Vaccines- Pros & Cons

After Hahnemann gave to the homoeopathic fraternity his theory of the Three Primary miasms of Psora, Sycosis & Syphyllis, it was the Late Compton Burentt who gave us the idea of another miasm which he labeled as vaccinossis. Since then homoeopaths the world over have been in a mental dilemma as to how they should deal or approach this vexed issue of immunizing regimes to infants and children and also how to deal with various situations which on the allopathic side the patient would be given same or the other vaccine or antisera preparation. Logically speaking there are three possible attitudes or thinking which a homoeopath may apply to his patients.

1) All vaccines & Sera are totally avoided

2) Whatever vaccine or sera if needed are administered and their side effects either preventively anticipated and treated by Thuja or other remedies or treated tautopathically later on as and when the need arises. Necessarily this implies an attitude of total acceptance of what the allopaths are doing.

3) An in-between selective approach in which the homoeopath prefers not to administer vaccines for many bacterial or viral diseases especially those that naturally arise after birth and within the first seven years of life like measles, chicken pox, mumps etc. preferring to give the vaccines in cases preventively for diseases like rabies and hepatitis.

Since I am basically a trained allopath now practicing exclusively the homoeopathic system whatever views I may here advocate are my own and do not in any way imply a rule for others to follow.

It should be remembered that natural active immunity which in the biological organism occurs at either humoral or cellular levels or both together can arise naturally either by a clinical infection as an acute miasmatic process like measles, mumps, chicken pox etc. or can also arise slowly and apparently without any clinical symptoms by what is known as subclinical infection occurring singly or repeatedly as in poliomyelitis or diphtheria. Active immunity can also be artificially bestowed through immunization with antigen which may be either the killed organisms or live but weakened organisms or by infection of the toxoids. Apparently it seems to me that artificial immunity by vaccines is closer to what occurs naturally by subclinical infections in the sense that in both these two ways a full-blown clinical picture of the disease is not visible. There's a major difference that there are possibilities of local and generalized reactions with the vaccines while these are obviously absent in the smaller doses of subclinical infections that nature gives to the individual.

However it has to be remembered that theoretically no individual is totally immune to an infective organism whether the infection has been through nature or through the antigenic stimulus of the human agency. There's always a basic threshold of resistance varying from individual to individual and this is where the homoeopath would assert on his theoretical background that it is the intrinsic quality and movement of the vital force that essentially determines the natural or acquired immunity of any individual. It is well known that immunity of any individual would depend on a host of factors extraneous and intrinsic like diet, fatigue and stress, drugs, surroundings and climate and above all emotional stability etc. etc. A factor not often appreciated by many is the aspect of what is known as herd immunity. This is the immunity of a group or herd as a whole towards a non immune individual of that group. In other words certain individuals escape from infection simply because they exist in a herd structure.

It is obvious that herd immunity will depend not only on the level of the immunized individual in the herd but more so on the level of clinical and subclinical infections. It would also depend on the relative numbers of births, deaths and the mobility of the individuals in the herd.

If the level of herd immunity is very high and the number of susceptible individuals very small the disease is virtually eliminated. In the west they seem to have done this elimination of diseases like polio and diphtheria. In small pox however it is said that it has been eradicated not so much due to herd immunity but because of measures that aimed at elimination of the source of infection by containment and surveillance.

It is unfortunate that as yet there is no coherent plan amongst the various homoeopathic bodies of India or amongst senior homoeopaths is general about any homoeopathically based immunizing schedules for infants and children. The national immunization schedule of India aiming of universal child immunization program launched by the W.H.O. has the following plan for immunizing the new born. BCG, 3 doses of oral polio and 3 doses of DPT vaccine all administered between the 3rd month to 12th month of age. Measles vaccine given as one dose only between 9th to 15th month. Between 18th to 24th month a booster dose of DPT and polio oral. Around 5th year the child receives its first typhoid vaccine dose and a booster dose of Diphtheria and tetanus. By 10th and 16th years it gets a repeat of booster doses for tetanus and typhoid.

Can one plan a somewhat similar schedule by our nosodes for the child??

Instead of BCG we could give the child say at 3rd month 3 doses sequentially a dose a day of tuberculin l M, 10M and CM. Somewhere Margaret Tyler had mentioned this American practice of tuberculin nosodes and the American homoeopaths claimed the child would be sufficiently immune or atleast in our words loose its inherent susceptibility to tuberculosis.

Similarly to a child give 3 doses of the nosode Diphtherinum say at the 5th month and 3 doses of Pertussin at the 6th or 7th month.

However the picture is not so clear with polio and tetanus. I have still not heard of any nosode preparation on the market for polio or tetanus.

A host of homoeopathic prophylactic medicines for polio have come to be written in the homoeopathic books. Gelsemium, Rhus tox, Kali phos, Lathyrus, Causticum etc. As none of these are nosodes, they cannot be administered in the same fashion as what we could in case of tuberculin or diphtherinum. Perhaps the position is to my thinking that so many prodromal symptoms of a case which could have terminated in polio do no end that way simply because our indicated remedies for the child at that particular stage of illness i.e. fever, malaise, body ache, headache etc etc. get the similimum like Rhustox and Dulcamara in rainy weather, Gelsemium in the summer and otherwise Kali phos and other remedies, so that we never see a case ending in paralysis with our remedies. While this is satisfying to us, it is not satisfying to an allopath who would say "okay by this you are treating the illness or presenting its outcome but that's not what we understand by active immunization"

With measles also we have our nosode morbillinum and at 9th month or a year similar 3 doses of high potency could be given.

What applies to polio would also apply to the child with various cuts, bruises abrasions and injuries. It is my practice in such cases to give Ledum or Hypericum for 3 to 4 weeks besides proper cleaning and care of the wound with external applications of Calendula with Hypericum.

It must be remembered however that the homoeopath takes a different view of illness like measles, mumps, and chicken pox. They are the outpourings of inherent psora and it is better for the average child to fight these illnesses with our indicated remedies so that the body's vital force is naturally strengthened and the intrinsic resistance of this vital energy raised. Would an immunity resulting from a clinical infection of measles, chicken pox, mumps or whooping cough be qualitatively if not quantitatively be entirely the same as the immunity bestowed by a prepackaged relatively harmless antigen of the vaccine?? Obviously there has to be some difference between both these two types of immunity bestowing mechanisms.

Speaking for myself if a child is brought to me at birth I request the parents to see that the child receives continuous homoeopathic treatment for a period of 7 to 10 years for any incidental illness. For such children I do not recommend any allopathic vaccines but I certainly do not prohibit the allopathic vaccines if the parents insist or if the parents are on transferable jobs or cannot stick to the ten years period that I demand from them. There is one disease however which I would always give a vaccine and that is rabies.

To conclude and summarize I must state that a lot of serious effort and hard clear thinking must be done by the homoeopathic fraternity on the vexed and annoying question of children and the immunizing schedules for them. Certainly the present day allopath recognizes the human host as the "soil" and the disease aspect as the seed. And certainly they have moved away from the "germ theory of disease" or the "single cause idea" of disease to the theory of "Multiple factorial causation" for disease. And certainly they have borrowed from homoeopathic lore their use of vaccines and never acknowledged their debt to Hahneman's thinking for after all both nosodes and vaccines are based on the "Likes cure Likes" basis. They consider "the use of vitamins and vaccines as pretreatment of the soil to render it unreceptive to disease agent". Shades of Hahnemann even here I guess! And from the multiple factorial causation of disease the orthodox profession is not very far away in attributing all diseases to the "derangement of bioplasma or bioenergy levels" - new fashioned terms for our good old vital force. If such a day arises it will be a sad day for homoeopathy indeed.

-Dr.D.E. Mistry