VACCINES & THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

VACCINES & THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WORKS?

By Richard Moskowitz, MD
Pathways Magazine, Issue 10

It is dangerously misleading and indeed false to claim that a vaccine makes us “immune” or “protects” us against an acute disease. In fact, it only drives the infection deeper into the interior and causes us to harbor it chronically, with the result that our responses to it become weaker and weaker and show less and less tendency to heal or resolve themselves spontaneously. To consider that possibility, I will examine the process of coming down with and recovering from a typical acute disease like the measles, in contrast to what we can observe after receiving the measles vaccine.

HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WORKS

Various components of the immune system all work together as if designed to help the body distinguish “self” from “non-self. “ This helps us recognize and tolerate our own cells, identify and eliminate foreign substances and life forms, and achieve complete and permanent removal of the offending substance from the body.

As an example of how the immune system works, consider the disease of Measles. Measles is a virus of the respiratory tract, acquired by inhalation of infected droplets in the air. These droplets are produced by coughing and sneezing of patients with the disease. Once inhaled by a susceptible person, the virus then undergoes a long period of silent multiplication as it travels, first in the tonsils, adenoids, and accessory lymphoid tissue of the naso-pharynx, later in the regional lymph nodes of the head and neck, and eventually, several days later, passes into the blood and enters the spleen, the liver, the thymus, and the bone marrow, the visceral organs of the immune system. Throughout this “incubation period,” lasting from 10 to 14 days, the patient usually feels quite well, and experiences few, if any, symptoms.

By the time that the first symptoms appear, circulating antibodies are already detectable in the blood, the height of the symptoms coincide with the peak of the antibody response. In other words, the illness we know as “the measles: is precisely the attempt of the immune system to eliminate the virus FROM the blood, mainly by sneezing and coughing, i.e., via the same route that it entered the body to begin with.

The process of coming down with and recovering from an acute illness involves a general MOBILIZATION of the ENTIRE IMMUNE SYSTEM, including:
1) inflammation of previously sensitized tissues at the place of entry;
2) activation of white cells and macrophages that find and destroy the foreign elements; and
3) release of special serum protein fractions to expedite these operations.
Numerous other mechanisms are also involved, one of many being the production of specific antibodies.

There is little room for doubt that acute illnesses (many formally known as childhood diseases) create experiences that are essential for the immune system to develop and mature into a healthy and functioning system with the ability to fight our illnesses. Not only will children who recover from the disease, in this example “measles,” but they will never again be susceptible to it. Such an experience also prepares them to respond even more promptly and effectively to other infections they may acquire in the future. The ability to mount a vigorous, acute response to organisms of this type should be considered a fundamental requirement of general health and well-being.