ABVA
is releasing the digitized version of its 58-paged document titled:
A Citizen’s report on
Anti-AIDS drugs and the threat to public health”
This Report was originally published
(hard copy) in January, 2002 and is being made available in digitized version now
due to its relevance in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic; many anti-AIDS drugs are
being used to manage coronavirus infection. ABVA reiterates that no lessons
appear to have been learnt by the international medical establishment, from
(mis-)management of past pandemics. ABVA feels the urgent need to stress some
very basic issues constantly being dodged by the medical profession under
pressure from the governments in power globally. The international bodies like
WHO, World Bank, United Nations etc preside over such a state of affairs every
time a new pandemic strikes humanity. Ivan Illich elucidated in 1976:
“The
study of the evolution of disease pattern provides evidence that during the
last century doctors have affected epidemics no more profoundly than did
priests during earlier times. Epidemics came and went, imprecated by both but
touched by neither. … Discussion of the future of health care might usefully
begin with the recognition of this fact.”
Yet both the political class and the
medical professionals ignore this fundamental point as they want to be seen
doing something demonstrably before the public gaze; and appear to be in
control of such pandemics! It is their collective arrogance and ignorance which
drives them to this disastrous path.
A crucial question is: Can Medicines
Control Epidemics?
Ivan Illich reminds:
“Medicines
have always been potentially poisonous, but their unwanted side-effects have
increased with their power and widespread use. … drugs contribute to the
breeding of drug-resistant strains of bacteria.” And:
“The
pharmaceutical invasion leads him (man) to medication, by himself or by others,
that reduces his ability to cope with a body for which he can still care.”
What are the lessons to be learnt from
the National Tuberculosis Control Programme adopted in India as advocated by
the WHO in 1964? Professor MPS Menon reminded us as early as 1983:
“Presently
we have about 10 million TB cases in India. Every year five lakh people die of
TB and another five lakh get fresh infection. There is the problem of drug
resistance too. This pathetic situation exists despite the fact that there is a
vaccine against TB (BCG vaccination programme started in India in 1948);
investigations and detection of TB cases are done free of cost; and drugs are
supplied to patients free of cost in hospitals and clinics, and if need be at
their doorsteps.”
Resistance to anti-T.B. drugs is a
global problem. It was not until the early 1990s, however, when outbreaks of
multi-drug resistance T.B. were reported in patients with HIV infection in USA
and Europe that the problem received international attention.
The T.B. bacteria developed resistance
to drugs used earlier; newer, costlier and more toxic drugs came into existence
for dealing with drug resistance bacteria; resistance has developed again for
even these drugs. This process continues taking its toll on human bodies. The
biggest beneficiary of this trade in human misery are the transnational
corporations.
Significantly the T.B. bacteria has
learnt to escape the onslaught of these drugs by camouflaging its ‘appearance’.
It lies dormant, thus, in the normal cells of the human body for years – nay
decades. It only causes the disease when the body’s immune system becomes weak.
Administering stronger medicines (principally antibiotics) may actually harm
the human body; weaken its immune system while the T.B. bacteria merrily lies
dormant inside a normal human cell waiting for the right opportunity to attack.
Did the Indian Government have an
alternative to tackling Tuberculosis through chemotherapy?
“Prof.
J. R. Bignall of the Institute for Chest Disease (Brompton Hospital, London)
was requested by the Indian Government in 1956 to study the extent of
Tuberculosis in the country. The anti-TB drug situation at that time was
pathetic with very few drugs trickling into the country and being abused even
by quacks. Dr. Bignall wrote to the government suggesting that the 2.5 lakh odd
TB patients in the country at that point of time should be allowed to have
conventional forms of treatment. The use of anti-TB antibiotics should be
banned in the county for 10 years, he said as his reasoning was that those who
die of the disease would die anyway and take the germs with them to be burnt or
buried, ending the germ’s life cycle. For the rest of the patients who survive,
their immune system would kill the germs. In the following decade India would
have been rid of TB germs.
“With
hindsight it looks like God’s advice. That advice could have worked even for
the West. The report was ridiculed in the Parliament and rejected. The results
are there for all of us to see.” (The
Hindu, June 3, 2001)
Management of AIDS pandemic as also
COVID-19 should have been on similar lines.
Globally governments ignored the T.B.
experience with medication and repeated the same folly vis a vis the AIDS
pandemic. HIV is still around even forty years after the pandemic started.
Ironically when COVID-19 pandemic appeared many drugs used for AIDS were
administered for coronavirus infection!!
Marc
Lappe in The Tao of Immunology, 1997
philosophizes:
“The
lesson here may be profoundly important. As with the Taoist adage about
responding to an enemy’s advances, "Force should never be opposed by
force,"it may be that sometimes the best use of the immune system is to
call on it sparingly. As evolutionary biologist S. Ohno of the University of
California Davis has declared, "To attack infected cells in which viruses
are in the quiescent state of symbiosis with the host is the ultimate
folly."
Until
we accept that the immune system’s response to some invasions is accommodation
rather than eradication, we will be doomed to fight a never-ending battle
against near-invisible enemies. If the immune system's way to "win"
is to relent, then perhaps we could learn to do the same. As the Tao-te Ching
says, "That which is most yielding can overcome that which is most
strong."
The lessons to be learnt is that human
kind has to live in peaceful coexistence with bacteria, virus, fungi etc. The
penchant to wipe out microorganisms through medications needs to be kept in
abeyance.
WHO has already sounded a grim warning:
“All
current antiretroviral drugs, including newer classes, are at risk of becoming
partly or fully inactive because of the emergence of drug-resistant virus
strains. If not prevented, HIV drug resistance can jeopardize the efficacy
of antiretroviral drugs, resulting in increased numbers of HIV infections
and HIV-associated morbidity and mortality.” [From WHO website on HIV Drug Resistance accessed on 26.02.2021 at 2.25p.m.]
The full report can be read here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10AFVnity8oJ9MiDTBcp5JkdfEOSa9awR/view
