Here’s the new
wisdom: Early exposure to pets,
peanuts and intestinal worms might actually be good for you, because they
program the developing immune system to know the difference between real
threats, such as germs, and Aunt Millie’s cat.
[I'll pass on the intestinal worms but how about the normal
childhood disease bacteria of mumps? I think I would prefer that to
intestinal parasites.... - bfg]
Evidence to
support this view has been mounting for more than a decade. But now, for
the first time, researchers are beginning to test remedies based on these
theories in patients. Other doctors are trying to make use of novel
approaches to retrain the immune system once it’s too late and allergies
set in. [What evidence? This is all BS!!! -
bfg]
“What we’ve
learned is that it may, in fact, be important to be exposed early on to a
sufficient quantity of allergy-causing substances to train the immune
system that they are not a threat,” says Andy Saxon of the University of
California-Los Angeles. “And, in people who already have allergies, we see
for the first time where the problems lie, and we have new opportunities
to tweak the system.”
Scientists
base this radical new thinking about human allergies on a deeper
understanding of how the immune system works. They have begun to exploit
fresh insights to attack allergies and other immune diseases in unexpected
ways. No longer content just to treat allergy symptoms, they hope to
outwit the immune system and stop allergic responses before they start.
[Ya know.... it might be easier and wiser
and CHEAPER to not cause the allergy in the first place. But that is not
how modern medicine works. If you create a problem then you come up with
another medical procedure and expense to treat the problem you just
created... - bfg]
“When you’re
born, Day Zero, your immune system is like a new computer. It’s not
programmed. You have to add software,” says Joel Weinstock of Tufts New
England Medical Center. “Between the ages of zero and 12, you’re learning
to read, you’re learning to write, and your immune system is learning to
react to things. Part of that is learning to limit reactivity.”
If the new
approaches work, millions might benefit. More than 50 million people have
allergic diseases, which are the sixth-leading cause of chronic illness in
the USA, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID), costing the health system $18 billion a year.
[Whoa, we don't want to prevent allergic diseases,
we want to treat them because it is a major money maker! - bfg]
Asthma alone
accounts for 500,000 hospitalizations a year, including 2 million
admissions to the emergency room, says a study in the May 2005 Journal of
Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Since 1980, adult asthma cases have risen
by 75% and childhood asthma by 160%, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention reports. [If you add these
statistics to the statistics on the various vaccinations, would the new
statistics show that the "cure" is better than getting measles, mumps,
etc.? - bfg]
To test
whether high-dose exposure breeds tolerance, researchers led by Gideon
Lack at Imperial College in London are preparing to launch a
counterintuitive — and some would say risky — seven-year, U.S.-financed
study that will expose infants to peanuts. It’s based on research showing
that children who eat peanuts at an early age are less likely to develop
peanut allergies. [Talk about dangerous. The
children are already being exposed to peanuts at an early age when you
give them that vaccine grown in peanut meal! - bfg]
The study is
risky because children with unrecognized peanut allergies might suffer
anaphylactic shock, a deadly drop in blood pressure often combined with
asthma, if they’re exposed to peanuts. [And
some of the people who suffered anaphylactic shock died. Why not study
eliminating too many vaccinations and eliminating all of the ones given
before one year of age! - bfg]
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