2. More background on autovaccine therapy
Autovaccine therapy is not a new phenomenon. Barger, Horgan and Horgan [1] described how they had successfully treated hundreds of patients suffering from colitis ulcerosa with autovaccination in the Journal of the American Medical Association back in 1929. They had made sterile culture filtrates prepared from the patient’s own gut bacteria and injected those patients with it, successfully treating most patients.
At that time, they could not have been aware that they had inadvertently inoculated the patients with bacterial DNA, nor could they have foreseen the enormous potential of this successful experiment. [{modal all-pop-ups/36-more-about-the-implications-of-their-work}'Read more about the implications of their work…'{/modal}] The advent of sulphur drugs and shortly afterwards the development of antibiotics, coupled with the high expectations ascribed to them, pushed these experiments – and autovaccination as a potential therapy – almost completely out of the picture. Both these alternatives seemed to be “miracle” drugs. They worked swiftly and there was nothing to indicate that there could be possible disadvantages in using them.
Nowadays, our view of antibiotic drugs has become more realistic as research reveals more and more of how they work. We know that they are only useful for treating acute infections. We know that they can damage the intestinal flora, that bacteria can become resistant to them and – most importantly of all in this context – they are useless for treating chronic inflammatory disease.
In the last couple of decades there has been a renewed interest in autovaccination by diverse international centres for the treatment of cancer. They use various techniques to implement this therapy [2-4]. Medical literature also describes the successful use of autovaccination for chronic infections, particularly in cases of resistance to antibiotics, such as the MRSA bacteria [5 and 6]. Using pathogens taken from the infected organ or from infected tissue, which have been identified by cultivating samples in a culture medium, sterile vaccines are prepared according to the De Vito method to address a specific pathogen. The method is a precisely formulated combination of steps: incubation, treatment with formaldehyde, and dilution [7].
These and other similar own-blood treatments are utilized quite frequently in Germany by GPs to treat the symptoms of illnesses caused by immune system dysfunction – such as allergies, recidivistic infections, auto-immune system diseases and habitual abortion. These therapies involve intramuscular injections of small amounts of the patient’s own blood at intervals of between two weeks and a month, after the blood has been taken and then held in vitro for a few hours at room temperature. In cancer surgery circles, it is recognized that blood transfusions using the patient’s own blood, can measurably strengthen the immune system and has a positive effect on post-operative recovery. The usual transfusion using donor blood has the reverse effect [9-11]. Repeated autovaccination using the patient’s own blood has also been shown to have a healing effect in cases of allergies in dogs that are difficult to treat, as published by M. Klein in Biologische Tiermedizin [8].
The assumption that blood taken from healthy individuals contains no micro-organisms is now outdated. Advanced research has shown that so-called “sterile blood” can still contain microbiological DNA remnants from previous infections [12-17]. Micro-organisms can escape the deadly effects of the immune system or antibiotics by disguising themselves – although still retaining their original DNA. They can alter their (external) membranes in any number of ways – as illustrated at the beginning of this article. These Cell Wall Deficient Bacteria (CWDB) do not behave like normal bacteria. The axioms of Robert Koch no longer apply to them in this form. Worse still, the use of antibiotics actually exacerbates this process. Treatments using antibiotics - mostly a spectacular therapy for infections in the short term - actually increase the chance of a chronic inflammatory disease in the long term. This effect caused by Cell Wall Deficient Bacteria (CWDB) is a phenomenon known for at least half a century, but it is not universally accepted. In scientific studies, (see below) these mutated bacteria have been associated with chronic illnesses, are unrecognizable to the immune system, cannot be seen using classical culture methods, and carry intact bacterial DNA that can transform back into virulent bacteria at any given time.
Chronic illnesses such as arteriosclerosis and rheumatism can be explained by making the link between previous infections and these CWDBs. There is a great deal of scientific evidence that bacterial DNA can be found in arteriosclerotic plaques or in pathological joint fluid and that there is a relationship with oral flora – particularly in cases of periodontitis [18-38]. The connection between CWDB and diverse chronic illnesses in humans and animals has been revealed as a result of thorough research documented by microbiologist, Lida H. Mattman [39].
Recent research indicates the possibility that whole sequences of bacterial DNA are able to penetrate the human genome and in this way increase malignity and pass it on to future generations [40]. A meta-analysis published in the Journal of Alzheimers’ Disease in 2015, has shown that Alzheimer’s Disease is increasingly seen as a delayed result of infections undergone earlier in life [41].
“If pathogens are indeed the cause behind the development of plaques, then we should be able to vaccinate ourselves against those infections,” writes Robert D. Moir, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School [42], “but it will not be easy to develop a vaccine for Alzheimer because there are apparently so many different pathogens involved in plaque formation,” according to Jacobus Jansen, researcher at Maastricht University [43].
The problem of determining the pathogens, as raised by Jansen, is not an issue in autovaccine therapy. The goal of the therapy is to (a) enable the immune system itself to recognize the pathogenic nucleus of the CWDB (CWDB-DNA) as an antigen, so that (b) the new information can be filed in the adaptive part of the immune system enabling it (c) to neutralize these antigens as soon as they are released from the cell. This occurs during the extracellular cell division of the CWDB. The nature of autovaccine therapy then ensures that no new pathogens can be formed and allows a gradual recovery from the chronic illness to take place.
Blood that is stored in vitro will disintegrate into its various parts. This is not only true for blood cells, but also for the CWDB. In this way, the pathogenic DNA-nucleus is released from its ‘disguise’. In this new state, the blood becomes an antigen and can be used as a vaccine against the chronic inflammation caused by the pathogenic DNA. The production of antibodies against this essential protein particle is set off by the injection of the vaccine with the result that no new pathogens are formed and healing can gradually take place. This is a slow process and can take a long time.
Initially, the idea of injecting even a small amount of “old” blood might seem bizarre – and that is probably why it is never done. Doctors recoil from the suggestion. The question is, is this a reflection of scientific reality or of is it just a gut reaction? Are there real risks involved in autovaccine therapy using your own blood? The answer is no. This is because of the long incubation time that is involved when preparing the blood. This period is six weeks or more and has the advantage that the only living thing left in the preparation is DNA. This means that all other bioactive molecules have been neutralised. The risk of undesirable side effects, such as auto-immune reactions which are caused by autoreactive T-lymphocytes does not exist as there is nothing recognizable for the body to react against – other than the DNA – which is the crux of the whole therapy. This has been confirmed in crossover tests done using autovaccines and patients’ blood. After treating many patients – some of them having had more than 30 injections, there have been no adverse reactions to the injections. This is no accident, there is no known scientific basis for any fear of a negative result.
The desired positive result can be limited or even blocked by various other factors such as a genetically determined illness, severe stress, hormonal imbalance, intestinal dysbiosis, (hidden) dental infections, heavy metals poisoning, conflicting medicines, etc. It is therefore necessary to undertake a thorough examination of the patient prior to applying the autovaccine therapy in order to eliminate those things that can render the therapy ineffective.
Without resorting to the use of pharmaceuticals, the therapy described above can achieve not only positive, but often spectacular results in patients with diverse chronic inflammatory diseases that have (until now) been deemed as untreatable by regular medical practice.