Site Hack

Posted on May 3, 2012 by jasperl

Hi, our main site was hacked, and this blog and all the blogs hosted here, in such a way as to kill links, for instance from search engines, so that a server error was returned.

This has killed our search engine rankings, naturally as search engines do not keep returning results that produce server errors. As well as traffic to this blog, all those hosted here, and to our main site.

I cannot see a way for anyone, except those with very narrow interests, to profit from this.

If anyone reading this blog has expertise in security please contact me. I have preserved all the files and requested the server logs from tech support at the ISP.

Jasper

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Part III: Childhood experiences that made me receptive to the hygiene hypothesis as an adult

Posted on April 3, 2012 by jasperl

After two thoroughly miserable, highly-allergic years in that bastion of open-minded, secular humanism, Texas, we moved to California.

The original plan was to move to Oregon, but our car had other plans, and to my great good fortune, broke down in Santa Cruz, California.

Which happened to be nine miles from where my father had washed up, Ben Lomond, after we dropped him off at the freeway on ramp outside Atlanta about 2 ½ years previously. I remember him walking away from the car, watching his backpack and it’s pink fluorescent flash recede with a great deal of relief and satisfaction.

I do not remember the reasons, but despite my earlier attitude about his parenting style, my brother and I ended up living with our father for about a year in Ben Lomond. I think that was around 1972 or 1973, so I was eight or nine. I know I was in the fourth grade my first year in California. Well, in fourth grade after a fashion.

When we moved in he announced his new, and very welcome, parenting philosophy. He was willing to give advice on any subject, but we were to have free-reign over almost everything in our lives. Pursuant to this philosophy, in which beatings were no longer a feature, he enrolled us in a free school. This was a semi popular form of schooling at that time. The theory being, if I remember it correctly, that children were innately curious, and if allowed to channel their curiosity would learn more, faster, because they would enjoy it more. So, at our school the children made all the decisions about what they learned, and when, and how. With the exception of mathematics. What that says about Math I am not sure, but it was the only lesson each week for which attendance was mandatory.

Since I had been reading the dictionary and encyclopaedias for pleasure since I learned to read age 3 this approach might have made sense, in my case.

Don’t get me wrong, my father still had a temper. We pushed his Triumph TR6 (?, 5 perhaps?) sports car over a cliff north of Santa Cruz after he lost patience constantly fixing it, and then we hitchhiked home. This was after watching him take an axe to it (the highlight inevitably being when he got the axe head stuck in the bonnet and lost it even more trying to get it out). Which of course lead to the quite rational decision to change tools. So he emptied his roommate’s 45 calibre, nickel-plated, semi-automatic pistol into it.

I have photographic proof in my mother’s photo albums, an event like that a boy wants to preserve for posterity.

My mother, like many expatriates, had developed this idealised view of the country she came from, and developed the concomitant prejudice against the destination country, also so often seen in expatriates. So, she regarded the US as a country, relative to the rose-tinted England of her imagined memories, of uncouth, uncultured, ill-educated rubes.

In an attempt to inoculate us against this American “disease” we were taken to see things like Swan Lake with Nureyev and Fonteyn (boring!), the movie, and a variety of foreign, subtitled films. One of which coincided with the start of our living with our father, at least in my memory. I believe it was this movie, more than any other factor, that determined how my brother and I chose to live for the next nine or so months, within the very loose parameters defined by our father. It made a huge impression on me, and I think my brother.

I have looked it up, the title is L’Enfant sauvage (The Child Savage, literally, or Wild Child less literally), by Truffaut. A good movie, you can read about it here. View the trailer here. I have to say even a wild child would never walk on all fours as depicted in the movie. Please.

I loved it, but then I was eight and it resonated with me because of the odd circumstances that would allow me to fashion a living facsimile of the forest life of the child in the film.

So it was that while most children my age were dying of boredom in elementary school I, and I think my brother, experienced the best year of my life. With the possible exception of the one in which I lost my virginity. I had a phobia about dying before I lost it for some reason. So its loss was accompanied by more than the usual relief.

We abandoned shoes, spent most of our time running, and it was running, for miles through the forest. We drank from rivers, streams, lakes and even puddles. We ate wild grapes, still the most delicious grapes I have ever eaten, and watermelons, oranges, etc., out of people’s gardens (wild children do not recognise the concept of property). Most of the time we were in Levi cutoffs, leaving our t-shirts at the forest entrance.

I even developed a belief system that resembles my understanding of what Animism is, now.

Our hair grew, uncut, well below our shoulders and was bleached blond and wavy. We slept in our clothes on a bare mattress, ate without plates or utensils most of the time, with our hands. We bathed about once a month, when we visited with our mother in Santa Cruz for the weekend. A good proportion of the visit was taken up with bathing, two baths, the first of which produced so much silt that the bottom of the tub was obscured by mud, the second to actually get clean, but still with silt in the bottom of the bath.

Bathing was followed by painful hair brushing and combing, with my mother then cutting chunks of matted hair out that were entirely resistant to any other approach. Dreadlocks were clearly not yet in style, since if left alone that would have been what would have developed.

On more than one occasion relatively large insects crawled out of my hair, I remember in particular a large, black beetle, and more disturbingly a medium sized spider, suggesting that their could have been prey for it in there, too. Our feet were so tough we could run barefoot on asphalt and gravel, I could extinguish a cigarette butt with my foot without pain, and walk on brambles without the thorns fully piercing my skin.

I learned to run on the balls of my feet, being permanently barefoot. How to suck just the clear surface water from a puddle avoiding the silt, mostly, just below the surface, when various fruits were ripe, to be able to tell the time from the position of the sun to within fifteen minutes, how to climb trees like greased lightening (my brother was always much better at that than I), and frequently slid down banks of dry earth in clouds of dust so dense that one’s mouth was thickly coated at slope’s bottom.

We were in such good cardiovascular shape that for years after I excelled in England at running. Running up slopes, thighs burning, and loping through the woods for hours, exploring new areas. Trying to find new wonders, new discoveries.

Pure freedom.

Magical.

Why does any of this matter?

Because from the age of five, until the age of forty-two, with the exception of the year in the forest and the two or three years that followed, I had severe allergies (seasonal rhinitis), until I acquired hookworm. Allergies that required me to carry at the least paper towels, and preferably a tea towel, to blow my nose on, the mucous flowed so quickly. So bad I had perpetual headaches during allergy season, sinus headaches. So bad my eyes would swell shut if I ran through a field of grass, eyes so swollen they hurt from it. Not mild allergies, allergies that often required so many antihistamines I was accused of using drugs at school (this was later, in England), so sleepy was I from their use. Spring meant many days or afternoons spent lying in the dark with a wet flannel over my face, preferably with ice cubes resting on my eyes. This despite being almost inebriate from antihistamines.

Hence, my childhood experiences were a large part of the reason why I was willing to go to Africa and later Central America to acquire worms. Why, when I first read the hygiene hypothesis/old friends hypothesis, it was like a light bulb coming on. Actually, more like the lights going on at the Boardwalk, in Santa Cruz. Why I advocate activities that I am sure many find repellant. Why I was determined to acquire worms, likely hookworms, after that first hour or two of reading about it at my aunt’s house all those years later, in England, in the summer of 2004.

England, where I moved aged 11.

The age I left home for the first time.

© Jasper Lawrence, 2012

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Part II: Childhood and a start to explaining why it made me receptive to the Hygiene Hypothesis later in life

Posted on March 31, 2012 by jasperl

I, like many I suspect, who have read the basics of my story, have long wondered why I, alone amongst all those people who wrote or read the same research I read actually acted on it.

Part of writing this is to try and answer that question.

My family emigrated to the United States from England, my original “green card`” is dated May 31, 1968. Which made me just over four years old.

We lived in New York City, in Brooklyn. My father was a computer programmer, or systems analyst, COBOL. I don’t remember much about NYC, except that our car was stolen and I, my younger brother, and mother, were witness to the beating and pistol whipping of a health food store proprietor. Our stolen car was later used in a homicidal hit-and-run.

Welcome to America.

My father was of the mind that to spare the rod would spoil the child, and was besides violent in other ways. I can remember being thrown into my bedroom having committed some transgression, bouncing off the bed, onto the wall and from there to the floor.

I think my parents around this point discovered marijuana, and certainly there were a lot of parties at our house where various people drank and smoked until late, with my brother and I trying for as long as possible to watch the proceeding from the top of the stairs. I can remember falling asleep in bed listening to the music and laughter wafting into my room, and on those occasions when we went to other people’s houses for the parties falling asleep on the pile of coats and jackets in a spare bedroom, and on one occasion a drunken couple briefly joining us on the bed before realising their error and leaving.

My father believed, because his father had required him to cut the switches with which he had been beaten, that children should only be beaten with your open palm. I can remember beatings and violence in the UK, but it is really in NYC that my memories start in earnest. I do remember him destroying our washing machine in England with an axe in a rage because the wringer had taken my arm because I was sitting on it and did exactly what I was told not to.

Because of him, and my mother’s taste in men later all of whom had similar natures, I learned to be very observant, and reserved.

The most memorable beating in NYC was over either my brother or I cutting the rubber shower attachment which fitted over the faucets on the tub. Neither of us would confess, so we both got the beating. It was after that that he decided that since our asses were clearly becoming desensitised that he should add destruction of our favourite toys to the punishment.

A surreal tableau ensued in which he crushed some matchbox toy car of mine, that I had chosen from amongst my newer ones to make it credible, with a pair of pliers while the family sat around and watched.

What the hell were they all thinking, I wonder?

At that time beating children was much more common and accepted than it is now, and while my experiences with it were not those of the majority of my peers, it was not uncommon. I mention it here because later in my story it is germane.

After a year in Brooklyn we moved, now with a new car, to “upstate” New York. Suffern, in Rockland County which at the time was a very rural area, although I doubt it is any longer given its proximity to NYC.

We lived in this fantastic old two storey house at the end of this enormous horseshoe shaped gravel drive. A drive which claimed chunks of my knees at regular intervals, we having set up jumps and ramps from which to launch ourselves on our bicycles.

Behind the house were the woods, through which wound a trail to a lake that had been dammed. In the summer we would swim, fish and play on it in anything that floated. In the winter we could sled down the path and skate on the lake surface.

Giant puffballs, the size of a football (soccer ball) would grow, but sadly for me so would goldenrod.

Whatever it was, the doctors said goldenrod, I was allergic to it, in a big way. And not just allergic, I developed seasonal asthma, and spent every evening during the time of year this went on hunched over a bowl of hot water with a towel over my head. That was asthma treatment in the late sixties in NY State.

When we later followed my father’s mistress to Georgia my asthma disappeared, but my allergies continued.

When my parents’ marriage ended, mistresses can have that effect, we moved State again. A newly single parent, not getting any support from the father, who did not want to return home to her parents in the UK was looking for help.

My mother chose to move us to Texas where her eldest sister lived (Hi Nora). My uncle worked for NASA as an atmospheric scientist (Hi Uncle Bob – lovely man). It was from him that I first learned about the destruction of the Ozone layer, and fluorocarbons. And, perhaps, that grown men could be gentle men in the true sense of the word.

In Houston, and later Friendswood (about the least friendly place on earth to a seven or eight year-old professed atheist – I had to explain the term when asked what religion I was – with the name Jasper, and by the local standards long hair), I learned just how bad allergies, and children, can be.

Timothy grass, wow. I ran through a field of it one day, and on the other side it was clear I was in trouble. My eyes swelled shut, to the point of pain. I had to be lead home by my brother. I was blind from the swelling around my eyes.

Texas. Just. Wow.

Same later on in California, but somewhat milder, certainly no Timothy grass in force like in Texas.

It was here that I was to have the experience which later made me very, very receptive to the Hygiene Hypothesis.

Because I gained first-hand experience, I believe, of it’s potential for allergies. Although I was not to realise that until about 30 years later.

© Jasper Lawrence, 2012

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The Story of Autoimmune Therapies Since November, 2009. Part 1

Posted on December 27, 2011 by jasperl

I have read a lot of quite strong worded, and very definite, comments about me or Autoimmune Therapies, often by people who have never met me. I have to admit that I avoid public forums on the subject of helminthic therapy because of this, and because I see a very loud minority expressing viewpoints which do not vary with contradictory information from good sources (not just me). I still find it disturbing to read people, as one for instance, doubting that we were visited by the FDA, that I went to Africa, etc., while saying these were just publicity stunts by me. Most of these people have never met me, and it is this group that seems to hold the strongest opinions. I find this odd.

Because I do not inhabit these forums, nor provide corrective replies, I am growing concerned that some people may give them credence just because I never bother replying.

So, over the next few months, as I get time, I will tell the story, with the help of Marc and Michelle, who were there from very early on, of Autoimmune Therapies.

Also, the story which is probably the best known, my account of going to Africa on Kuro5hin.org, was written without an understanding of how their system worked. Having started writing it on a whim, I stopped at some time in the middle of the night, when I woke up late the next day I found the article locked and being voted on for publication. I had intended to correct various bits by referring back to the basic science again, and was far from finished writing it.

So hopefully this will fulfil the objectives of providing my side of our story, as well as bits of Marc’s and Michelle’s, and a corrective to the incomplete version published on K5.

I am going to break the story up into these parts, with these titles:

Part 2. Developing asthma, going through the medical mill, and learning their might be hope after all.

Part 3. Researching hookworm and other helminths, trying desperately to obtain them from a source that did not require me to travel.

Part 4. Going to Cameroon to obtain hookworm, unfortunately the wrong type.

Part 5. Meeting Garin and my further attempts to obtain the correct species of hookworm.

Part 6. The start of Autoimmune Therapies, and providing therapy from Mexico.

Part 7. The decision to ship from Santa Cruz, CA in the USA to everyone using FedEx.

Part 8. The FDA visit, and the immediate aftermath.

Part 9. Two years, just about, of profound depression and drift.

Part 10. Contact by an inspirational client and the beginning of the end of depression. Contact by the MHRA, what it meant for us and for Helminthic Therapy, current plans and projects.

Part 11. The future, as I see it.

I should have part 2 up and done by January 15th, don’t hesitate to hassle me if it does not show up by that date. I am insanely busy, my work days typically never end before 2 am, and often not before 6 or 7 am. I am gripped by the kind work aholicism which has always possessed me when I am working on something I love.

Yes, I wake up late.

Jasper Lawrence
© 2011

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Why acquiring hookworm the old-fashioned way is a baaaad idea

Posted on December 23, 2011 by jasperl

I was asked about a month or more ago to address the topic of acquiring hookworm as I did the first time, and the dangers inherent in doing so. By which I mean going to Cameroon and walking barefoot in the latrine areas of the locals, as I described shortly after doing so here.

The person who contacted me was rightly concerned at posts he had read of people suggesting that they do just that, to save on the expense of purchasing hookworm.

As I describe in the post linked to above, before I went to Africa to get hookworm I considered the many risks associated with doing so, and I only accepted those risk because I had spent 18 months scouring the internet for sources of hookworm, or any other of the various types of helminths I considered safe.

I could not get the ova or larvae from laboratory supply companies, from universities with parasitology departments studying the organisms, nor by locating the areas in the USA where hookworm infection is still endemic because so many people in the S. Eastern US, and Appalachia in particular, still live as they did before Rockefeller’s eradication program began in the 1920s. What every health department I called, in Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and I am sure a few others, all said was something like, “I know we do have cases in our State, but it is not a reportable disease, and so we have no idea where you would find people with hookworm infections”.

I contacted the various universities with parasitology program, I lied, cajoled, begged, offered to pay large sums, i tried to enrol in the programs at Nottingham (the only then active study, into allergies, was full).

I emailed or called every laboratory supply company I could find, no dice. The closest I got was a dead adult hookworm mounted on a slide for parasitology classes.

I tried everything to avoid going abroad to acquire hookworm for the following reasons:

The high risk of acquiring mosquito borne diseases like Malaria, Dengue fever, Filariasis (leading to Elephantiasis, incurable). Those borne by other insects, like trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), West Nile Virus (Nasty!!!), Leishmaniasis (avoid the photographs), the Plague and while most forms are treatable pneumonic can be fatal in less than a week and the mortality rate if untreated is 100%.

Obtaining medical care in Africa is not a happy prospect if you really need it. For instance when I visited the hospital in Limbé the regional capital, when I approached the building I thought the hospital must be behind it because this building was clearly intended for keeping animals. I am deadly serious.

Medicines, including clean syringes had to be supplied by the patients, which is why if you to to Africa besides your anti malaria’s, antibiotics for cholera, shots for typhoid, and cholera (not very effective and makes you feel like dog meat), shots for all the hepatitis versions, etc., you have to take a supply of various syringes so you can be sure of not having one reused on you.

After all the official rate of HIV infection in Cameroon is about 20%, and given that life expectancy there is 47 this means that probably about 50% of adults in Cameroon are HIV positive.

Yellow fever of course, but a requirement of entry to countries where it is endemic is proof of inoculation. Which is good because it destroys your liver in a trice. Then there is Typhus fever (interesting thing: “The first reliable description of the disease appears during the Spanish siege of Moorish Granada in 1489. These accounts include descriptions of fever and red spots over arms, back and chest, progressing to delirium, gangrenous sores, and the stink of rotting flesh. During the siege, the Spaniards lost 3,000 men to enemy action but an additional 17,000 died of typhus.”).

Don’t forget TB, much of which is now totally resistant to antibiotics, interesting thing it can affect your bones as well as your lungs, so your bones crumble away.

Getting bored with listing diseases, there are too many more to want to continue, so just going to list the highlights, you can look them up on Wikipedia: Leptospirosis, Lassa Fever, Ebola & Marburg Viruses (your hemorragic fevers), Schistosomiasis, Rabies, Diphtheria, etc., etc., etc.

Then there are the water borne diseases, meaning you have to stay away from fresh water, whether flowing or still. Don’t forget all the large predators, some that live in water that are above you on the food chain in Africa.

My favourite story was of a German tourist who was told not to swim in the lake by the hotel he was staying in, heedless of the advice he did just that, and was a crocodile’s dinner as a result).

Hippos eat people, too.

There are many other diseases, among which are Polio. If memory serves the eradication effort failed because a bunch of religious lunatics in Nigeria refused vaccination at the end of the global eradication program, Cameroon is next door. But I am getting tired of listing them, that last link takes you to the CDC page for travel advisories for Cameroon and I think lists most of the diseases.

Of course the greatest danger to life and limb in Cameroon does not come from disease or predators, although there are tigers on Mount Cameroon, the second highest mountain in Africa, and it’s largest active volcano. I walked up part of it and down to where it had bisected the road to Nigeria, the flow was enormous.

No, the greatest danger to life and limb in the third world comes from the citizens of the country you are visiting most of the time.

The only guide book to Cameroon warned that cars were the greatest risk, I laughed at that given what I had read about the diseases. But so it proved.

In just two weeks in the country I came upon three accidents, shortly after they had happened, involving fatalities. In one memorable case four in one car that had burned. Quite an image, plus countless others, not involving fatalities, one involving a large gravel truck, a minibus, and a motorcycle.

The minibus had been tossed down the slope next to the road and its contents and passengers distributed at random hither, thither, and yon, along with all their possessions. They seemed to be in the worst shape, the motorcyclist seemed fine, but the passengers in the minibus were all moaning and gripping various body parts, heads in particular.

I was once in a taxi that was one of four cars simultaneously overtaking another car while two cars, one overtaking, came at us in the other direction.

Exciting!

There are no driving tests, few seat belts, no visible police outside the capital, no road signs, only one paved road (from the capital to the oil refinery) that I saw outside the capital, no signs, or road markings. There are only a couple of fire stations in the capital, and I doubt even that many in the rest of the country. Both are quite near the presidential palace by some freak of chance.

As to an ambulance, forget it. If you cannot get yourself to the hospital you aren’t going to make it, and even if you do, see description of hospital in Limbé as reference, I would not rate your chances unless your wounds were very superficial.

The drivers all navigate by honking constantly, as if an audible warning, amongst 3-15 all at once is a license to do just about anything.

The taxis are interesting, I and my traveling companion who I took with me so we could take turns sleeping in dodgy situations, and glad I did, got in a taxi, paid our fair, and waited to take off. Bear in mind almost no one owns a private car in Cameroon, most cars on the road are taxis, and almost universally they are Toyota Tercel sized vehicles that are exported from Germany by the container full, after they fail their road worthiness tests and are deemed by their owners not worth fixing.

We were waiting in one such vehicle, and as the morning rush hour, almost all on foot, passed by the taxi driver slowly filled the Tercel up until there were five passengers in the back seat, and two in the front passenger seat, of which I was one. Then we set off.

When we arrived in the country, in the capital Yaoundé, at night, we got a taxi, were greeted by a woman with skirt hiked to mid thigh standing with legs apart pissing in the street immediately we left the airport.

Within five kilometres the taxi had run out of diesel, so the taxi driver took part of his fair in advance, flagged down one of his friends driving by in another taxi and disappeared into the dark to fetch some diesel. He returned with a one litre soda bottle full of diesel about a half an hour later, and off we went to the capital. All dirt roads.

Then there is the issue of wealth, Cameroon and countries like it where the money economy shows an average daily wage of about a dollar fifty US a day and where family sizes are large, means that parents frequently watch their children die for lack of medicine costing a few dollars.

Such people, when confronted by a white man, perhaps the first they have ever seen as was the case with many I met, must know that your pocket change represents one to three months wages. Ask yourself if you would hesitate to rob, or even kill, to get that money living in that situation. I know my children would come before some white asshole from a country so rich, and that cared so little for the world’s poor.

I heard many stories relating to Cameroonians returning from living in America having saved enough money to build a nice house (about $25K for a four or five bedroom mansion of you are interested) being taken for a ride on the Bay by their old friends and ending up as fish bait for the money in their pockets. I was offered almost a kilometre of beach front property outside Limbé for $10K.

Life is cheap in places like Cameroon, and if you go there you can expect to be exhausted from the constant danger, and the tension it causes.

The last night we were there we spent at a deputy chief of police’s house in Yaoundé, the capital. When we woke up, thanks to the Mosque broadcasting the morning call to prayer at dawn and all the roosters crowing their guts out, we found the power was out. We soon realised it was just the house we were in. What had happened was that someone had stolen her electricity meter, while the power was live through it, in the middle of the night.

She was not surprised, apparently it happens quite often, but not always with a successful outcome, of course. That is how poor people are.

Before I went there I reasoned that I was most likely to return without any disease, next most likely to return with the wrong disease, and would be lucky to return with hookworm.

My original plan was to work with the local pathology labs and doctors to identify infected children, collect a stool sample, culture it (easy in its natural environment) and so infect myself that way.

I quickly learned that that level of poverty makes everyone corrupt. It is not just the ruling class, everyone is on the make, and being white you are the best opportunity to come along in a long time. It took me about four, wasted, days to work out that the doctors and labs were just waiting to see how much I was willing to pay, and that there was no guarantee I would get what I paid for at all.

It was only then that I resorted to walking barefoot in latrine areas.

One can consider such a thing and believe it will be easy to do, but when the time came the only thing that made me do it was the thought of returning home to all those who had decided, clearly and often expressing naked derision, that I was a lunatic for considering infecting myself, never mind going to Africa.

The thought of having to tell them that I did not have the balls to do it was all that compelled me to do it in the end.

Then there is the cost, once you add up the price of two plane tickets, one for you and one for your wingman, all the other travel expenses (the vaccinations are a killer), etc., it is certainly far, far cheaper to buy it from one of the providers.

Plus the outcome is certain, there is no guarantee you will come back with any disease, let alone the right one.

So unless you want the adventure, and I have to admit Cameroon made me feel more alive, and more appreciative of living in the West, than anything I have ever done, I suggest you be sensible and just buy it from someone.

Our policy is that no one is turned down for therapy on the basis of the inability to pay.

If you are pissed off with the price and think it should be cheaper, you know, based on cost of the raw material, I suggest you read this post.

I did what I did only because there were no alternatives, if I could have bought it, even at double what we charge, especially given my experiences in Cameroon, I would have.

I was very lucky, I met a cousin of the Prime Minister on the plane there, and her husband who managed a French owned banana plantation. They happened to live in the darkest area of the map provided by the WHO showing the highest rates of hookworm infection in Cameroon, Limbé. They kept me prisoner once we arrived in town, I kid you not, until they had convinced me and my companion of the danger we were in traveling around the country.

To persuade us to stay with them they went so far as to lend us his car and driver for the duration of our stay. I doubt you would be so lucky, and without that I am pretty sure we would likely have been in grave danger.

They employed six or so people around the house, one of which worked from 6 am to 6pm, and another the other twelve hours. The guy who worked during the day walked around the walled grounds all day with a revolver and machete, and the night clerk slept on the bare tile floor in front of the front door with a gun and machete in his hands, all night. No pillow, no blanket, no mattress. A hard man, a serious man, a man without a sense of humour.

The windows were all barred, the doors all locked with multiple locks, and the man of the house had multiple hand guns to back up the guards.

That is the third world, and if you think visiting it is a bargain compared to buying a sterilised dose of helminths from us, go right ahead.

But don’t say I didn’t warn you, and make sure your life insurance is paid up, and that your will is up-to-date.

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Negative blood test results for Strongyloides and infectious disease in AIT Reservoir

Posted on December 23, 2011 by jasperl

Updated December, 2011

I am the primary reservoir for production of doses of hookworm and whipworm for AIT’s version of helminthic therapy, and there has been fairly constant unfounded speculation as to my current status re infection with Hepatitis, HIV, etc., and the helminth Strongyloides.

As you can see (you can download the test results here: “Reservoir_Test_Results.zip”) I am negative for everything I was tested for, including Strongyloides. Please note that the tests were performed by one of the oldest and most prestigious schools of Tropical Medicine in the World, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

Although I think only a handful of people have ever asked me about such test results (in over four years of being in business providing hookworm and whipworm) those that do are very interested in the results. Perhaps others that are very interested don’t mention it for some reason? As I explain later, I am certain sure such concern is NOT appropriate.

It would be nice to know what level of interest there really is given that these blood results were very expensive, about $750/£500/€602. Given the expense, hassle and apparent relative lack of interest, if you are keen to see me continue getting these types of test please let me know via comments here or anywhere on this blog.

The only value in the test is to reassure people, falsely, since they provide absolutely no guarantee, except in stool examinations for worms like strongyloides, that the person is not infected. Besides which, in fact because of this, anyone preparing doses of helminths for other people has to take steps as if the host is infected with everything, to do otherwise would be irresponsible.

The reasons for this are manifold.

First, you cannot test for every possible pathogen. I doubt I have enough blood for such a comprehensive panel, even if I had the money.

Secondly, a negative test result, unless the disease is an exotic, hard-to-encounter-unless-you-travel-to-some-weird place, organism like Strongyloides, cannot be entirely relied upon because most tests are for antibodies, not for the actual pathogen.

So there is inevitably a period of time, referred to as the Window, in someone recently infected who carries one of these diseases where they are not yet producing any, or sufficient, antibodies to show up on a test.

If you are at all familiar with the HIV test you already know this. The interval between exposure to HIV and being able to test positive is up to six months, and in rare cases say when there is coincident Hepatitis C exposure (or use of prophylactic therapy), even longer. Even if you are being tested monthly, or more frequently, for every human disease going, you still do not know whether or not you have picked up something since your last test, or if they are in the Window period.

Third, some diseases cannot be tested for, although the pathogen has been identified. No test has been developed. So you cannot test for everything.

Fourth, some diseases clearly have an infectious component, but that vector or agent has yet to be identified.

So the results should have no effect on dose preparation, and although it may be reassuring to know that your reservoir is not a cesspool of human disease, such reassurance is illusory.

What you should really be concerned about is whether the person preparing the dose has the requisite knowledge, skills and experience, and is caring and attentive each and every time they are in the lab. I would like to note here that half the full-time staff of Autoimmune Therapies are PhDs, one with a career working in labs with microorganisms, one that was regularly tested for compliance by among other organisations the FDA and NIH. The other was a practicing Clinical Pathologist working with tissue, stool and body fluid samples, for the National Health Service, also in an inspected facility. Among both their duties was obtaining and maintaining the requisite accreditations and approvals necessary for the lab to operate within the law.

Having said all that if it is important to you I am happy to submit to any test you desire, at any time, so long as you are willing to pay for it. That would include any test prior to preparation of your dose if you want. I would also be happy to sign a waiver pre-test arranging for the results to be sent directly to you from the lab performing the tests.

Jasper

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New AIT Policy for Testing of Reservoir Donors of Helminths

Posted on December 23, 2011 by jasperl

Edited based on experience trying to obtain regular test results:

Previously in an attempt to settle once and for all the contention that reservoirs should be tested regularly for infectious diseases, despite such tests clearly being of no use in providing any assurance that the reservoir was disease free, nor should such negative results have any impact on the way in which dose are prepared, I decided I was tired of arguing the point with those who could or would not understand that and said publicly that I would obtain such tests every two months.

But this is the UK, and there are many reasons the UK only spends just over 8% of GDP on healthcare, while the USA spends over 16% (and enjoys a lower life expectancy than the UK despite that).

As I learned, even private doctors simply refuse to order tests without good cause, and I was not comfortable telling them the truth. Having lost my home and access to my children in the US when we came to the FDA’s attention I had no desire to repeat the experience here in the UK.

So not only are such tests useless, as explained here, they are not going to be performed to satisfy those for whom that quite sensible explanation is not satisfactory.

Not because I am unwilling, but because to do so is impractical.

If however you wish for tests to be preformed prior to the preparation of your dose the offer remains to obtain them at your expense, assuming I can find a doctor willing to order them, and to ensure that the results are sent directly to you.

Thanks for your understanding

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Can Hookworm Cause Anaemia in Therapeutic Numbers?

Posted on May 5, 2011 by jasperl

I have asked each of the PhDs who work for Autoimmune Therapies to write articles and reviews of scientific papers on the subject of helminthic therapy, the Hygiene Hypothesis and Old Friends Hypothesis, etc.

I have done this because so much of what is discussed online regarding helminthic therapy is uninformed or based on folk-knowledge, much of it being flat wrong.

Of course a great deal of the research and what is known is very difficult to find, and even harder to understand.

I and those of us who work at Autoimmune Therapies have been studying the subject for years.

I have been reading about the life-cycle of hookworms and whipworms, the Hygiene Hypothesis, and Old Friends Hypothesis, as well as the impact of infection with either hookworm or whipworm on the human immune system, since June, 2004. That was when I first encountered the concept of the Hygiene Hypothesis and the work of Dr. David Pritchard, and others, thanks to my aunt.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of hookworm is their potential to cause anaemia. I have read on someone’s blog for instance that a single hookworm can take up to six pints of blood per day. The person writing the post apparently is not aware that we each have roughly only 8 pints of blood. Or that an adult hookworm is only about one centimetre long and a half a millimetre wide. It is hard to imagine how so much blood could be consumed by such a small organism.

But how much blood does a single hookworm consume in a day?

That depends on which species of hookworm we are talking about. Here we are discussing Necator americanus, the kind that Autoimmune Therapies uses. We selected N. americanus instead of Ancylostoma duodenale because N. americanus draws much less blood, and lives far, far longer than A. duodenale.

According the various parasitology texts and papers I have read that examine this subject the most commonly quoted figure is 0.01ml/day per adult hookworm. Which works out to be 0.3ml/month, if the month has 30 days.

To put that amount in perspective a teaspoon contains about 5.0ml of liquid if filled to the top.

The second most commonly quoted figure for daily blood loss per adult hookworm is 0.03ml per day. Which gives a monthly amount, for a thirty day month, of 0.9ml/month.

The respective amount of blood lost to an infection with 50 hookworm each 30 days then must be between 15ml – 45ml.

In comparison the range quoted on Wikipedia for blood lost each month to menstruation is 10ml – 80ml being considered normal, and 35ml/month considered average.

So clearly, unless you have some disease that leads to blood loss or can cause anaemia, a therapeutic number of hookworm do not represent any risk of anaemia, because clearly the body can cope with a monthly blood loss of at least 100ml without problems.

But how much blood loss per month can humans tolerate, after all a menstruating woman with hookworm might be a risk of anaemia.

Marc wrote the following discussion of the body’s ability to replace lost blood in reply to a thread on the Yahoo Forum on this subject. If you are interested the thread is here.

“Just a note on blood loss, depending on the source the upper limit of average blood loss due to menstruation is 80-100 ml per month. Assuming the highest level of blood loss per worm is 0.03 mL/day which is the most commonly reported higher amount for N. americanus, this equates to 63 ml/month for 70 hookworms (note that AIT provides 35 hookworm as the most common therapeutic dose, although up to 100 will be provided if necessary).

To put this into context, a woman donating blood will give (in the UK) 470 ml of blood per donation without any adverse consequence. The average adult can lose up to 15% (approximately 800 mL) of their blood suddenly without clinical symptoms. So even if we assume 126 mL of blood loss per month to hookworm, double the known amount taken by hookworm, the body is easily of capable of replacing this.

To demonstrate the ability of the body to cope with chronic blood loss, the following calculation may be useful, I have used a blood loss that is double the maximum expected from 70 hookworm which allows for extra blood loss as they move around, at the same time I have assumed the lowest values pertaining to our bodies’ ability to produce Red Blood Cells (RBC).

Therefore, in reality the following calculation underestimates the ability of the human body to replace blood loss from helminths by somewhere between 2 and 5 fold.

We like to be conservative at AIT.

The use of RBC is more appropriate than the use of the total blood volume when evaluating the impact of hookworm on the body’s iron status. It is the RBC that transport oxygen, and it is a decrease in RBC or in haemoglobin in the RBC, that is by definition anaemia. Total blood volume is independent of RBC, and maintained at a fairly constant level at the expense of all other factors.

Assuming there is no reason why normal red blood cell (RBC) production can not be achieved (such as dietary iron deficiency, the normal RBC production in an average male is 18 ml/day. The body can increase production of RBCs by up to six times this value when needed. The average adult male has a haematocrit of 48% (that is each litre, 1,000ml, of blood contains 480 mL of RBC, i.e. 48%). Assuming 126 ml per month of whole blood loss due to hookworm(0.03x70x30x2), this equates to the loss of 60 ml of RBC per month (126×48%).

the human body in that same time produces 540 mL (18×30) of RBC, and can if required produce at least 3240 mL of RBC per month (540×6). Therefore using this worst case scenario, there is an approximate 54 fold excess in the volume of RBC’s that can be produced by the body (3240/60) compared to the amount that are lost to hookworm. For women the calculation is slightly different as the average haematocrit  and the production of RBC per day will be slightly different.

This means that unless there is a significant factor already causing iron deficiency, such as poor dietary intake (malnutrition), or poor absorption of iron, due to dysfunction of the small intestine (or surgical removal as is common with Crohn’s Disease), hookworm on their own in appropriate therapeutic numbers, like those provided by AIT, cannot cause iron deficiency and subsequent anaemia.

Bottom line: There is no risk of developing anaemia if you are provided hookworms by AIT, or know what you are doing and use the appropriate number of hookworm”

For the record, I infected myself with a total of 300 N.Americanus and show no signs of anaemia about six months later.

Jasper Lawrence

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Update on “A” and her progress

Posted on April 22, 2011 by jasperl

More good news on the progress of “A”.

For those of you who have not read “A’s” story, about how her severe Crohn’s has responded to helminthic therapy, you can read two earlier accounts of her progress since starting helminthic therapy for Crohn’s Disease (whipworm, her disease is active in her colon) about eight months ago here and here. “A” was about 2 years old when she started on therapy, 14 months when diagnosed.

This latest from her father:

Start Quote:

First recent email:
I thought I’d write you on a few things, as the good news on “A” has gotten better. First, we got the shipment (whipworm – Jasper), and everything went well. I realize I have yet to pay for it, but I will fax the credit card information to you early next week. I apologize for the delay. The second thing is that “A’s” GI got the biopsy slides back from her recent colonoscopy and the results were fantastic. They showed only mild inflammation, and no granulomas. Her previous slides from last years colonoscopy had shown bad inflammation, and granulomas everywhere. Her doctor said particularly the granulomas disappearing was “amazing”. I’d like to know to what extent of amazing the disappearing granulomas are, but I can’t find much information on granulomas as it relates to Crohn’s. But none-the-less it is obviously a great thing, and further reinforces the effects of the therapy. I also mentioned to her that you would be interested in talking with her, and she said that was fine. I’ll give you her information again, Dr. Name and contact information redacted – Jasper.

So good luck. She seems very excited about “A”, as are we.
On another note, I found a group on parents of children with IBD on the web. I read some of their stuff, and felt a particular kinship with both them and their kids. Needless to say, much of the subject matter is not pleasant. I was struck by the fact that their experiences could be an alternative for ours, had we not been so fortunate. I plan on posting a little thing about our experience with helminths. Perhaps someone could be moved by the irrefutable facts of “A’s” success. I’m not at all sure of the response I’ll get, if any, but if you don’t mind, and someone is interested, I could pass your information on to them.

Second recent email:

Jasper,

It’s good to hear from you again. You may post what you would like on your blogs, we trust in your discretion. Another good thing on “A”, is that since she got the second dose she has gotten even better. Her stools have been almost completely formed for weeks now, and we have seen absolutely no blood. This is certainly her longest run yet.
We will continue to stay in touch, hopefully with only good news! Thanks again to you and everyone else involved.

End Quote.

Fantastic, isn’t it?

Jasper

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Why McMaster ova counts are largely worthless for detecting changes in helminth population

Posted on February 20, 2011 by jasperl

The Argument Against Egg Counts as an Indicator of Helminth Number

  • Parasitology texts note that per day female hookworm and whipworm ova production varies from 2,000 to 20,000 total. For this reason alone any estimate based on an ova count must have a variance of x10. That is the answer can only be expressed as a range, with the higher end of the range being ten times the low end. So a typical answer would be “from 20-200 hookworm”. Fairly useless, particularly if you are trying to detect the loss of one or two hookworm. On this basis alone the test is too crude for the purposes most with deliberate helminth infections are trying to use it for.
  • Egg counts are a measure of density. So any count is going to be affected by things like the speed of material through the intestines (constipation or diarrhoea at the extremes), amount eaten, amount of fluid drunk, fibre content of food, etc. If you think of the extremes one can see this is going to have an enormous impact on density of ova per gram of faeces. Different foods and drugs affect the speed of material through the intestines.
  • Any count depends on extreme precision and replication of methods and precision from test-to-test. Only an experienced lab technician is capable of accurately counting ova in stool, stains are no aid and identifying each and every ova in a gram of faeces is difficult work. In someone producing 100 ova per gram .1 grams will contain 10 ova, so the slightest variation in weight can have a big effect on the number observed, that effect then being amplified by the multipliers used to derive worm population from egg counts.
    Ova production varies tremendously with time. Hookworm ova production falls by an estimated 50% about one year after infection. But there is little information on whether this is invariably 50% or exactly when it happens or how fast.

  • Ova production in all helminths is affected by various drugs, some known, some inevitably unstudied. So, antibiotic use so profoundly reduces ova production that parasitology texts recommend not doing ova tests for two weeks after the subject stops taking the antibiotics. Other drugs almost certainly have various effects as well.
  • McMaster egg counts have been abandoned by doctors of veterinary medicine as being useless as a practical tool for estimating worm numbers. They would know.
  • Most people using helminthic therapy, if using N. americanus or T. trichiura, know how many helminths they received. So the only purpose of ova counts is to monitor infection levels. But given all the other factors noted here the test is not sensitive enough to detect even a relatively large change in numbers.

    Egg counts can be used as a broad indicator of worm burden, but only as an indicator. McMaster egg counts were intended for use to determine whether someone has a heavy, moderate or light infection, so appropriate treatment (as in elimination except in light infections) could be prescribed.

    Researchers use egg density measurements in studies to monitor worm burden in their study subjects, but they have specialised equipment and the training to do so reliably and consistently. Even then they cannot indicate much, and beside most studies continue for far less than one year. So any change they are likely to detect would be gross, that is loss of worms. Which is undoubtedly what they are primarily looking for.

    The only method with any real utility to determine helminth population is endoscopy for hookworm and colonoscopy for whipworm.

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