Saturday, July 11, 2015

The Unreported Health Benefits of Measles


Posted on: Thursday, July 9th 2015 at 4:00 pm
Written By: GMI Reporter

Almost overnight, measles went from being characterized as a natural rite of passage necessary for strengthening immunity to a deadly infection against which we have only one hope against complete destruction: 100% vaccine uptake. The truth is that measles and other childhood infections may actually protect against life-threatening conditions like cancer and heart disease. 
Not long ago, measles infection was considered a normal immunological rite of passage in children, with the CDC itself still identifying anyone born before 1957 as having presumptive evidence of immunity against measles due to the lasting protection conferred by natural exposure. Check out this video on measles as depicted in the media half a century ago, wherein it is the subject of laughter and not mortal fear.
How, then, have we strayed so far from this awareness into the mousetrap of ignorance and irrational fear that followed the California Disneyland outbreak which was used to push through the approval of SB277, removing all but the illusory medical exemption from California? How did measles go from not only a benign and perhaps necessary childhood exposure to a presumably deadly one?
First, the measles vaccine is failing, and has been for many years. We see evidence of this going back to the mid-80's, and all around the world. Read our article "The 2013 Measles Oubreak: A Failing Vaccine, Not a Failure to Vaccinate" to see a review of the literature. Or, consider that the Chinese are having measles outbreaks in populations that have up to 99% measles vaccine uptake.
Instead of placing blame where it is due - on the failing vaccine itself - the vaccine industry, government and media response (all which share financial ties) is unilaterally to "blame the victim," forcing more vaccines on populations that are almost universally compliant, but are told they still need to take boosters because the original vaccines aren't effective enough. The deeper truth is that vaccination is not the same thing as immunization. In fact, quite the contrary, as live vaccines like MMR actually infect healthy individuals with the very transmissible viruses they are believed to prevent. And this is confirmed through WHO, Merck and CDC funded research no less.

Perhaps the most important thing to acknowledge is that germ theory itself is dead, without which the vaccine agenda no longer has a leg to stand on. The discovery of the microbiome's role in our own self-definition as a holobiont species comprised of far more "germs" than actual eukaryotic human cells, as well as the critically important role that viruses have played in helping to create the human genome (up to 13% of our genome is viral in origin), decimates the view that germs are our primary enemy "out there" and against which we must war. This logic is unsustainable and intellectually bankrupt, because "they" are more "us" then we are ourselves. This is why we need to look at measles through a different lens. In fact, we need to appreciate the health benefits that natural measles exposure may confer not just against measles, but other conditions that require immunological priming by natural infections and subsequent homeostasis and optimization of our natural immune defenses.
On GreenMedInfo.com we have indexed some of this research under the keyword section "Health Benefits of Measles," a phrase that would do us all good to re-enter popular discussion and consciousness now that "Measles is Deadly" seems to be the only prevalent thought-form.
On this database page you will find over a dozen conditions that have been observed to be mitigated through natural measles exposure. Some of these are as life-threatening as malaria and blood cancer; certainly far more life-threatening than measles is. While some of these citations go back as far as the 1960's, the research on measles conferring health benefits continues to be published. In fact, last month, a groundbreaking study published in the journal Atherosclerosis titled, "Association of measles and mumps with cardiovascular disease:  The Japan Collaborative Cohort (JACC) Study," reveals that infection with measles and mumps (especially in the case of both infections) is associated with lower risks of mortality from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The authors proposed the following potential mechanism behind this association:
It has been suggested that infection can impact atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) either deleteriously or positively [1]. The former proposes that inflammation caused by chronic infections with pathogens such as Chlamydia pneumonia and herpes simplex virus type I can accelerate atherosclerosis [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6]. The latter suggests that infections suffered during childhood can protect from atherosclerosis [1]. The 'hygiene hypothesis' is a possible mechanism underlying this effect [1], [7] and [8]. Improved hygiene decreases the opportunities for infections, which are necessary for normal development of the immune system. Weakened immune systems lead to decreased production, as well as inactivation, of regulatory T cells, which control the balance of T helper cell types, Th1 and Th2. As a result, inflammation at the arterial wall is not well controlled, leading to the development of atherosclerosis. Therefore, people with a history of infections may have a lower risk of CVD, especially atherosclerotic diseases such as stroke and myocardial infarction, compared to those without previous infections. However, to the best of our knowledge, only one previous study, which used a retrospective design and had a small number of participants, has suggested that viral or bacterial infections could protect against CVD [1]."
Clearly, if the hygiene hypothesis holds, suppressing natural infectious exposures with man made ones, administered through novel routes like injections, along with adjuvants and biologicals to which our bodies have no evolutionary precedent for exposure, would result in immunological imbalance or dysfunction. This could have a wide range of deleterious downstream effects, including cardiovascular ones.  
There is one thing for certain.  The research on the potential health benefits of measles shows it is not the juggernaut of death - a characterization that serves corporate profits and advances health policies that endanger our very bodily integrity.
For related research read the following articles on vaccine failure in chickenpox, shinglesmumpswhooping cough (pertussis)influenzaHPV (Gardasil) and hepatitis B, to name but a few. 

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