I grew up in a small New England farming community in the 1950s and 1960s. Second- and third-growth forests of birch, maple, and white pine blanketed a landscape dotted with green patches of pasture, orchards, and only an occasional front lawn. Streams were full of trout, deer roamed the forests, and beavers built dams and flooded hollows, creating ponds where migrating mallards rested on their way to Canada. However, all was not completely pastoral.
On the viral scene, smallpox had yet to be eradicated; the new “kissing disease” emerged at a time when French-kissing before marriage was still taboo. Paranoia over viruses was common. Rabies, for example, was a serious issue among farming folk, and even the favorite dog was put down if there was the slightest hint of foaming at the mouth or strange behavior. Children were forbidden to play with wild animals, and bats—common in attics and barns—also conjured up dark fears of rabies. During the hot, humid summers, swimming in the local watering holes was a pleasure; however, on several occasions these ponds were off limits. They were called “polio pits,” and parents scared children into avoiding them with stories of the crippling effects of poliomyelitis.
Ironically, at the same time we were allowed to swim in a river that had been chemically “purified” by run-off from a factory just upstream. The water was so clean that no fish, algae, or any life at all grew in it. No one questioned the effects of swimming there, not realizing that it was sterile due to toxic chemical runoff. Another river was so polluted that it turned an opaque green, and at times, small bursts of fire flickered on its surface.
Luckily, in the countryside, serious contagious infections were almost non-existent. The worst-case scenarios and parental fears never materialized, and I never caught anything more than a seasonal cold or mild flu. Those times were the beginning of the age of vaccinations that were given to all children by the local country doctor in the school gymnasium. Things have changed dramatically since then, yet the notion of viral plagues is still an ingrained part of the psyche.
It seems every generation has had its viral epidemic: in those times it was polio, while the decades between 1980–2000 belonged to AIDS. Now, chronic hepatitis may prove to be the virus of our times, and the next after that may belong to stealth viruses, a new super-flu, a previously unknown virus, or the re-emergence of smallpox through an act of bioterrorism.
My professional interest in viral diseases began early in my career. In the early 1980s I worked with AIDS support groups in San Diego, as well as with chronic Epstein-Barr virus and cytomegalovirus cases at the California Clinic of Preventive Medicine in Del Mar. My work with these viral illnesses lead me to look at other viruses, including hepatitis C in the late 1980s and later at human herpes virus-6.
In 1997, my own near-death encounter with an infectious illness brought the frightening reality of emerging disease to my doorstep. Most likely contracted during a trip to Peru where I conduct ethnomedical research, studying the medical systems of indigenous peoples, I experienced an acute episode of high fever, severe headache, and the loss of my color vision (it returned after two weeks), followed by rheumatoid arthritis three months after my return from the Amazon.
Though numerous blood tests were ordered, all attempts to determine a diagnosis were futile, leaving the most likely diagnosis to be a rare form of delayed-onset dengue. A mosquito-born virus that mimics the symptoms of malaria, it had caused an autoimmune reaction in which my body's defense system attacked itself.
Conventional medicine was useless for my condition. Since all the blood tests were inconclusive, and a name could not be assigned to my case, it was considered untreatable. I even went to the world famous Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California to consult the most prestigious infectious disease specialists—all to no avail. It was as if my illness did not exist. So when the internists, infectious disease specialists, pathologists, and immunologists threw up their hands, I became impatient with modern medicine and began treating myself with natural medicine.
For treatment, I drew upon my considerable knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine, homotoxicology (a modern form of medical homeopathy discussed in part 2), and nutritional medicine, as well as with Taoist breathing exercises, meditation, and shamanic techniques.
In the process of recovery, I became determined to find out more about such conditions, so as to help others with viral diseases. This lead me to intensive study and to interviewing immunologists and virologists, as well as naturopathic physicians and doctors of Oriental medicine who had experience in treating viral diseases. I subsequently published several academic papers on the integrated management of hepatitis C, and out of all this developed the practical ideas for this book.
In the twenty-first century the specter of a viral epidemic looms over us, and in many ways our fears are justified. A brief review of the history of infectious disease and modern viral illnesses will set the stage for this book.
I find it enlightening to listen to doctors and nurses of the older generations speak about their experiences prior to World War II. At that time, infectious diseases were still common in the United States, and doctors were trained in medical school to routinely recognize and rapidly diagnosis tuberculosis, smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid fever, and even cholera.
In fact, serious infectious diseases were among the most common of problems for which a physician was tasked in those days of house calls. Children still died of diarrheal diseases. Syphilis was incurable before the advent of penicillin, and among the elderly, influenza was a dreaded and often deadly disease. Patients with tuberculosis were housed to overflowing in special sanatoriums because before antibiotics, there was no specific treatment for this disease other than bed rest, fresh air, fluids, time, and prayer.
We have come a long way since then—technologically speaking—but, ironically, the more we improve, the more vulnerable we become to other diseases, especially viruses.
When, then-U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart,1 announced that the “war” on infectious disease was “won” in 1969, the medical profession and the general public applauded, genuinely believing that humans had indeed permanently triumphed over nature. Stewart's pronouncements promoted a sense of false security that created a policy de-emphasizing infectious disease as a major public health issue for two decades, and as a consequence people in America and the industrialized world quickly forgot that deadly infections ever existed.
How far from the truth they were was unimaginable until only very recently.
A little more then a decade later, “new” threats began emerging, one after the other: AIDS, caused by the human immunodeficiency virus; genital herpes, caused by a virus in the herpes family; hepatitis C and other viral diseases, including a new strain of influenza A; and deadly hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola and hantavirus.
Other nonviral infectious agents were not sitting around quietly either. The medical world was shocked at the re-emergence of a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis; cholera epidemics in Peru killed thousands; and deadly outbreaks of food-borne Escherichia coli were found in fast-food hamburgers. Lyme disease, a spirochete bacterial infection that is still baffling doctors, has become endemic in some parts of the United States, and antibiotic-resistant infections threaten hospitalized patients with flesh-eating bacteria. Anthrax, a deadly bacterial disease once rare in the United States, re-emerged in 2001 as a consequence of bioterrorism.
Many questions arise from these facts, which I address in the first part of this book. Are these “new” illnesses or are they diseases that have always existed and only now are manifesting through a natural evolutionary process of which we are unaware? One of the most important questions is this: are these new illnesses strictly medical issues solvable by stronger pharmaceutical drugs and better vaccines, or are they environmental, ecological, and largely social issues of public health?
We are inclined to think of modern medicine as one unified army of gallant and heroic medical doctors and nurses marching toward a clear and steady victory over the common enemy of disease. The reality of both war and medicine is strikingly different from this romantic scenario. War moves over a terrain of rugged hills and steep valleys, though bitter, icy winters and unbearably hot, sweltering summers; it's about getting stuck in the mud, getting lost and having to retrace your steps, being wounded and sometimes losing the battle—or your life.
Our social myth of ever-victorious and all-knowing modern medicine persisted well into the 1980s, even when the mystique was fading. A brief historical sketch will help to illustrate this.
By the 1950s and early 1960s, the age of optimism in medicine had peaked. Doctors were firmly entrenched in linear, cause-and-effect thinking, riding high on earlier successes that included the first use of penicillin and the development of other, even more powerful antibiotics, the use of cortisone to treat inflammatory diseases, drugs for psychiatric illnesses, open-heart surgery, and the beginning of the smallpox eradication program that began in 1953 and ended in 1977 with the last reported case in Somalia.
By the end of the 1960s, the progress of previous decades was reaching a climax even though the decline of modern medicine was beginning. In the 1970s, the age of the specialists came into being, and by the early 1980s medicine had turned into a highly sophisticated and extremely profitable enterprise. The light of medicine that shone so brightly early in the twentieth century was growing dim. The era of medicine as big business had begun.
Ironically, during the age of the specialists and at a time when the newly emerging infectious diseases were first starting to appear, the medical specialty of infectious disease was in decline. Viewed more as an academic pursuit or a matter that affected the Third World than as an important field for modern doctors—certainly not one in which glory and money could be had—very few medical students embarked upon a career in this field. Bacteriology was considered out of date, a subject in which all the major questions had already been addressed. Antibiotics killed bacteria; end of story.
The fate of a sub-specialty such as virology was even bleaker. As recently as the 1970s, the study of viruses mainly was confined to analyzing the clinical presentation of virally caused diseases and determining symptoms. Though at one time most cancers were thought to be caused by an unknown virus, not until the AIDS crisis gripped public attention was there much interest in viruses, and even then relatively few scientists became interested in viral biology until the late 1990s.
Despite such criticism, the progress made in medicine in the last hundred years has marked one of the most impressive epochs in the history of medicine. Yet paradoxically, as we come to the end of this period, it is also now almost universally accepted that medical technology is out of hand and dangerous, health care is too expensive, public health is at risk, and incidences of infectious diseases are increasing despite the use of antibiotics and vaccines. So we are at a crossroads in modern medicine, or perhaps it is better to describe it as a standoff with the victor yet to be decided.
In a medical system that viewed itself as infallible and all-powerful, there was no motive to use any but the tried and presumed true methods. However, with the advent of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, vaccine-resistant viruses, drug-resistant parasitic diseases like malaria, and the increasing strength of viral illnesses, the conventional methods are being questioned and the accepted thinking challenged.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are so common that 10 percent of all patients hospitalized overnight, two million each year, acquire a nonviral, nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infection. In intensive care, the statistics are even higher: 50 percent of patients acquire a nosocomial infection. Drugs themselves are potentially dangerous, with an estimated 100,000 deaths in the United States alone due to medications. Vaccines, once believed to be the ultimate answer for the prevention and eradication of many common viral illnesses, have their own set of problems and have been known to cause cancer, neurological disease, and even death from contaminated supplies.
How did we end up in such a frightful situation?
In a medical system that viewed itself as infallible and all-powerful, there was no motive to use any but the tried and presumed true methods. Natural methods were ridiculed as old-fashioned and worthless. However, with the advent of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, vaccine-resistant viruses, drug-resistant parasitic diseases like malaria, and the increasing strength of viral illnesses, the conventional methods are being questioned and the accepted thinking challenged.
A clear example of this outmoded thinking comes from the research and treatment of human immunodeficiency virus, the presumed cause of AIDS. Despite nearly twenty years of research and treatment, until the year 2000 the global AIDS epidemic had not made us more aware of viral diseases in all their varieties. It did not highlight the need for more effective and safer antiviral medications; nor did it stimulate more vigilance against the powerful, deadly, emerging viruses. Call it complacency, misguided use of research funds, or ignorance of deeper issues, the end results have been the same: the prospect for even good symptomatic treatment of viral diseases remains grim.
When the AIDS epidemic caught us by surprise in the late 1970s, the experts immediately followed the old model they had used for smallpox and polio: they focused on how the disease manifested in patients and began what has become an empty search for a vaccine. Dramatizing the issue, the uninformed and vicious among the medical establishment, along with conservative politicians, immediately called for more strident measures, a repetition of the combative old ways involving quarantine, high dosages of powerful toxic drugs, and blaming those who indulged in forbidden sexual practices, the blacks in Africa and Haiti, and intravenous drug users. It was a witch hunt. All of these measures and attitudes eventually proved ineffective and morally wrong.
Though researchers gathered vast amounts of information over the last two decades of the twentieth century on how AIDS manifests, they still debate its cause and they have still not provided a clue for a cure. Despite the enormous sums of money spent on AIDS research, we still have not found a vaccine that works for HIV infection, and have only partially effective drug treatments to manage viral activity, and these have a high side effect profile.
To make matters more complicated, when high dosages of the few antiviral drugs that we have are used on HIV patients, the virus mutates. The rapid turnover of HIV-1 generates extraordinary genetic diversity within the virus population, thereby rendering the drug ineffective.
Not to be outdone by AIDS, we were again caught by surprise when a previously unknown liver inflammation mysteriously appeared. At first labeled non-A, non-B type hepatitis, because neither known type of hepatitis was detectable in patients, hepatitis C virus originally appeared in individual patients in Japan in the 1970s and then was discovered in the blood supply in the United States in the late 1980s. A potentially fatal viral disease that has no effective treatment and no cure was lurking undetected in blood banks until it infected tens of thousands of victims who now have passed on the infection to thousands of others, many still not diagnosed.
In addition, ongoing outbreaks of fatal viruses such as Ebola in Africa in 1976, hantavirus in New Mexico in 1993, increasing fatalities caused by hemorrhagic dengue fever in Southeast Asia, and West Nile fever in New York in 1999, startled the medical profession and shocked the world.
Somehow we forgot that new viral strains surface regularly and that science and modern medicine are not infallible all of the time.
To make matters worse, evidence mounted and suggested that viruses were causing other diseases. At first thought to be the underlying cause of all cancers, certain viruses are now clearly linked with some types of cancer, as well as diabetes, heart disease, chronic fatigue, Alzheimer's, and certain forms of arthritis. Also, during the same time period when AIDS and hepatitis C were first discovered and initial research into them was instigated from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, patients began complaining about conditions for which there were no medical diagnoses. Doctors were stumped and suggested to these patients that their condition did not exist, since there was no name for what they complained about, and routinely referred them for psychological therapy.
Needless to say, the profession of private practice clinical psychology boomed. Unfortunately, talk therapy did not work for the majority of these patients since they were not neurotic, but had legitimate physical conditions that defied conventional diagnoses but which did include as part of their symptom profiles mood changes and fatigue—symptoms commonly associated with depression, according to accepted medical standards.
Then a new phenomenon appeared on the medical front. With the advent of newer and safer antidepressants, doctors referred fewer patients to psychologists and began the wholesale prescribing of Prozac and other selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) under the false assumption that these patients were not merely neurotic, but clinically depressed—which of course the majority were not.2
These new illnesses included chronic fatigue, depression-like mood disorders, and unexplained, continuous muscle pain—all of which may be linked eventually to viral causes and immune system disruption. Over time, it became evident that neither psychotherapy nor psychoactive drugs were the answer for these patients, so doctors then mysteriously suggested that the cause of these new conditions could be a virus for which there was no treatment and therefore no culpability, which meant that there was nothing medicine could do.
In addition, increasing incidences of allergy-like symptoms and environmental sensitivity, menstrual complaints and menopausal symptoms, an increasing infertility rate among white women, and increasing adult onset diabetes, glucose intolerance, and obesity further confused a conventional medical profession that relied solely on a single cause-and-effect model.3 Gulf War Syndrome added another dimension and was perhaps the first medical condition taken to the floor of Congress for discussion as to whether it existed.
Then, in one of the great medical paradoxes of the twentieth century, individual patients began a gradual and silent defection that often involved a heroic quest to search for alternative solutions to their infirmities. By the late 1980s, alternative medical therapies were well established, and by the 1990s, more than two-thirds of all Americans had used some form of alternative medicine.
However, alternative practitioners, those to whom the public turns when conventional medicine fails, were in an even worse state of affairs as far as viral disease was concerned than their conventional counterparts. Nearly no one in these fields had a specific interest in viral diseases, nor had anyone studied viral illnesses in any depth or detail. Likewise, there was no organized body of information available to those few who practiced in this area.
Though patients experienced a hit-or-miss approach with alternative practitioners, they often were provided some symptomatic relief from their complaints. Such results, though not completely curative, encouraged both patients and practitioners to continue therapy. Conventional doctors were put on notice.
Thankfully, things are now starting to change on both fronts. Conventional medical practitioners recognize the benefits of alternative therapies and research is mounting on effective natural antiviral therapies.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, humanity seems caught between its own creative destructiveness on the one hand, and nature's deadly equalizers on the other, and the possibilities of nuclear destruction, unbridled pollution, and the greenhouse effect may soon be outweighed by infectious illnesses—especially by emerging viral diseases. Could it also be that these newly emerged viral diseases are not only a serious health threat to individual humans but also a harbinger of new disease patterns in a world out of balance?
This bigger picture has been largely ignored except by a few of the more enlightened researchers and alternative medicine practitioners who have dared to suggest that the new viruses might be the result of trans-species migration, microbial mutations, immune suppression, chemical toxic overload, and environmental destruction (especially in the tropical rain forests). All these concepts contradict current medical thinking and political interests. Robin Hening, the author of A Dancing Matrix says, “The intrusion of humankind into the natural order of things seems to be the single most important factor in the emergence of new viruses” (Henning 1994).
The good news is that though a lot of mistakes have been made, we are continuously improving our knowledge in an attempt to understand our world and the many diseases we must deal with, and we actively keep searching for alternative ways to improve our health.
While those in conventional medicine were ignoring the epidemic rise of emerging infectious disease and novel chronic illnesses, others were investigating evolutionary links to disease. Referred to as the new science of evolutionary, or Darwinian, medicine, with theories highly compatible with natural and functional medicine, this system presents a complete way of viewing disease where patterns have as much validity as cause and effect. In addition, research in nutrition, herbal medicines, and nutraceuticals—natural, standardized, nonprescription medications—has led to outstanding clinical results and numerous products that have great potential in treating the new diseases, many of which are discussed in part 2.
Though one must be wary of solutions that seem too easy, could it be that there are straightforward answers to the many complex questions that arise when we consider the importance of these new diseases in human suffering, lost productivity, and reduced quality of life?
A very real threat from emerging viruses does exist and must be taken with the utmost seriousness. The issue is of such gravity that alternative practitioners and natural healthcare consumers must not fall into the same trap as did conventional medicine, which was to become smug in its accomplishments. The possibility that the world could be thrown into a crisis of unprecedented proportions is real. The convergence of increasing immune compromise, an increasing population of older people with chronic disease, increasing antibiotic and antiviral resistance, burgeoning third world population with endemic infectious disease, and increasing environmental population and rain forest devastation—it all takes the “ground zero” scenario and the theorized coming biological apocalypse from the realm of fiction to that of possibility.
The main question is not if we will have a viral epidemic, but what direction is the current epidemic of microbial illnesses taking? In answering this, keep the broader view in mind, and realize that the scenario of epidemic chronic and acute infectious diseases, many of which are virally induced, is already upon us. Though no one can predict the future with absolute certainty, there are three possible scenarios.
A very real threat from emerging viruses does exist and must be taken with the utmost seriousness. The possibility that the world could be thrown into a crisis of unprecedented proportions is real. The main question is not if we will have a viral epidemic, but what direction is the current epidemic of microbial illnesses taking?
The first is of an increasing incidence of acute plagues, either drug-resistant old ones, newly emerged ones, or a combination of both.
The second is the increasing incidence of endemic chronic infections. Of these two, the most likely scenario for the wealthy countries is that of endemic chronic illness combined with immune suppression, rather than the wide-sweeping plagues of past centuries.
This, however, is not the case for the overcrowded, poorer countries in the southern hemisphere. They will likely continue to suffer from acute infections as well as the effects of environmental degradation on their homelands by their wealthy neighbors to the north. Malnutrition, the result of widening and deepening poverty in these countries, causes immune weakness and dramatically increases susceptibility to infection, setting up a vicious cycle that makes an efficient breeding ground for all forms of microbial infectious organisms, including viruses.
The third scenario is viral bioterrorism—unleashing a virus, like smallpox, for which we no longer have immunity, a limited supply of vaccine, and no effective drug with which to treat it.
From a global perspective, the most likely scenario is a combination of all three: an increasing incidence of chronic degenerative disease and infectious epidemics combined with the sporadic release of infectious microbes by agents of international terrorism. Currently this is already happening in the world's large cities, in rich and poor countries alike, where a combination of rich and poor commingle, where stress and environmental pollution are highest, and where poor and nutritionally impaired immigrants harboring viral illnesses arrive daily from China, Mexico, South America, Africa, and the Caribbean.
One question remains: will viruses finally wipe out human life on this planet?
In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the media capitalized on sensational projections indicating that if unstopped, AIDS would eventually infect every person alive within one lifetime. It did not happen and will not happen, but how the bigger scenario of viruses and humans will play out is still anyone's guess. I am not betting on the germs, but neither am I waiting for science to catch up to the bugs and deliver a safe and effective cure.
In writing this book, my agenda has been straightforward and clear: to help people understand the seriousness of viral illnesses and to place at their disposal (and their doctor's) evidence-based tools for prevention and safe treatment. These methods are not infallible, but there are currently no specific or reasonably safe and effective antiviral drugs, so the medical situation is obvious. We have no choice but to use natural alternatives in the interim while the research continues. Perhaps in the process we may find them to be the best primary choice after all.