We’re closely following the unfolding Ebola crisis in West Africa, on which topic Rob Verkerk participated in a panel and other discussions with doctors and health workers in two separate events in London last weekend. The health professionals included those working on the ground in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Uganda and other sub-Saharan countries.
A call for knowledge – not vaccines
All we can say publicly at this moment is that the news agency reports that are making headlines around the world are deeply distorted in important respects, save for the appalling suffering individuals, families and communities are facing in affected areas. What you won’t read in the papers is that healthcare workers and others in these countries are making concerted efforts to reach out to their diasporas in the West. They are making a call for knowledge, resources and funding that aim to treat and prevent future spread of the disease — without having to rely on ‘fast-tracked’ experimental drugs and vaccines. This drive is doubly motivated by the fact that so little of the aid money coming into Liberia, Sierra Leone and other countries is getting to the places and people where it could have most impact.
Ebola virus at 108,000 magnification
Undeclared motives?
It’s of interest that the Liberian Embassy in the US states “The Liberian Government has declared in recent months that it has discovered sizable amounts of crude oil along its Atlantic coast.” This would have nothing to do with the peeked interest from afar, surely? And it beggars belief that all this external interest cannot be quickly converted to practical help on the ground that uses known, non-pharmaceutical methods to prevent viral transmission and enhance immune function that would likely make a huge difference to the unfolding tragedy and loss of life.
While a large number of people in the Ebola-stricken areas of West Africa are both macro- and micro-nutrient deprived, a pattern is emerging. People with better diets, including the 47% who have survived the latest epidemic and the three infected westerners, appear to have stronger immune systems that are better able to weather the viral assault. Yes, nutrients can be used to strengthen the immune system! This is a fact that has been known for a very long time, and is an issue that has been subject to tremendous study in recent years and is now supported both by a large body of published literature and decades worth of clinical experience. Yet it’s barely being considered as an option by the World Health Organization and other authorities working in the affected areas.
Question marks
While we wish all the best to the volunteers upon whom the safety of the Ebola vaccine is being tested, we wonder how similar the immune responses of healthy Westerners compares with those of some of the poorest, most nutritionally deprived people in the world. We also wonder how well short-term responses to the Ebola proteins used to trigger antibody responses in vaccinated subjects will reflect the long-term health responses of people in the affected region. The planned vaccination scenario that is expected to be unleashed in West Africa this November gives rise to many of the same question marks that hang over genetically modified (GM) foods and their effects on humans.
With President Obama today proclaiming that the Ebola crisis, which has emerged in a natural resource-rich yet impoverished part of the world, constitutes a “global security threat”, one wonders what some leaders have planned…
We will keep you posted as we are able to release more information.
Comments
your voice counts
17 September 2014 at 7:33 pm
It is my understanding that in the past, the chiefs in villages affected by this virus had the survivors move immediately and then the village was burned down along with everything in it. Evidently this practice worked quite well. Fire is a good cleanser. Anytime drugs are foisted upon a people one has to wonder what's going on?
17 September 2014 at 8:41 pm
For your information:
Can Ebola Be Cured With Vitamin C? Dr. Robert Cathcart, re-inventor of the prosthetic hip, who has had the most experience in vitamin C theory, attested to personal suffrage which he was initially driven by in search of a cure. Stricken with chronic hay fever and congestion, Cathcart discovered that intravenous overloads of vitamin C could and has cured many sickness and diseases including his very own. Other similar Ebola illnesses which were tested were also cured through rectal vitamin C absorption and Dr. Cathcart believes it could quite possibly be a cure all.Dr. Cathcart is joined by other doctors like Dr. Thomas Levy, who has also reviewed and studied the positive effects of vitamin C from viruses and illnesses.The question anyone infected with or even mildly concerned about Ebola, must question why this potentially simple cure has not been put to the test in any recent clinical or medical studies. http://www.viralglobalnews.com/health/can-ebola-be-cured-with-vitamin-c/13925/
'My experience with giving massive doses of ascorbic acid orally to over 30,000 patients and with giving intravenous sodium ascorbate to over 2,000 patients would indicate that with EBOLA and other viral hemorrhagic fever diseases that intravenous sodium ascorbate should be used in doses beginning with at least 180 grams per 24 hours. If the fever is not controlled or the symptoms are not reduced, the dosage and the rate of administration should be increased until they are controlled.' http://vitamincfoundation.org/www.orthomed.com/ebola.htm
18 September 2014 at 2:55 pm
Big Pharma & its minions wouldn't fancy any body curing/eradicating Ebola with nutrients & vitamin C, they wouldn't be making large amounts of dosh that way; shame really so much suffering because of these super greedy power hungry companies.
18 September 2014 at 5:58 pm
I find this whole Ebola crisis interesting if you look at the history.
Up until recently, Ebola has never left Africa, but about 10 years ago, America started working on a vaccine and in 2009 an American pharmaceutical company patented a particular strain of Ebola Virus. Then in 2014 we have an outbreak of this particular strain of the virus and, surprise, surprise we have candidates to test this previously untested vaccine, one that is very likely to make this pharmaceutical company millions.
Am I the only one to smell a rat here?
27 September 2014 at 4:20 pm
Robert Scott
After the revelations about the MMR vaccine started circulating, a spokesperson turned up on BBC radio 4 stating that inoculations had been tested on white males, the research had been done on white male cells in vitro and animal testing had been done on male rodents. There followed an admission that the same wonder vaccines were dramatically less useful for Hispanics and actually a health hazard for African/Americans.
If the same development and testing regime is to be used for the alleged Ebola vaccine, we must all pray for the victims of this profit led enterprise. of course the situation is now far worse, since the copyrighting of the Ebola virus, effectively outlawing research into any other treatment regime, with special difference to any natural medicine approach. If this does not constitute a crime against humanity, then what does?
12 October 2014 at 9:25 am
The particular mechanism with which the body naturally breaks down and prevents infection from lethal infections including Ebola, HIV, HCV and SARS has gradually emerged.
The mechanism is called mannose-binding lectins. Mannose-binding lectins are apparently produced in the human body via a DNA sequence, called the MBL2.
When this part of our genes is in order, the body will produce and release these mannose-binding lectins into the bloodstream. Mannose-binding lectins will then recognize and glom onto certain carbohydrate molecules that cover and make up various microorganisms.
These include fungi, bacteria and even parasites, which utilize glycoprotein shells to protect themselves. But they also include viruses. Once the lectins attach to these shells, they will break apart the surface of the microbe and basically break them down, allowing the body's other immune cells to kill off the microbe and prevent it from replicating.
In fact, a healthy body that produces good levels of these mannose-binding lectins will be able to easily fight off colds and flus, as well as other microbial infections. Several animal studies have shown mannose-binding lectins heartily beat down coronaviruses and infectious bronchitis.
....
Humans aren't the only critters that produce mannose-binding lectins. Red algae also produce these profusely, which allow the algae to protect themselves from invasion by viruses.
The most promising form of mannose-binding lectins is a component of the Scytonema varium red algae called Scytovirin. The protein extract was isolated by researchers from the National Cancer Institute at Frederick, Maryland in 2003. The protein contains 95 amino acids, and was found to bind to HIV-1 viral shells.
A similar antiviral protein was found in Nostoc ellipsosporum – called Cyanovirin-N. Both of these antiviral proteins did similar things – they broke down the glycoprotein shells of HIV and HCV.
Yet another anti-viral extract was found from the New Zealand red alga species, Griffithsia sp. This protein is called Griffithsin, abbreviated with GRFT.
....
Other plants also produce these mannose-binding lectins, some of which have been used in traditional medicines. A study from Belgium's University of Leuven studied 33 different plant lectins, and found 10 different mannose-binding lectins among the plants that inhibited coronovirus, and intervened upon the replication cycle of SARS-CoV.
Excerpted from: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/red-algae-extract-fights-ebola-and-hiv-sars-and-hcv
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