Fat Elvis
02-09-2011, 08:52 PM
PARASITIC WORMS MAY TREAT AUTISM, IMMUNE DISEASES
Here's a big wow....the story, told by Bob Grant in The Scientist -- of how a father's desperate search for a cure for his severely autistic son has helped propel the investigation of how roundworms may be used to treat autism and several other diseases, including Crohn's disease and multiple sclerosis.
The genesis of this treatment lies in the agrarian lifestyles to which we humans had, over thousands of years, adjusted so well.
The Iowa researchers knew that when people moved from less developed to more developed countries, the rates of autoimmune diseases rose in the immigrant population. For example, in populations moving in the 1970s and 1980s from India, a country with high incidences of worm infection, to the United Kingdom, where such infections are rarer, the incidence of Crohn’s disease increased rapidly. And in the 1930s and 1940s epidemiologists had found virtually no occurrence of bowel disorders in children living in the rural southern states of the United States. Because pig farming was done on a regional basis and many rural dwellers lived in close proximity to their livestock, worm infections were much more common outside urban areas. As nationwide programs were launched to tamp down worm infections among rural populations and migration to urban areas increased, autoimmune diseases became more prevalent.
Here's a video of a presentation Stewart Johnson made in 2007 about the treatment of his son, Larry Johnson, whose extremely violent and self-abusive behavior disappeared when he began drinking a concoction of roundworm eggs. He continues to take the treatment, and continues to be violence-free. That's enough to get anyone over the ewwww factor. More information on Johnson's site, autismtso.com.
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/r_R_sHV8H9o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Here's a big wow....the story, told by Bob Grant in The Scientist -- of how a father's desperate search for a cure for his severely autistic son has helped propel the investigation of how roundworms may be used to treat autism and several other diseases, including Crohn's disease and multiple sclerosis.
The genesis of this treatment lies in the agrarian lifestyles to which we humans had, over thousands of years, adjusted so well.
The Iowa researchers knew that when people moved from less developed to more developed countries, the rates of autoimmune diseases rose in the immigrant population. For example, in populations moving in the 1970s and 1980s from India, a country with high incidences of worm infection, to the United Kingdom, where such infections are rarer, the incidence of Crohn’s disease increased rapidly. And in the 1930s and 1940s epidemiologists had found virtually no occurrence of bowel disorders in children living in the rural southern states of the United States. Because pig farming was done on a regional basis and many rural dwellers lived in close proximity to their livestock, worm infections were much more common outside urban areas. As nationwide programs were launched to tamp down worm infections among rural populations and migration to urban areas increased, autoimmune diseases became more prevalent.
Here's a video of a presentation Stewart Johnson made in 2007 about the treatment of his son, Larry Johnson, whose extremely violent and self-abusive behavior disappeared when he began drinking a concoction of roundworm eggs. He continues to take the treatment, and continues to be violence-free. That's enough to get anyone over the ewwww factor. More information on Johnson's site, autismtso.com.
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/r_R_sHV8H9o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>