Helminth therapy is a completely safe and cheap way of preventing autoimmunity. It has already been used safely by thousands of people across the world to treat existing auto immune conditions - I myself have been cured by it. It has been the subject of publicly funded research since the 1980s, but there has been no attempt to develop it into a recognized treatment because it cannot be patented. Treatments are developed by pharmaceutical companies based on expected profit from patents, and the treatment of autoimmunity using patented pharmaceuticals is the main source of profit for these companies. This has the power to transform hundreds of millions of lives and save advanced states trillions. I have more details about the research background and the reasons helminth therapy has been ignored for so long - please let me know if youâre interested in either hearing more or trying to create a campaign on this issue.
Links to existing publicly funded research are below:
(Helminthic therapy research)
A more detailed explanation of why helminths are so important in human physiology is below:
In pre-industrial societies, autoimmunity barely exists. There is ample evidence to show that the main aspect of modernity of significance in autoimmunity is the eradication and absence of parasitic infection. Dr Joel Weinstock, a gastroenterologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, was, in the 1980s, the pioneer of the idea that autoimmunity could be treated by the controlled introduction of parasites. There follows extracts of an interview he gave before his death, where he explained the thinking behind the helminth hygiene hypothesis:
âImmune-mediated diseases such as ulcerative colitis, Crohnâs disease, type 1 diabetes and some allergies were very unusual problems before the twentieth century. It could be that an infection has made these diseases more common, but nobody has found a link with any particular infectious agent. The rise must be driven by environmental change.
Until the early nineteenth century, most people were farmers. Their floors werenât terribly clean, they didnât have refrigerationand they didnât bathe very often. Humans evolved over thousands of years in that environment. But now we live in clean houses where food is refrigerated and weâre using antibiotics. It occurred to me that this change may have made us more susceptible to immune-mediated diseases. Maybe there were things that were protecting us. Scientists have known since the 1970s that helminths are powerful modulators of hostsâ immunity, so maybe the loss of these worms changed our immune responses. This is the Inflammatory Bowel Disease hygiene hypothesis: the loss of worms from our bodies altered our intestinal bacteria, and is one of the factors that has made IBD common.
In 1999, I did some mouse studies with a few varieties of worm â Schistosoma mansoni, Trichuris muris and Heligmosomoides polygyrus â that showed that they might be able to prevent ulcerative colitis or reduce inflammation. And many groups have shown that worms can block other immune-mediated diseases in mouse models. Thereâs also epidemiological data from developing countries such as India that, although not definitive, suggest IBD and allergies are higher among children and adults who have had treatment for worms. And there is some discussion that changes in bacterial composition of the gut could be a risk factor.
How would a gut-flora imbalance lead to IBD?
The worms change the immune response to gut bacteria. In the gut, you have tons of bacteria. Normally, your immune system is reacting just enough to keep the organisms where they belong, on the surface lining of the intestine; itâs not trying to sterilize. What we think happens in people with IBD is that the immune system gets confused. It starts seeing the intestinal flora and other things in our gut as dangerous and mounts a damaging response â far beyond whatâs necessary to keep you safe. The worms turn off these destructive pathways, such as those that create type 1 helper T cells.
How does an absence of worms affect the immune response?
Worms can live inside you for a couple of years; to do that they have to avoid the attention of your immune system. So they sense how you react to them, and make molecules that modulate your immune responses so you donât kill them. This modulation doesnât do us any harm. In fact, our immune systems have evolved in such a way that some of us may need the worms â they block the SYK signalling pathway, which is involved in immune receptor signalling, and prevent the T-cell activation that leads to inflammation. In the absence of these worms, you become more susceptible. This has been shown in mouse models, and some studies suggest the same is true in people, but itâs not completely accepted yet. Weâre currently identifying the molecules that mediate these pathwaysâŚ.right now there are no ongoing clinical trials that use live worms. Iâm convinced helminth therapy does something, but the definitive studies and therapeutic agents that we know will help people are not yet there; we donât treat people with wormsâ.
There are, however, some companies that began to supply auto immune sufferers with lab-produced, controlled and safe doses of helminths. And I recovered from a serious autoimmune illness (Crohnâs disease) thanks to helminths supplied by one of these companies.
Iâm friends with a brilliant General Practitioner in London. He was fascinated by my experience with helminths. He is in charge of an NHS Trust in London, and he spoke to every medical practitioner he knew about helminths. None of them had heard anything about the four decades of publicly funded small-scale trials that were pointing to the potential of the treatment, but had failed to lead to development of it. But, in his words: âEvery single one of them was convinced by the helminth hygiene hypothesis, because it makes total senseâ. In the small-scale, publicly-funded research, and even in the review literature, there is broad consensus: the absence of helminths in the modern body is a significant factor in the explosion of autoimmunity in modernity. It is worth pausing on this consensus for a moment. Because what that consensus means is that the vast majority of autoimmunity is preventable. Entire populations could be given safe, lab-controlled doses of helminths as a preventative measure. And all medical experts consulted on the matter agree that it would work.
The helminth species suggested for treatment, with a history of billions of infections, have no cases of acute complications, other than as a result of very high numbers of organisms. But with deliberate and controlled treatment, the dosage can be easily and completely controlled. The organisms suggested for treatment (TSO, NA etc) cannot reproduce in the human body. It cannot spread to others or reproduce outside the body, in societies with water closets and sewage systems. The safety credentials of the treatment are impeccable. Doses are straightforward to produce and would cost next to nothing if mass produced. They are easy to take, producing only a mild, short-lived rash, which serves to show that the treatment has been taken successfully. The type that cured me, Necator Americanus, only need to be taken once every few years.
The preventative gains a society would glean from a new generation, free from autoimmunity would be transformative. It would be unburdened by the astronomical cost of long-term treatment, and its individuals empowered with the energy to contribute fully to society. A society who took on helminths would benefit from the recovery of those existing sufferers still capable of it. They are a mass of people currently lacking energy, but also empowered by self-discipline. They are people who have been diverted from the lives they would otherwise have lived. People who have had to grow up in ways that others have not, in order to survive. People who have learned the hard way, to appreciate every ounce of energy that they have.
A nation state that is able to adopt helminths first will not only benefit from the unleashing of the potential of its auto immune population. It will also gain a competitive advantage over the other nation states who have retained their auto immunity. This is because prevention is so much easier than cure.
The first country to adopt helminth vaccination will gain a long lasting competitive economic advantage. In the years prior to copycat adoptions of helminth vaccination, in the face of incontrovertible mass evidence, there will therefore be a generation in the country of first adoption with autoimmunity that is returned to pre-industrial levels. That will be unique. The first economic impact felt will be on the cost to society of health spending, as a generation of young people grow up without the need for pharmaceutical treatments for auto immunity. In fact, the first country to adopt will be the only country able to afford an effective national health service. The second wave of economic gain will come when the low autoimmunity generation reach working age. At this point the proportion of working age people able to work will increase, along with an increase in tax revenues and a decrease in the cost of disability support. It is difficult to overstate the potential value of these competitive gains. In a world of rapid capital movement, where most places are potential sites for investment, small differences in output become ever more significant.
My hope is that a great medical practitioner realises the potential of helminth vaccination, and has the strength of will to carry the project through to the point that itâs efficacy cannot be disputed. That modern day Edward Jenner would have to be, as all great medical innovators now must be, not first and foremost a brilliant scientific technician. Before they could execute the technicalities of their medical research, they would first have to operate politically, and navigate the panoply of forces that money now exerts upon our decision making. This is why I am reaching out to any political actors I can see, with a genuine patriotic interest in helping restore health in their countries.
Thanks for taking the time to read this information. I have also included an examination of my analysis as to why the treatment has not, so far, been offered to patients.
Best wishes
Daniel
Why havenât helminths been offered to patients?
If the helminth-hygiene hypothesis was entirely and universally convincing, what was the explanation, I wondered of my doctor-friend, of all the colleagues he had consulted, for why helminths were not being offered?
âThey were of the viewâ, he explained, âthat the idea of the treatment would be unpalatableâ.
The problem with that explanation is that similarly âunpalatableâ treatments are being offered to patients. And it is insightful to observe what is different in these cases.
The NHS in Britain uses maggots on wounds to fight antibiotic resistance. Professor Yamni Nigam, an entomologist at Swansea University, carried out a survey of nursesâ attitudes to maggots. She said âsqueamishnessâ had to be opposed to roll out the treatment widely. She told the Today programme on Radio 4: âNurses that are specialists in wound care tend to have seen maggot therapy and are on board with the idea of using it. Whereas non-specialist wound nurses and general staff nurses donât really want to use maggots. Then we have this issue where staff nurses are reluctant to join in. Certainly everybody . . . has a natural aversion to creepy crawlies and most people tend to have an inherent disgust as far as maggots are concerned.â Nigam explained how the treatment worked. âMaggots are so efficient and cost-effective,â she said. âThey can turn a stagnant wound that has been refusing to heal for months â within four days they can transform the wound. She said the âyuck factorâ among nurses could be overcome through extra training.
Why has maggot-treatment of wounds with antibiotic-resistant infection been developed into a treatment? Because it intervenes in an acute situation. The consequences of non-action are immediately clear, binary and undeniable. The treatment is offered, because medical authority would be open to straightforward litigation if it was not. And there are no less effective, more expensive, synthetic alternatives for the treatment of antibiotic-resistant infections of wounds, which the pharmaceutical industry are currently profiting from patents on. The exact same dynamic is at play in the adoption by medical authority of fecal implants â a âyuck factorâ easily overcome, because medical authority supports its development, in a situation where easily demonstrable, acute harm would occur without it, and where there are no patented alternatives. In these instances, when the naturally occurring treatments are demonstrably and immediately lifesaving, their yuckiness is irrelevant. And, therefore, the yuckiness of helminths is also irrelevant. Its influence on the situation is only felt because of the absence of any advocacy for it within medical authority. Auto immune individuals who are fortunate enough to hear about the treatment are often put off by its yuckiness, only because they are left to decide about the treatment without guidance from medical authority. No patient refuses fecal implants. Neither is the reason all patients accept fecal implants, when prescribed them, because they are a less yucky prospect than helminths. Rather, quite simply, they take them, because they are advised to.
The only reason there isnât, as Dr Weinstock highlights, more evidence, of the type deemed acceptable by medical authority, is because it hasnât been sought. In terms of helminth research, the development funding is exclusively focused on attempting to isolate chemicals involved in the process of immune dampening that helminths stimulate. There is no reason to think that an isolated, patentable chemical would be as safe or effective as the actual helminth. How many processes in nature operate through the action of a single chemical in isolation from other processes? Every action of nature is the product of a complex interaction of a vast multiplicity of inter-balanced elements. When I agreed to appear in a Michael Mosely documentary about helminths, the so-called expert cited after my interview claimed that a treatment of this kind would be safer. Why? There is no basis to that claim. No element in this process of isolating single mechanisms and synthesizable active ingredients has the recovery of the patient in mind. The process is pursued from start to finish because of a business model based around the exploitation of patents.
My own experience of healing through helminths was that their effect was gradual. It edged me back to health day by day over a period of years. It worked like a breeze on the sails. I benefited therefore, from the fact that at the point I came to take helminths, through effort and discipline on my part, as well as good fortune, Iâd been able to calm the severest winds of my illness, and had been able to reduce the influence of most of the pharmaceuticals that had previously been prescribed to me. It is the influence of helminths as treatment on milder and more easily controlled auto immunity that is therefore of most potential. Does that mean that Iâm already, by my own experience and admission, discounting the potential of helminths as a mass treatment? Not entirely. First, there are many people suffering real difficulties as a result of the milder forms of auto immunity. These people are all deemed by medical authority to need symptom repression. It could offer them a cure. Second, the depth and severity of auto immunity is in many cases related to the length of time of suffering. In these cases, where attempts at symptom repression are of limited success, the wracking of the body by inflammation leads to structural damage and weakness. We could say that in this case, where the ship is damaged, a healing breeze has much less chance of success. However, studies into the effect of helminths on severe auto immunity are unlikely to have considered the therapy as the first port of call. That is because our system is biased against naturally occurring substances. Finally, helminths have most potential as a new form of preventative vaccination against auto immunity. Have there been any attempts to study this potential use? And what is the opinion of the researchers about the preventative potential of helminths, given the universally accepted evidence from pre-modern societies, which indicates that auto immunity is almost entirely absent where a background of helminth infection exists? Have those reviewing the evidence base (the authors of meta studies) taken the above considerations into account? Or have they been unreflective about the nature and potential uses of the treatment?
Small scale studies, of the kind the state can afford, whenever a treatment of genuine potential is investigated, invariably show a spread of data on efficacy. This spread of data is what appears in the case of helminth research. The difference between the helminth data and small-scale study data, on treatments that end up being prescribed, is that the high-cost studies are simply not conducted. And it is the high-cost studies that open the door to prescription. Naturally occurring substances are caught in an ingenious catch 22, where their efficacy is denied due to a lack of evidence, and no evidence is sought due to a threat to profit margins. Even greater than the scandal of buried evidence is the scandal of evidence never sought.
It might be suggested that Iâm biased by my experiences and/or that Iâm mistaking correlation for causation. It is difficult for me to prove to others the absurdity of the claim that the correlation between my recovery and my use of helminths could be coincidental, other than it makes a mockery of my life experience and the obvious incontrovertible observations of those around me in the years before and after my recovery. It should also be added that, according to medical authority, no possibility of recovery from my condition is accepted. According to deniers of my experience, therefore, a medical impossibility may have happened to correlate exactly with my use of helminths. It is also clear that itâs potential as a preventative measure when administered before autoimmunity develops, is far greater than itâs potential as a treatment.
It is unlikely that autoimmunity is mono causal. Helminths may be the main element in many instances of autoimmunity, without being the lone cause. Should a lack of sole cause justify avoiding all attempts at understanding? This justification is circular. Modernity is varied and complex, as are we. The impacts of modernity on us are also varied and complex. The absence of a simple explanation for the pathological manifestations of modernity is likely in most cases, but for that to make us give up attempts at understanding is for us to give up on health altogether.
I would like the information you have on this product. Please reply as to the best way to get it, ie, email snail mail,etc. thank you. T. James
I order mine from a company in France. There are other suppliers, but these ones Iâve used for years. The website below has guidance on dosing protocols and contraindications etc.
Iâll post an email for the supplier I use below. All the best.