Re: Pig WhipWorms & Auto immune response

Interesting that this topic should come up just now. I was reading a book over Christmas called "Carpet Monster and Killer Spores” by Nicholas P Money (Oxford Univ Press, 2004). Interesting and very technical book about toxic mould.

However from a UC perspective he discusses the over-active auto immune response that many people have nowadays which in his view is partly due to the lack of intestinal worms and parasitic infections that people are exposed to:

"Only very recently in biological terms have sanitation and modern medicine succeeded in abolishing a panoply of parasites including roundworms, hookworms, flukes, Tapeworms and protists (like the malarial parasite)....The absence of worms has also been blamed for inflammatory illnesses such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. In a seemingly perverse approach to treating these ailments, Dr Joel Weinstock at the University of Iowa has pioneered the deliberate ingestion of parasites. According to Joel, many of his patients have reported dramatic improvement in their conditions after swallowing eggs of the pig whip worm, Tichuris suis. The whipworms cause no disease symptoms and are expelled from the body a few weeks after the patients' autoimmune reponses have been canceled" p.46

Bernard
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