the immune system to become convinced this sudden increase in bacterial toxins results from overgrowth of harmless bacteria.

There is still another way immune systems decide which of a slew of possible microbes is causing the problem. After a successful immune response kills off large numbers of microbes, and cell signalling indicates the infection is resolving, fragments of the defeated invaders are carried to lymph nodes, where many kinds of immune cells learn what invaders are responsible for the attack. If you accidentally kill off the wrong bacteria, the odds are weighted toward immune response against these in the future.

People who grow up on farms are surrounded by microbes, but there is a difference in types: most of these are not specifically adapted as human pathogens. Their immune systems generally do better at distinguishing real human pathogens from harmless microbes. For people who grow up in cities things are quite different. A high percentage of microbes they encounter will be human pathogens, because there aren't too many other hosts around. Non-human hosts in this unnatural environment are likely to be classed as vermin, and those that are particularly successful have a long history as vectors of human disease.

The historical misunderstanding which is still with us is that antimicrobial action is simple chemical toxicity. When you get exactly the right antibodies the selectivity is like magic, with very low toxicity. The earliest antiseptics were not just toxic, but often caustic. It took a long time to realize that putting them in wounds slowed healing. The research on this took place during WWI. You can decide how long it took doctors to see the obvious.

The first antibacterials against treponema pallidum, like Salvarsan, actually contained arsenic. Paul Ehrlich thought of chemical agents as magic bullets (actually "Zauberkugeln" or "magische kugel". Ehrlich was merely talking about highly specific chemical agents, using a metaphor derived from hunting with a shotgun.) Much better antibacterial agents for this were eventually found which contained no toxic heavy metals at all.

The first patented antibiotic, Prontosil, was developed from dyes, based on the incorrect idea that binding a toxic chemical to bacteria was necessary to get rid of them. It was later found that a chemical which had been known so long it could not be patented, sulfanilamide, was the active ingredient, and more effective by itself. Sulfanilamide has exceptionally low toxicity, which was a good thing when it was liberally sprinkled on open wounds during WWII. Its mechanism of action is much more subtle.

In a disease like AIDS, where the patient's immune system fails, various antimicrobial agents are of little use unless they stop the activity of the specific virus responsible. In most other cases, it is the patient's immune system which ultimately causes the infection to resolve. This doesn't stop doctors from trying to poison whatever they think is causing a problem, usually based on totally inadequate evidence, and frequently poisoning patients. We don't know the long-term consequences of such ignorance, but these can't be good.

One reason research on chronic infectious disease has been severely neglected is that it wouldn't do to discover that common illnesses of unknown etiology are iatrogenic.

 

[alex3619]

Many antibiotics have a mode of action that targets bacterial biochemistry. They rarely have the capacity to kill bacteria, unless the substance is extremely toxic, in which case it kills our cells too. The weakened bacteria are more vulnerable to our immune system, replicate more slowly, or lose some of their defenses. Its our immune system that kills them. I do not agree that antibiotics do not, at least in general, have bacterial toxicity, only that an antibiotic in general does not kill bacteria.

Bacteria are capable of fast evolution, though not as fast as viruses. As such they develop resistance over time. Worse, a lot of resistance genes are located in small nucleic bodies called plasmids, which can be passed from bacteria to bacteria. So a resistant strain can pass on its resistance to bacteria, even other species of bacteria.

Antibiotics, like insecticides and herbicides in agriculture, thus lead to their own demise in effectiveness. We need better ways. Sadly, we don't have much that is better yet, only general hygiene practices. In time I expect better methods to be developed, but this is not going to be fast, easy or cheap. When all antibiotics fail, then caustic poisoning can be used, or amputation or tissue removal, or the patient can die ... unless their own immune system can be supported to enable them to fight off the infection.

Immune boosting is the point of vaccination. We just use archaic and risky practices, though cheap, in vaccine design and production.

 

[anciendaze]

Alex, there is a distinction here a lot of people will miss. I was talking about antibodies first, then later antibacterials called antibiotics. I specifically said that many antibiotics are derived from toxins, including mycotoxins and bacterial toxins. I don't think we are in serious disagreement on most of this.

In general natural antibodies simply mark bacteria as targets for specific immune cells like macrophages. We would do well to develop such specific ways of directing immune response at identified pathogens and cells containing them. These would not be broad-spectrum antibiotics. At present, treatment of infectious diseases is more likely than not to take place in almost complete ignorance of the specific pathogen responsible for the disease.

(I have seen people treated with IV antibiotics for what turned out to be a viral infection, followed by a liver disorder which was either the effect of hepatotoxic drugs or an autoimmune response. Patient and insurance company, or government, were billed for more than the patient earns in a year. As long as these ignorant practices remain profitable they will continue.)

Even when a pathogen is identified to the level of a visible microbe under a microscope we generally do not know if this has mutated from the reference strain on which research was done, and for which treatments were developed. All too often we fail to spot even bacterial pathogens which are pleomorphic and/or part of biofilms. Three relevant examples are borrelia burghdorferi, helicobacter pylori and treponema pallidum, all causing chronic infections.

One reason pathologists often fail to carefully track the strains responsible for many resistant infections is that this might well show the strain came from the hospital where the patient died. This is usually not a failure of pathologists themselves. Economic feedback is at work. Hospital staff are careful not to send samples from patients who are clearly dying to pathology because lab work which cannot benefit a particular patient cannot be charged to that account. You can guess why money for investigating more thoroughly is in short supply.

 

[Snow Leopard]

I had Mumps as a young'n, despite having up-to-date vaccinations at the time. It does happen. Fortunately, I didn't pass it on to anyone.

 

[golden]

i think it happens regularly. doctors and vets are reluctant to diagnose an illness which has been vaccinated for too. their thinking is 'it cant be that disease cos theyve been vaccinated'

this book called dissolving illusions looks handy. here are some pictures of lines:

http://www.anh-europe.org/ANH+Book+...+by+Suzanne+Humphries+MD+and+Roman+Bystrianyk

There is already a steady decline, before vaccinations, vaccinations are not accelerating that decline, in the case of polio, before the vaccine the numbers were about 17 per 100,000 - by 1965 it was 2 cases per 100,000 BUT we cant get a meaningful picture because before the vaccination polio case figures included aseptic meningitis, coxsackie virus and after vaccinations began, they no longer included aseptic meningitis and coxsackie virus -

there are some disturbing data 'gone missing' and the whole thing smells of fraud.

Vaccination rape is something i take very seriously.