Over the past fifty years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded. Currently 1 in 2.5 American children has an allergy, 1 in 11 has asthma, 1 in 13 has severe food allergies, and 1 in 36 has autism. While some attribute this rise to increased awareness and diagnosis, my guest on today's show, Thomas Cowan, MD, argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines American children typically receive - approximately 70 vaccine doses by age eighteen. The goal of these vaccines is precisely what we’re now seeing in such abundance among our chronically ill children: the provocation of immune response. In his new book Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness, Dr. Cowan looks at emerging evidence that certain childhood illnesses are actually protective of disease later in life; examines the role of fever, the gut, and cellular fluid in immune health; argues that vaccination is an ineffective (and harmful) attempt to shortcut a complex immune response; and asserts that the medical establishment has engaged in an authoritarian argument that robs parents of informed consent. His ultimate question, from the point of view of a doctor who has decades of experience treating countless children is... ...what are we really doing to children when we vaccinate them? Dr. Cowan, MD, is a veteran family physician who has studied and written about many subjects in medicine, including nutrition, homeopathy, anthroposophical medicine, and herbal medicine. He is the author of Human Heart, Cosmic Heart: A Doctor’s Quest to Understand, Treat, and Prevent Cardiovascular Disease and the new book Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness from Chelsea Green Publishing. He is also a founding board member of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and a frequent lecturer throughout the US and Canada.
 He's also the same doctor I mentioned in this Joe Rogan episode when I talked about how your "heart is not a pump". During our discussion, you'll discover: -Dr. Cowan's experience with a childhood friend with asthma, and how it turned him onto medicine...8:00 The child was teased by classmates. "How dare you be sick..." He was way out of the norm. Asthma is far more prevalent now than in the 60's. Increasing number of adults with autoimmune issues. A large number of people diagnosed with autism become institutionalized. -The story of William Coley's Toxins...12:50 "Give me a medicine to produce a fever, and I can cure any disease." --Hippocrates Coley was an oncology surgeon, specializing in osteosarcoma. Realized his conventional treatment of sarcoma (cancer) was not effective. Came upon a former patient who was scheduled to be treated for sarcoma. Wound up getting treated for erysypelas (induced fever); sarcoma went away and never returned. Experimented with induced fever treatment on his own patients. 40% were cured with this treatment. 40% mortality rate. Inducing fever was killing the cancer. Coley's Toxins has been banned as a practice in the U.S. since the 1960's. "When I'm treating someone for a condition who's symptoms include a fever...If we can cure that condition without alleviating the fever, I am preemptively pushing this individual away from cancer for the rest of their life." --Dr. Thomas Cowan -The two branches of the immune system...21:20 You get exposed to measles. Body is looking at infected cells. Mounts a white cell response: attack and digest infected cells and clear out of the body. Fever, rash, diarrhea. Basically what we call "being sick." "Being sick" is not the virus; it's your body rejecting the virus. If you inhibit the cell-mediated response, you can infect and even kill people. By eliminating the symptoms (fever, rash, diarrhea, etc.) you allow the virus to continue its attack on the immune system. Theory of vaccines: Purely antibody strategy. No cell-mediated immune system. Inject the virus along with aluminum, mercu