Vol. 26 No. 1 February 2006

What a lot of rubbish is being said and printed about bird flu . . . and some of it by homœopaths, too. Many scientists fear that bird flu virus H5N1 will develop a form that is easily transmitted from human to human, with a consequent death toll of many millions. They may be right; they are more likely to be wrong. You might remember the same thing was said about SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in 2003. The disease was only quite recently traced to bats which infected palm civet cats (and two other animals) which often ended up as special dishes in South China restaurants. The animals infected people, and then there was person-to-person spread. Some 8400 in about 30 countries got it; at least 800 died, one of them in New Zealand. Health authorities congratulated themselves on the success of the measures taken to contain SARS, but sceptics thought luck had more to do with the halt of its spread.

Older people with good memories will remember that after a strain of flu said to have originated in pigs was blamed for the death of a young man on an American army base in January 1976 there was a similar panic. President Gerald Ford ordered $US135 million to be spent on vaccinating every American against this menace saying, contrary to many experts, that the Fort Dix virus “was the cause of a pandemic in 1918 and 1919 that resulted in over half a million deaths in the United States.” The hastily concocted vaccine killed at least 113 people and triggered Guillain-Barré syndrome in many more. Did this alarm the vaccine makers? No, they had the forethought to get legislation exempting them from legal action if anything went awry with their untested product. The epidemic never came, because it was never going to come. The one “swine flu epidemic” victim probably had A/Victoria/75, or A/New Jersey/8/76. Ironically all the soldiers at Fort Dix had been vaccinated not long before against A/Port Chalmers.

As to the present day bird flu, at the time of writing this the World Health Organisation’s statistics, from the 5 countries involved, total 137 properly diagnosed cases with 70 deaths. It is important to know that, as in 1918, though a flu virus can be lethal in itself it also has the propensity to trigger proliferation of two species of bacteria found living in nearly everybody, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae. Older people are prone to these bacterial pneumonias; the young and fit are killed by the virus triggering a cytokine avalanche because they have a very efficient immune system. H. influenzae got the second part of its name because for many years it was thought to be the cause of flu. It was first collected from the victims of a major flu epidemic in Europe in 1892. The lungs of 1918 victims cultured it, too, so even then it was blamed for the pandemic. It has been suggested by homœopaths that in 1918 the world’s population was very vulnerable to flu, or “created” flu, because it was in a Gelsemium state of mind (as Kent says, “There is much nervous excitement. Complaints from fear, from embarrassment, from shock that is attended with fear, from sudden surprises that are attended with fright.”). What rubbish!

Some homœopaths appear to think there is a need for remedies with a bird connection to be used on bird flu – Tuberculinum aviare and Oscillococcinum, etc. There is no good reason for this. Remedies to consider using are the standard used for flu ever since their utility was found in their provings or soon after. Homœopaths who did very well in 1918, many with no patient deaths at all, used obvious remedies like Bryonia, Eupatorium, Ferrum phosphoricum, Gelsemium, Rhus tox, and some not so obvious ones such as Sticta and Veratrum viride. When pneumonia was obvious, that was treated appropriately. Many of these homœopaths reported their belief that the use of aspirin was very harmful, even fatal. A good book to read on the topic is The Homœopathic Treatment of Influenza, by Sandra J. Peko (Benchmark Homeopathic Publications, San Antonio, Texas, 1999). The Society’s price is $45. It would pay too, to study the treatment of pneumonia (if you wish to save everyone, if there is a pandemic) in books such as Dewey’s Practical Homœopathic Therapeutics and Royal’s Textbook of Homœopathic Theory and Practice. I am not panicking, I am prepared.

Bruce Barwell