Ancient Medicine and Modern Medicine: My Personal Experience

 

Here’s a letter below I received from a friend Ar. C.K. Chang: 

 

 “Here is my 1 cent worth of thought, Prof. Lim. I think you are over relying on western medical knowledge to solve your medical problems. 

 May I say that during Hippocrates' time (450BC?) there was no such thing as western medicine that is currently being used now? 

 

What they depend on was basically natural stuff and healings based on a holistic nature that continued until this guy Rockefeller came into the picture. 

 Being super rich from oil, he decided to put an end to all those traditional and alternative forms of practicing medicine and established his own western medicine, setting up medical schools, institutions and spawning Big Pharma. 

 Sure, he pumped a lot of money into R&D into the 'western medical' profession which you are part of, but practically killed off other forms to form some sort of monopoly in the medical world. 

 

Instead of letting a thousand flowers bloom, only one is blooming. How sad. So now everything is dependent on drugs and symptomatic treatment which is repeatedly being drummed into doctors’ heads to become the norm of treatment. Luckily, TCM is still alive and flourishing but I won't say about others that have almost stagnated. 

 

The mind also plays a major role in healing, and this has been totally ignored by so called western doctors. You still have the choice”. 

 

 CK Chang 

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=231599861908503

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 Here’s my reply to him just to share my thoughts: 

 Dear Ar. Chang, I thank you for your comment that I depend too much on modern mainstream medicine and modern drugs to ‘cure’ my leg problem. Unfortunately, and on the contrary I don’t. 

History of Medicine: 

 

I am completely aware of ancient systems of medicine that dated back even before the Greek civilization during which their medicine was based on the theory of humours that states that good health comes from a perfect balance of the four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. 

Consequently, poor health resulted from improper balance of the four humours. It was only when Hippocrates around 460 – 370 BC, the Greek physician known as the "Father of Modern Medicine", established a medical school at Cos that ancient Greek medicine came to revolutionize the practice of medicine we know today. That was the period of Classical Greece or the Age of Pericles 

 

 Even then, Hippocrates and his students did not use the type of modern synthetic medicine and drugs produced by drug companies we used today. He advocated food as medicine, rest, sleep, exercise and natural medicine to be practiced Hippocrates and his students documented numerous illnesses in the Hippocratic Corpus, and developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, which is still in use today with some minor modifications based on the several revisions of the Geneva Declaration. 

 His students and he also created medical terminology that is part of our vocabulary today. Medical terminology such as acute, chronic, epidemic, exacerbation, relapse, and others were being coined by Hippocrates.

 

 The contributions to ancient Greek medicine of Hippocrates, Socrates and others had a lasting influence on Islamic medicine and medieval European medicine until the 14th century. 

 

 

 I am completely aware of the history of medicine as a member in the Section on History of Medicine among memberships in other disciplines of medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine in London where I am a Fellow.

 

 But even long, long before Hippocrates, the ancient art of healing was already practiced with a very impressive outcome using natural methods and natural medicines derived from plants. 

 Even till today about 40 % of the modern drugs used in hospitals were plant-based, except now they are presented as synthetic and as isolates in pure form If you care to go to my blog article here: 

 

 “Worlds and Powers Far Beyond Ours”

 https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search=worlds+beyond+ours.

 

In that article I wrote a brief account how the art of healing was practiced after human agrarian even in the 3rd millennium BC and during the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 BC – c. 2004 BC) during the Neo-Sumerian Empire where they already used prescription of natural medicine extracted from botanical sources. 

 

 I also mentioned the oldest Babylonian texts on medicine dated back to the Old Babylonian period in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE, namely the years between 2000 through 1001 BCE. 

 

Traditional Chinese Medicine:

 

 Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), system of medicine has a history at least 23 centuries old that actually seek to prevent or cure disease by preserving or re-establishing a yin-yang balance, very much the same principle of homeostasis we are familiar and accept in modern medicine Its medical system is also one of the world’s oldest. 

 

 Together with acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, dated back at least 2,200 years, even though the earliest known written record of Chinese medicine is the Huangdi neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic) from the 3rd century BCE. That work provided the theoretical concepts for TCM that remain the basis of its practice today. 

 

The fundamental nature of the traditional Chinese system of medicine seeks to restore a dynamic balance between two complementary forces, yin (passive) and yang (active), which permeates the human body as they do the universe as a whole.

 

 According to this principle, a person is healthy when harmony prevails between these two forces: illness, on the other, results from a collapse in the equilibrium of yin and yang. 

 

 May I remind doctors today that medical practice based on prescription was already there 4,000 years ago, and that was 2,000 years even before Jesus Christ who was the greatest of all Healers till today.

 

 When Jesus came to this world, He showed us He did not even use prescription medicines or drugs or use any kind of surgery like we do today. 

That essay I penned in my blog was almost a university dissertation on medicine consisting of 6,878 words in length. 

 

 As I am currently a Special Medical and Scientific Adviser to an international group of pharmaceutical and herbal medicine companies, I am aware of how drugs and natural medicines from plant sources work – the former based on pharmacology, the later on pharmacognosy, their chemistries and mode of action.

 

 Joint WHO-Ministry of Health-Institute for Medical Research Expert Technical Committee: 

 

 In fact, when I was working at the Institute for Medical Research (IMR) I was one of the members of the Joint WHO-MOH-IMR Technical Expert Committee on Alternative and Complementary Medicines. 

In those countless meetings and meetings, after meetings where I sat as an expert member for nearly 6 years till I retired in 1994 we discussed various aspects and problems encountered if we were to integrate native and complementary systems of medicine with conventional mainstream medicine as practiced in hospitals 

 

 In those meetings we need to look at the training aspect, length of training and qualifications of the practitioners, their clinical and therapeutic efficacy, safety, legal, administrative and logistic aspects and their problems, acceptability by the public, among many other issues, and how best to integrate them into the mainstream health system. 

Those meetings and discussions took us many years to decide, and they went on well after my retirement and other new committees took over. 

 

 Thankfully, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), together with one or two other systems of traditional Indian systems of medicines along with most western alternative and complementary medicines such as naturopathic and homeopathic medicine are now officially recognized for practice by an Act of Parliament. 

 

However, all practitioners must be registered by their own governing bodies under the Ministry of Health, similar to conventional medicine controlled by the Malaysian Medical Council During those years of discussions I was asked to look at the practice of TCM, being a Chinese member in that Technical Committee. 

 

 Clinical Observation and Training:

 

 Not being familiar with TCM, I then went to the main college and clinic where TCM is practiced every night from 8 – 11 pm for 6 months and learned how they treat and the procedures they used. 

 

 The college and clinic there was quite large and surprisingly extremely crowded by patients from all races, mainly Chinese, followed by Malays and Indians. The treatment was all free, and the entire clinic was filled with a pleasant aroma of Chinese medicinal herbs with their own Chinese pharmacists dispensing out the prescriptions written out by the Chinese physicians.

I also saw how they performed acupuncture. It was quite impressive. The acupuncturists execute the procedure in a very aseptic way, wearing face masks, and gloves, and using only disposable needles, or needles passed through a spirit flame to sterilize them.

 They were truly well-trained and qualified. It was a painless procedure. I also spoke to the patients, and they all felt very comfortable, happy and were relieved of their chronic pains plaguing them for years under conventional hospital treatment. 

 

 I spent months observing and talking with the TCM doctors and learnt from them. Additionally, I learned the theory of TCM on my own which was initially quite “alien” to me as it was against my western medical-scientific thinking as a medical researcher. 

 

National Conference on Traditional Medicines:

 

Finally, after many years, a national conference on traditional medicines was organized and held by the Institute for Medical Research attended by practitioners and paper presenters from associations of various systems of medicine including doctors from the Malaysian Medical Association and professors and specialists from teaching hospitals. 

 

 A Paper Presentation on TCM: 

 I then presented a paper on TCM as best as I could in English on behalf of the Association of Chinese Physicians of Malaysia. But I am unsure if I did justice to them as I am not formally trained or qualified in TCM, except those few 6 months of TCM clinic sessions I attended, and learn more on my own. 

 

 Additional Training in Other Medical Systems in Good Use During a Health Survey:

 

 But I do have some formal training in London, Sydney and Melbourne and in India on naturopathic and natural medicine which was put into good use in a few emergency medical situations when I was conducting regular health surveys with our medical and health team consisting of epidemiologist, medical doctors, nutritionists, dentists, an anthropologist and sociologist, a statistician, supported by a team of nurses and medical technologists from the Institute for Medical Research 

 

 A Personal Experience: 

 

 In order to cut a story very short, in one of our health surveys, I went to a village house at the fridge of a jungle where the only access is through a jungle path on foot where no bicycle, motorbike, let alone cars or an ambulance could reach. 

 

 I went to a village hut to look for a man who was statically selected who was supposed to go to the community hall over 1 km away where our medical team with their medical and portable lab equipment were placed and waiting.

 

He was unable to come to the village community hall because he was very ill. I saw him lying there unable to move. I examined him. He was jaundiced all over his body and eyes. His abdomen was bloated with ascites (water retention). 

He was very ill, with nausea and vomiting and drowsiness. It was a clear case to me of a liver disorder that needed further investigations in a large and good hospital. Such a case needed to be transported by ambulance straight to hospital. 

There was no way of calling an ambulance into the jungle, But I was there together with a nurse and two medical technologists looking for him to come to the village community hall. 

 

We went there without anything. But this man was very ill lying there with just a few of his children and his wife looking after him. In such a scenario what shall we do? 

 

It was then I made use of my training and knowledge in natural medicine that was found aplenty in the jungle. 

 

 An Unwanted Weed Turned A Life-saving Medicine:

I did not go far, just to the front of his house to look for an unwanted weed for most people. I found it not far from his village compound. 

It was a weed no one wanted called “dukun anak” in Malay, scientifically called “Phyllantus amarus” which has been traditionally used for over 200 hundred years in SE Asia for the management of a wide range of diseases from kidney disorders, jaundice traditionally described as “yellow fever” and liver disorders, diarrhoea and dysentery to urogenital diseases…etc. 

 

 I told one of his daughters about 50 of these small leaves, pound them and make an infusion out of it, and drink it three times a day. 

I also advised him to avoid fatty foods, alcohol, and a diet high in starch and carbohydrates. I also asked her to follow me to the community centre so that I could give her vitamin B complex and vitamin C. She did. I gave her my office phone number in Kuala Lumpur where she may contact me if necessary. 

 

 I then forgot the whole event and went to conduct studies on other houses which were our main objective. We were not there to treat anybody. 

 

 A Surprised Wake-up Phone Call: 

 

 After about 10 days in the villages, we went back to Kuala Lumpur. I thought about him anymore as we were busying analysing our blood and urine samples, and anthropometric, clinical, food intake and nutrition, socio-demographic data among thousands of other data 

 One morning, about a month later I received a call from this man’s son who was working in Petronas in Kuala Lumpur thanking me profusely telling me his father had fully recovered under my instructions. 

  

 I was quite stunned, surprised, held on the phone for several minutes, yet so happy having done my best for his father in a primitive rural setting where nothing was available to me except natural medicines from a tropical jungle. 

 

 Lessons on Jungle Medicines from Native People: 

 

We also came to learn that a lot of the Orang Asli (native people of Malaysia) who live in the jungles or at the fringes of thick jungles and rainforests have deep knowledge of medicinal plants in the jungles. 

 

 They treat themselves, including snake bites using these plants. The jungles contain tens of hundreds of thousands of natural medicines available to them, and they have very deep knowledge about them, and also how and when to use them or mixtures of them. 

 

 We pay tribute to them as we, my former doctor colleagues and I used to learn from them. The jungle is their entire huge natural pharmacy and ‘hospital’. 

 

 Some international drug companies are always in these jungles collecting hundreds of thousands of different plants for analysis for medical values where they can isolate, synthesize and patent and sell them to the medical profession at exorbitant prices. 

 

 After receiving the phone call of gratitude from his son, I sat thinking about this patient the entire morning and how my training at the University of London came as a blessing for this gentleman and later for others too. It was a blessing for me too to be able to help.

 

Another Medical Emergency: 

 

 There was also another medical emergency where in another place a year or two later in Kedah in a rice field I managed to save a young Malay girl about 20 + years. As usual I was accompanied by two nurses and two medical lab boys to help me. 

 

I divided two of them to be with me, the other two to another village house some half a kilometres away as all the houses in isolated villages are all scattered far apart from each other No sooner had my nurse with me recorded down the answers from a questionnaire on demography; the other medical technologist and nurse from the other house came running to me telling me a girl was unable to breathe. 

 

 I followed them running as fast as we could to find this young female student studying in Kuala Lumpur but returning to her village during holidays at the height of a rice harvest. She was cyanosed (blue on her face and lips) gasping for air. 

 

I immediately diagnosed her with an acute asthmatic attack. 

 

 As usual, such an event needed to be immediately treated in a hospital where there are Ipratropium (Atrovent), albuterol and fast acting bronchodilators, and inhaled corticosteroids. nebulizers, supplemental oxygen, if not intubation…etc.

 

We were not prepared for such an emergency happening in an isolated house in a vast rice field. What do you want us to do in such an event? I have to think quickly about applying first-aid measures. 

 

But what can be done except sitting her upright, clamming her, and loosening anything tight clothing if she has no asthmatic inhaler of her own. I have to think quickly. I remember foot reflexology. I remember corticosteroids. 

 

I remember adrenaline acting directly on the beta-adrenoceptor for bronchodilation, and its inhibition of bronchoconstrictor neural pathways, besides inhaled corticosteroids, short and long -acting beta-adrenergic blocking agents.

 

 I remember black coffee contains theophylline. as a bronchodilator That was all those knowledge I could remember and have in such a panic situation I knew at that time the adrenal gland or suprarenal glands above the kidneys produce the corticosteroid hormones such as aldosterone, cortisol, glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids on the outer cortex layer, and the inner medulla layer produces adrenaline and noradrenaline.

 

I knew that these hormones are used as drugs for the management of asthmatic attacks. I also knew that stimulating certain zones on the sole of the feet can release these very valuable hormones in an emergency.

 

Prior to that, I attended some courses in foot reflexology informally on my own as I always do to increase my knowledge just for anything. 

 

I also knew there were other areas such as the back of the neck, between the thumbs and the index fingers where we could massage to stimulate the suprarenal glands to release these hormones There are certain specific zones or spots on the sole of the feet that stimulate various organs such as the heart, lungs, liver, stomach…etc. There is a chart showing these zones. 

 

 But what I had forgotten then was which area on the feet I needed to massage as I hardly practice foot reflexology or massage except to learn them out of academic interest. 

 

 But then I faced an emergency situation where I needed to know but had forgotten in that life and death predicament.

 

I needed to think quickly. So I told one of the nurses to carry the young Malay girl just outside her village Malay wooden house that was built standing on wooden stilts with a short ladder to the floor. 

 

I told the other medical assistant to place her sitting upright, her legs dangling on the steps of the house ladder. I then instructed the nurse to massage the entire sole of her one of her feet, while I managed the other since I forget the specific zone to the kidneys and the adrenal glands. 

 

 We both desperately massaged her feet hard, while the other helper tried to keep her sitting upright and comfort her. 

 

A Miracle Appeared: 

 

 I was quite desperate, but that was the best I could offer and manage. Both my nurse and I did that for less than 10 minutes, and gradually a miracle appeared before our eyes. Her cyanotic face changed colour from blue purple to light brown, then into pink. 

 

I could have cried aloud and embraced her and my nurse from such a frightening experience for us all. She took deep breaths of air after the event. 

 

We stayed with her for about half an hour just in case of another episode. I then advised her to carry with her an asthmatic inhaler all the time to inhale puffs of the medication. 

 

 Black Coffee: 

  

 Since she did not have one, before we leave, I told her to take two cups of strong black coffee without sugar or milk because I knew that coffee contains theophylline and caffeine in coffee when metabolized produces the bronchodilator theophylline, the very same drug also used in medicine for treatment of asthma 

 

 I also advised her not to come back to her village during padi harvesting time due to pollen that might have triggered her asthmaticus and exacerbation into a medical emergency. 

 

 There were a few other medical emergency situations I faced unexpectedly, especially after I joined St. John Ambulance Malaysia as their Regional Staff Officer for Training after my retirement from medical research.

 

 Advanced Course in Medical Emergency: 

 

 I then went to do advanced courses in emergency medicine at Kuala Lumpur Hospital, at the Emergency Dept of HUKM (National University Teaching Hospital Malaysia) and at Selayang Hospital. 

 

 Thereafter I was admitted into membership in the Section of Emergency Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine in London as part of my Fellowship. 

 

Interference with Nature:

 

Often, we interfere with Nature using our drugs that in the long-term cause more problems instead of leaving this to Nature.

 

For instance, we experienced, as well as malariologists from the Malaria Division at the IMR who told me of our experience working in the jungles where native were found to harbour various species of Plasmodium (malarial parasites) their bodies throughout their lives without coming down with malaria. 

 

 Then we started to put them on antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine and followed them up 3 months later. When we went back for follow-up the same population whom we gave anti-malarial drugs to most of them who came down with frank malaria, presenting all the typical clinical features of malaria which they never had before we went. 

 

 They have lived all their lives with malarial parasites in their blood without symptoms or signs of malaria until we tried to interfere by treating them.

 

 As to why they do not get clinical manifestations of malaria, or how the malarial parasites in their blood managed to undergo their life cycle by multiplying first in the liver cells and then into the red blood cells, destroying them, releasing daughter parasites called merozoites to continue the cycle by invading other red cells without affecting them is not clear to us. It looks like a miracle in symbiosis and their mutual harm.

 

Symbiosis with Nature:

 

The native folks who live with Nature in the tropical jungles have been living in symbiosis all their lives with pathogens, parasites and disease being affected till we interfere with our modern drugs. 

 

The same story was also told to me by a WHO Consultant Malariologist who was attached to the IMR. One morning we were having an informal chit-chat about malaria. He told me he was in Assam before he came to Malaysia. 

 

He told me malaria was not that serious in Assam till WHO interfered with antimalarial drugs. He told me how the people there, when faced with malaria, took their native medicine from some trees, and it was gone. But when WHO came to interfere with their recommendations using synthetic drugs, malaria flared up. 

 

He then told me that's why he came to Malaysia, much to our laughter.

 

In a few health surveys conducted by research teams from the Institute for Medical Research in the 1980’s and 1990’s it was found that the natives Orang Asli who lived in the jungles or at the fringes of thick tropic rain forests of Malaysia, hardly acquire any of the modern lifestyle, chronic and modern diseases like diabetes, heart and vascular diseases like hypertension unlike found among city dwellers

 

However it was found that when they were resettled into the urban areas, they soon acquired these scourged disorders of urban settlers, and a hospital needed to be established for them when the jungle was their entire pharmacy where they have intimate knowledge of medicinal plants and where they treated themselves successfully anything from snake bites to tumours 

 

Conventional Allopathic vs 

Alternative Systems of Medicine:

 

It is not true that conventional medicine is better than alternative medicine. Both systems are useful depending on the nature of the disease or nature of the problem.

For one, conventional medicine is excellent in the case of a medical emergency or in an acute crisis where there is a need to act very fast.  For instance if there is a serious trauma, say in an accident where the casualty needs to be stabilized as fast as possible, such as a serious loss of blood, in shock, or in a cardiac arrest.

  

His vital functions such as airways, breathing, circulation and haemodynamic need to be stabilized. Sometimes supplemental oxygen or even endotracheal intubation need to be established.

 

In conventional medicine, they have powerful and fast acting drugs such as adrenalin, amiodarone, lidocaine to be given by bolus intravenous infusions, or in acute infection such as endocarditis or osteomyelitis, that may need prompt and prolonged parenteral antibiotic administration.

 

Sometimes surgical intervention such as removal of a tumour, an appendectomy as an emergency surgery, an obstruction somewhere in a system, or a surgical repair to an incompetent cardiac valve would be the only way. No other medical system can be better than surgery to replace a surgical procedure.  

 

These are just a few examples where conventional medicine shows its best that no other alternative approaches can replace.

 

Unfortunately, the drug approach in conventional treatment does extremely badly in managing chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, asthma, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, the management of chronic pains and in most lifestyle diseases…among many others.

                                   

These are areas where traditional and other alternative therapeutic systems come in better as they address the root causes of the disease through lifestyle modifications, acupuncture, physiotherapies, and dietary changes, physical, psychological and even spiritual approaches. They would be the best form of therapies.

 

 One Of the best and the most ancient systems is herbal medicines especially in Traditional Chinese Medicine where they use a mixtures of herbs, flowers, leaves, roots from medicinal plants including adaptogens from botanical sources to assist  the body to adapt to various biological, chemical and physical stressors and challenges  These herbs, roots, and parts of plants have been used for centuries in Chinese and Ayurvedic curative traditions, and they are still very popular and well-accepted till today.

                                           

 Unlike synthetic drugs that consist of a single active compound acting pharmacologically in isolation, medical plants contain a spectrum of biologically active compounds acting synergistically in low non-toxic doses as a family supporting each other’s action as prescribed in nature.

These collective modes of actions of mixtures of botanical medicines given at low non-toxic doses are far better and safer for long-term therapy for chronic conditions than single synthetic drugs given at higher dose without adjunct therapeutic support.  

 

Integrative Medicine:

 

Each medical system has its uses, and I think it is best to adopt an integrative approach rather than a stand-alone therapy. If a single approach of any alternative medicine is used, this would land up no better than conventional drug therapy.

 

It would be unsurpassed if the best therapeutic approaches from each system of medicine is taken and integrate them as one and call it integrative medicine rather than alternative medicine.

                                                                 

 In such an integrated approach each therapy would complement and harmonize the deficiencies of any single system. Hence the term alternative medicine should be replaced by complementary medicine.   

 

There is a book I bought not long ago called “Integrative Medicine complied by David Rakel MD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico with a forward by Andrew Weil, MD, Director, Arizona Centre for Integrative Medicine, a Clinical Professor of Medicine and a Professor of Public Health, University of Arizona.

 

In the 4^th Edition of this book there were 148 highly qualified medical specialists along with equally highly qualified physicians, doctors in other systems of medicine, many of the authors armed with a PhD, ND, MSc alongside with their MDs.

 

They collectively contributed their expertise in writing that book par excellence contained in an impressive 118 chapters in 1,123 pages. It is quite an expensive book, but worth every cent of it for every clinician of modern conventional medicine to open their eyes and mind.

 Let me now take this opportunity since you asked and advised me on how our disobedience to God had created this division in medicine.

Let’s have a look. 

 

The Garden of Eden: 

 

 When Adam and Eve were created, God put them into the Garden of Eden where He told Adam he was free to eat any the fruits (as foods and medicine) in the Garden except from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (the knowledge of medicine), for when you eat from it you will certainly die (Genesis 2:15-17). 

 We can also visualize in these 2 verses those trees Adam was free to eat provided him with not just food, but natural medicine as well for his eternal health. But Eve came along, deceived by Satan who came in disguised as a serpent and used Eve to eat the fruit of (medical) knowledge (on unnatural synthetic medicine like today). 

 

All the trees in the Garden of Eden were natural food and natural medicines such as medical herbs and medicinal plants. 

 

Our Tree of Knowledge vs. His Wisdom: 

 

 The Tree of Knowledge is our present-day synthetic drugs and medicine because we scientists are too "knowledgeable" to rely on our own strength instead of seeking His Wisdom. 

 

 Had both of them just listened and obeyed God, they and all of us today would have enjoyed eternal health and eternal life eating only natural food for nutrition and natural medicine for managing diseases that have never been shown to have any side-effects or resistance to disease. 

 

 This is so unlike synthetic antibiotics to most bacterial infections today, for example isoniazid and rifampin, two most powerful drugs against tuberculosis that both have now become multidrug-resistant. 

 

 Another example is the use of chloroquine against Plasmodium (malarial parasites), and more recently the same chloroquine as well as remdesivir for SARS-Covid-2 virus. Both chloroquine and remdesivir are now useless for the current Covid pandemic. 

 

God is never wrong if Adam and Eve and we have listened and have obeyed under His guidance.

 

Unfortunately, we wanted to be too smart to have our own knowledge instead of wisdom. So we ate our own tree of knowledge that leads us into the evil of disease and death. This is just an example. 

 

 We can go on and on…all night long till dawn. But we need to stop here so that I can have my rest to have my late dinner, bathe and sleep. 

 

(5,428 words)

 Thank you for your thoughts and for your advice.

 

Our Wonderful Natural Immune System vs. Drugs and Vaccines Defenses Against Covid and Other Infections

I received a short comment by a retired architect last night (3 June, 2021) inside my WhatApp chat group. 

 Here’s what he wrote:

 “It is so sad that most people nowadays depend on vaccines to solve their health problems and generally ignore or forget that they have such a great protector called the immune system right inside their bodies to fight diseases for them. Of course we have to bolster our immune system by exercises, eating nutritious foods, having a positive mindset, blah, blah, blah” 

 I could not help thinking how correct he was. He immediately prompted me to write this essay to elaborate. 

Our Wonderful Natural Immunity vs Drugs and Vaccines Defenses

 

" Iwill praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." (Psalm 139:14. KJV)

 Many drugs have since been suggested for the treatment of Covid, starting with anti-malarials like chloroquine and its derivatives, hydroxychloroquine that is also used for the treatment of autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. 

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have since shown no notable antiviral effect against infections with SARS-CoV-2 in macaques or human lung cells according to two studies published online in Nature. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine — drugs that are generally used for the treatment of malaria have been investigated for their prospective treatment for COVID-19 in more than 80 registered clinical trials. 

They have been shown to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection in cell cultures, but their efficacy for the management of patients with COVID-19 has been debated. 

 Roger Le Grand and colleagues investigated the effects of hydroxychloroquine action on cynomolgus macaques, a non-human primate model of SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans. Hydroxychloroquine was shown to have no substantial antiviral activity, regardless of the timing of treatment initiation, either before infection, soon after infection or late after infection. 

In addition, using this antimalarial drug in combination with azithromycin, an antibiotic, had also no significant effect on virus levels in the macaques either. https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine-shown-ineffective-against-covid-19 

A Megadose of vitamin C to be given intravenously has also been tried and claimed to be ‘successful’ but no extensive studies have been done except in some hospitals in the UK. 

 Others then came out with the antiviral drug remdesivir that targets a range of viruses. It was originally developed over a decade ago to treat hepatitis C. Remdesivir, a nucleotide drug originally developed for the treatment of Ebola when it was found to inhibit the replication of a wide range of human and animal coronaviruses in vitro and in preclinical studies. 

 However a study by Wang, Yeming et al published in April 2020, was the first double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial (RCT). It was also a multicentre trial with ten hospitals in China with 237 patients. 158 of them were given Remdesivir, and the rest were given a placebo, while they were on other forms of COVID-19 protocol treatments. 

 Despite a low sample size, the study found no significant differences in patients treated with Remdesivir in comparison with the placebo treatment. Source: Wang, Yeming, et al. on “Remdesivir in adults with severe COVID-19: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trial.” The Lancet 395.10236 (2020): 1569-1578. 

 It was therefore not surprising when the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus emerged in late 2019 in China, remdesivir was tried When remdesivir was found to be ineffective, though initially ‘promising’, the antiparasitic drug ivermectin was suggested despite heavy criticism and warnings by WHO Ivermectin is an FDA-approved drug for the treatment of parasitic diseases in animals that was found to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. 

 In one claim, it was said that ivermectin was able to effect approximately a 5,000-fold reduction in virus at 48 hr in cell culture. Hence this drug is now been repurposed for the treatment of SARS-Covid-2? 

In a setting where the number of COVID-19 patients is rapidly escalating resulting in increasing mortality worldwide, hydroxychloroquine, doxycycline, azithromycin, and other drugs shown to be futile, an effective drug has to be considered. 

 Ivermectin is the candidate to be tried. It was reported to be able to suppress SARS-CoV-2 replication. At least this was shown in a vitro experiment by an Australian group. Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug used since 1987 for the control of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, as well as in the treatment of scabies in humans. 

 Ivermectin has very low toxicity and is a cheap drug. It was then tried out for as a prophylaxis as well as for the treatment of COVID-19 in Central and South American countries. One month after the declaration of the pandemic, countries such as Iraq, Egypt, Iran, and India began clinical trials with it with mixed results. 

 Many other small trials elsewhere have also not shown convincing results, and currently WHO and the Ministry of Health Malaysia has not recommended ivermectin to be used for Covid either despite lobbying its use by some quarters. 

 Then came an anti-inflammatory drug baricitinib originally meant for the treatment of mild to moderate rheumatoid arthritis due to its ability to reduce inflammatory cytokines. Baricitinib is an oral Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor that is selective for JAK1 and JAK2. 

It is being assessed for the treatment of COVID-19 as it may check cellular immune activation and inflammation. It is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. However on November 19, 2020, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the use of baricitinib in combination with remdesivir in hospitalized adults and children aged ≥2 years with COVID-19 who require supplemental oxygen, invasive mechanical ventilation, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. 

 A study was conducted in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial evaluating baricitinib plus remdesivir in hospitalized adults with Covid-19. All the patients in the study received remdesivir (≤10 days) and either baricitinib (≤14 days) or placebo (control). 

The primary outcome was the time to recovery. The key secondary outcome was clinical status at day 15. This study on the efficacy of baricitinib together with remdesivir was carried out byAndre C. Kalil and his colleagues who concluded baricitinib plus remdesivir was superior to remdesivir alone in reducing recovery time and accelerating improvement in clinical status among patients with Covid-19, notably among those receiving high-flow oxygen or noninvasive ventilation. 

The combination was associated with fewer serious adverse events. As already mentioned, baricitinib binds to JAK1/2, which inhibits JAK1/2 activation and leads to the inhibition of the JAK-signal transducers and activators of transcription (STAT) signaling pathway. This decreases the production of inflammatory cytokines and may prevent an inflammatory response. However my own feeling is, baricitinib role in managing Covid-19 may not be very satisfactory other than it inhibits the intracellular signalling pathway of cytokines such as IL-2, IL-6, IL-10, interferon-γ, and granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor. 

 Nevertheless, it has been also shown to improve the lymphocyte count and probably may prevent entry of the virus into the cell? The next agent to be considered was another antiviral drug - nelfinavir that is used along with other medications to treat human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Nelfinavir belongs to a class of medications called protease inhibitors. It works by decreasing the amount of HIV in the blood.

 Scientists then thought since nelfinavir is a protease inhibitor that competes for the active cleavage site on the protease enzyme, it would be able to block the cleavage of the poly-proteins of SARS-Covid-2 virus and thus the maturation of new viral particles. But unfortunately it failed to be.

 Another alternative researchers have in view is famotidine. This is an antiviral that was believed to be able to bind a papain-like protease that is encoded by the SARS-CoV-2 genome and would be able to block the entry of SARS-CoV-2? When it did not work as well as anticipated, they then came out with the ideas of using monoclonal antibodies together with lopinavir and ritonavir that are also virus protease inhibitors that were used in the treatment of human immunodeficiency. 

But we are not sure the outcome of the idea Initially researchers also thought that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine may work as polymerase inhibitors. In some ways they may work as a polymerase inhibitor by blocking out RNA duplication since a polymerase is an enzyme that synthesizes long chains of nucleic acids to assemble themselves as the RNA of SARS-Covid-2 virus. 

The virus uses base-pairing template strand for replication. Initial results were encouraging, but after a period of trials, both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine lost their effect probably by blocking out the inhibitor of polymerase on which they build up their RNA strands It looks like the virus was able to circumnavigate that by erasing the polymerase inhibitors as part of their evolutionary process to be more adaptable and resilient. 

This is just my personal view that needs to be investigated Other scientists and researchers then suggested using umifenovir, a small indole-derivative molecule that is used in Russia and China or tocilizumab and also sarilumab that is used as a prophylaxis against influenza virus A and B Despite all the efforts of scientists and researchers the virus is still ahead of them in defiance. 

 Then they came out with another idea of using bevacizumab (Avastin) which is actually a cancer drug that is also used to treat certain eye diseases This drug like baricitinib is a Janus kinase inhibitor with potential anti-inflammatory, immunomodulating and antineoplastic activities. 

Other than this pharmacodynamics, I am unsure in what other ways this drug is going to work against SARS-Covid-2 virus? In desperation when all drugs failed, other workers suggested an antidepressant drug fluvoxamine which is an immunomodulatory agent. Again, I am unsure how immunomodulation per se would work.

Going through the literature other scientists suggested using a combination of antiviral lopinavir and ritonavir. Several small studies have been conducted on all these drugs, but none has been shown satisfactory within expectations. They all require large-scale well-designed randomized studies against placebos. 

 In a video sent to me lately of a doctor in the UK who even suggested using antihistamines and mast cells inhibitors to suppress cytokine storms in a hyperactive immune reaction for Covid-19, while other doctors claimed they have ‘successfully’ treated Covid patients with bronchodilators and steroids? But these two are just examples of isolated ideas that holds no water to the consensus of a scientific community.

Now they have thrown out hydroxychloroquine previously thought would be the answer, they have brought back the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin once again. 

 Whether it was chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, to my mind the initial results may be hopeful, but as with all organisms, they are able to fly round a threat for their inherent survival as prescribed in the laws of survival of the fittest. This phenomenon has always been observed since 4,000 million years ago and there is no possibility for us to defy Nature in her well-designed and unyielding evolutionary process 

 As I see it, this virus is here to stay along with their entire families from SARS, MERS, to Covid-19, and I think they are much more mutagenic strains yet to come to confront our human race who is unable to live in harmony with them and with other creatures of evolution.

 Our Immune System:

 Having everything now have failed us, let us discuss how our own immune system may be our sole hope. It is outside the scope of this short essay to discuss immunology or the immunological system of our body. The immunological role of the body in combating this coronavirus would take chapters, and this is necessary for this short review. 

 Furthermore, this short article as with all other articles in this blog is meant only for the general reader. It is not a research paper where all the references need to be cited. A general simple essay like this for the general readers does not require these or technical details that would be lost in transition. 

 Let’s now see how the immune system works for most people during this pandemic Briefly to be explained in simple language, one of the components of the immune system is composed of lymphocytes in the white blood cells. A lymphocyte consists of many components, among them, natural killer cells that are responsible for cell-mediated, cytotoxic natural immunity, T cells responsible for cell-mediated, cytotoxic adaptive immunity, and the B cells that produces the humoral antibodies for adaptive immunity. These are the main type of cells found in lymph and plasma of blood, hence the name "lymphocyte" Lymphocytes make up between 18% and 42% of circulating white blood cells, or WBC which are also called the leukocytes. 

 CD Cells: 

 There are actually many more types of lymphocytes such as NK cells, T-helper cells, T-regulatory cells, cytotoxic T- cells…all responsible for the defense system. They are classified as CD cells under the immunophenotyping system. But we shall not go into all that. 

 Collectively, the white blood cells, the antibodies, the lymphatic system, spleen, bone marrow and the thymus together make up the immune system. We shall also not go into these sub-systems either except briefly mentioned here. 

 Although the detailed mechanisms of the immune response are beyond the scope of this article, we shall have a brief look at how antibodies are produced by the immune system. When our body immune system encounters a foreign molecule such as a protein of the spike protein of the SARS-Covid-2 virus for the first time, specialized cells such as macrophages and dendritic cells arrest these foreign molecules to present them as antigens to the B cell lymphocytes. 

 As scientists and medical researchers, we called this an ‘antigen presentation’

 Once an antigen presentation to the B cell lymphocytes is effected, a process known as somatic hypermutation allows the B cell to begin coding for a new antibody that will contain a unique antigen binding site in the variable region that is capable of binding specifically to part of an antigen molecule to which an antibody attaches itself. We called this an epitope from the antigen. Each B cell lymphocyte produces one unique antibody against one unique epitope. 

 Once antibodies with sufficient specificity to the epitope can be encoded, the B cell begins to discharge antibodies into the bloodstream. These antibodies then bind explicitly with the foreign molecule and allow the immune system to eliminate the foreign molecule from the system. 

 In some cases, these antibodies can disable pathogens such as viruses directly due to the binding action When antibodies produced by the B lymphocytes (B cells) bind to the antigen (SARS-Covid-2 virus for example) it stimulates the B cell to divide and mature into a group of identical cells called a clone. They then make many copies of them as memory cells 

 The immune system keeps a record of every microbe or viruses that was previously encountered by its B- and T-lymphocytes. They then keep them in the memory as memory cells. In the next encounter with the same virus or with any foreign protein or pathogenic organism previously presented, it immediately recognizes them and destroys them. 

 Some infections, like the flu and the common cold, or Covid-19 where the virus has mutated into other variants or strains they may not be recognized by the memory cells and will not confer immunity. 

 In other words, vaccines against one strain or variant virus may not confer immunity to the same virus if it has mutated into another strain or another variant.

 Antibodies (Immunoglobulins): 

 Let’s now briefly look at some of the antibodies or immunoglobulins. In short, they are designated as ‘Ig’ produced by the B cells of the lymphocytes There are five major classes of antibodies, namely, Immunoglobulin A (IgA), immunoglobulin G (IgG), immunoglobulin D (IgD), immunoglobulin M (IgM), and immunoglobulin E (IgE). 

 In humans these can be sub-grouped into IgG1, IgG2, IgG3, IgG4, IgA1 and IgA2) based on additional small differences in the amino acid heavy chain sequences. Based on differences in the amino acid sequence in the regular regions of the light chain, immunoglobulins can then be further sub-classified by determination of the type of light chain (kappa light chain or lambda light chain). A light chain has two successive domains, one constant domain and one variable domain. 

 The immunoglobulins are specific for different types of infections or may change even for the same infection For instance in one study by Yanan Wang and his colleagues they showed virus-specific IgM for Covid-19 patients reached up to over 80% from the second week to the eighth week after symptom of onset, then declined quickly to below 30% in the twelfth week. In another paper by Rhea Veda Nugraha et al here:

 https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2020/2560645/ 

 They found “the serology information about SARS-CoV-2 also remains unclear. Most patients with COVID-19 showed a peak increase of immunoglobulin M (IgM) nine days after disease onset and shifted to immunoglobulin G (IgG) in the second week. Other data showed that viral load increases mostly during the first week of the disease but decreases in the second week. Then, IgM and IgG begin to increase on day 10” 

A Shift in the Immunological Tune:

Somewhere on the 9th day of the infection the IgM shifted to IgG for reason unclear. I suspect the vaccine containing the synthetic isolate or the attenuated virus may have mutated in the body to present a different pathogenic behavior requiring different types of immunoglobulins. 

 I suggest this needs further investigation, without which we will not be able to predict the vaccines long-term effect that has been hotly debated over and over again by many immunologists, molecular biologists, researchers, clinicians and ordinary man-in-the-street who were all very skeptical and cautious of these vaccines 

 In their study, concentrations of IgG remained high for at least 3 months before subsequently declining. As compared with the non-severe group, serum IgM level from week 3 to week 8 was significantly higher among the patients with severe clinical symptoms What all this means in a nut-shell there may be already a lot of people with of SARS-Covid-2-specific IgM and IgG circulating in their blood through cross infections without them knowing it, or showing any symptom of the infection. We can call this as “herd immunity” 

 Most people survived this pandemic on their own without any drugs or previous vaccines given to them except perhaps a minority of them were given supplemental oxygen to help them breathe, or an acute cases if they are unable to breathe on their own they were being ventilated by endotracheal intubation.

Statistics on Mortality: 

 If we now look at the statistics as on Wednesday, 2 June, 2021 there were 171.196,260 cases recorded worldwide with only 3,565,444 deaths. This amounts to just 2.1 %. No data is given for total recovery In Malaysia yesterday on June 2, 2021 at 8 pm (1200 hrs GMT), there was a total of 587,165 confirmed cases, 82,274 total active cases (14.0 %), 501,898 total recovery (85.47 %) and only 2,993 death (0.5 %) since the pandemic started in December, 2019. 

 We can clearly see how beautifully our own immune system has been designed to work for us without any drugs, vaccines except hospitalization

 “Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (God)” (1 Corinthians 6:19), and 

 "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:14). 

Unfortunately, most people have not realized this wonderful work of Nature with some even giving praises to certain medications they took on their own instead of giving this well-deserved glory to their own body and to the Intelligent Designer who has naturally protected them. 

I think we should be thankful for this gift of our immune system that did most of the job for us that has healed most people instead of believing in some other treatment except with some help of supplemental oxygen given to them in a hospital. 

I hope others will join me to see how wonderfully our body and our immune system has been designed to work for us in an infection to heal itself eventually with just 2.0 % mortality worldwide from this pandemic so far.

 A few thought it was the antimalarial drug chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, and the antiviral drug remdesivir that helped them that they labeled as ‘miracle drugs’ 

Now they found the virus is smarter than us by causing these antiviral agents to be resistant by their ability to express enzymes on their own to block out the action of the inhibitor of polymerase that synthesizes long chains of RNA nucleic acids for replications. 

It is so apparent to us, or at least to me, that this humble teeny-tiny virus not endowed with any brain are far more smarter and intelligent than our combined smartest and brainiest scientists on Earth attempting to encounter them Initially our drugs were found encouraging, but now this virus has become much smarter and resistant to them just as the malarial parasites are now resistant to chloroquine due to evolution of better and hardier strains. 

 Now they revert to ivermectin that now seems maybe promising, but in the long term when this coronavirus is confronted by any agent that threatens their continuing existence, ivermectin may too fail like chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, and the rest of the other antiviral agents.

 In the final scenario it is still our own immune system that is living to protect us. No vaccine can work without our immune system 

War of the Worlds:

On this note, may I divert you to an article I wrote soon after the outbreak of this pandemic in the late December 2019 where I compared a story HG Wells wrote: “War of the Worlds” where he paid tribute to our microbes, the bacteria that eventually fought for us against the Martians who did not have that immune systems as we do 

In that scenario, HG Wells wrote it was not our combined world armies, nor our nuclear weapons just like our drugs and vaccines that that finally won the battle for us, but it was our humble bacteria for which the Martians have no immune system against our bacteria This article called “War of the Worlds; Earthlings vs. the Coronavirus” was published on May, 2020 in Ir. Lau Tai Onn blog here: 

https://taionn.blogspot.com/2020/05/2020-war-of-worlds-earthlings-vs-corona.html 

All vaccines still require our immune system to produce all those antibodies to confront our made-made virus antigen in the vaccines. Without our immune system that produces these antibodies as our sole savior to challenge this virus, or the modified virus as in vaccine we will be doomed. 

 In fact we can clearly see if a virus or the antigen in the vaccine is injected and presented into our body without the immune system as our natural defenses, we will just let this pathogen go right through with any defenses. 

In short, the vaccine kills us straight away in one sentence If not for our living body, but as a dead body without any more immune system operative anymore, then absolutely nothing, whether drugs or vaccines can elicit response anymore. Just be very thankful how our body has been designed by an Intelligent Designer for us. 

Don’t we think so? 

 I hope I have explained, and thank you for encouraging me to write this essay.