vaccinosis: the malaise (fever, muscular aches, bone pain, prostration, etc.) as the result of being vaccinated.” from A Dictionary of Homeopathic Medical Terminology

Consider this scenario: You take your five-year-old cat to the vet to have his teeth cleaned. The vet suggests that, while the animal is there, they give all the yearly shots: the three-in-one, the feline leukemia booster, and the rabies vaccination. So, while still under the effects of the anesthesia, your cat's immune system is barraged with this multiple-virus "protection" program. For weeks afterwards, the cat "doesn't seem the same", but you can't quite tell why.

Seven months later, the cat develops a tumor in his chest, and within a month it grows so rapidly that the cat has to be put to sleep.

While the conventional veterinary community might protest any claim that there is a connection between the vaccinations and the tumor, something inside you knows differently.

What a vaccination is supposed to do is mimic the process of disease itself. When a weakened (attenuated) version of a virus is injected into the body, the immune system is "tricked" into producing antibodies, the T-cells and B-cells that protect the body against a particular disease. If the animal is exposed to the virus in the future, the body remembers the virus and responds with the appropriate antibodies.

John Fudens, DVM, says that he does not have a problem with the concept of vaccination. "The problem I have is with the method. An injection is a totally unnatural and artificial procedure.

"No disease, short of being bitten by a rabid dog, is injected by needle. What happens in this case is that the disease totally bypasses the natural mechanism that is set up by the mouth and the respiratory system to resist most communicable diseases."

Richard Moskowitz, M.D., in his remarkable article, "The Case Against Immunization," carries this observation further by pointing out that the creation of circulating antibodies "is only one, and by no means the most important" of the mechanisms by which the body handles a viral attack. In fact, he says, if we vaccinate, we have short-circuited very important primary responses to disease and have "accomplished what the entire immune system seems to have evolved in order to prevent: we have placed the virus directly into the blood, and given it free and immediate access to the major immune organs and tissues, without any obvious way of getting rid of it."

Also, what vaccination protocols fail to take into consideration is the unique state of an animal's immune system. We can never know how long whatever protection is gained from the vaccination will last or even if it will be effective. The only true immunity occurs when an animal gets a disease and survives. It is then immune to that particular disease for life.

Dr. Fudens points out that "with the natural disease process, the virus or bacteria doesn't include the antibiotics or the fungicides that are used to protect the vaccine against bacterial contamination. And it doesn't include aluminum sulfate, mercuric oxide, or any of the chemical substrates that are used to carry the virus particles into the body in the injection procedure.

"And certainly you don't have the multitude of viruses coming in as one group or one entity. You pick them up one at a time. So when you have four, five, six or seven viruses, it's a totally unnatural process."

Dr. Fudens prefers to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies with the use of homeopathic nosodes, disease substances that are diluted to the point where only the "energy" of the disease is left. "It still accomplishes the same thing," he says, "but you don't have the other contaminants which cause all the types of damage we see."

Dr. Fudens, who has practiced veterinary medicine for over twenty-five years, says that the worst reactions to vaccinations he sees are to the feline leukemia vaccine.

"These animals will come in with severely depressed immune systems. They will actually mimic the disease they were vaccinated for. I vaccinated with the leukemia vaccination when it first came out and I can't tell you how many cats came back and I'd swear they had leukemia.

"Every skin problem you see is due to vaccinations, without fail. Later on in life, arthritic situations and degenerative spinal diseases are the result of vaccinations. And I am convinced that FUS in cats is also vaccination-related.

"The rabies vaccination in dogs and cats causes so many problems it isn't funny. It causes personality changes, skin changes, damages the thyroid and endocrine systems. It lowers the immune system tremendously, and after that, of course, the animal becomes fair game for just about any disease."

Five years later, at a workshop on Chronic Diseases in Raymond, Maine, Dr. Pitcairn seemed even more emphatic about the effects of vaccinations:  "Another big reason for the increase in Psora [the homeopathic term for the disease which underlies all chronic illness], besides the allopathic drugs suppressing disease, is the use of vaccinations. I think that's the reason so many diseases are coming out at their base to be autoimmune dysfunction. They [the vaccines] hit it [the immune system] hard, they disorient it, confuse it, and it starts reacting wrongly."

In addition, Dr. Pitcairn has observed the reaction of many animals to the homeopathic remedy Thuja, often used to counteract negative reactions to vaccinations in both people and animals.

"Thuja causes improvement in so many animals it makes you wonder what we're doing with this vaccination stuff."

In addition to seeing the side effects of vaccinations experienced by individual animals, many homeopaths question whether or not conventional vaccinations are producing a population-wide suppression of disease that has serious implications for the future health of all creatures.

What is clear, according to Jeffrey Levy, DVM, is that a pattern exists where we see the elimination of one disease (feline distemper for example, or smallpox in humans) followed by the emergence of a worse disease (feline leukemia for cats, AIDS for humans). While one can place any kind of interpre­tation one wants on these facts, says Levy, the pattern is quite clear.

In responding to the claim that the side-effects of vaccinations are a necessary evil for the greater good of society,” Dr. Levy states, "It's not the greater good. You're protecting the individuals artificially, and in doing so degrading the health of the population at large."

Richard Moskowitz, in the essay previously mentioned, seems to support Levy's assertion: "At the bottom, I have always felt that the attempt to eradicate entire microbial species from the biosphere must inevitably upset the balance of nature in fundamental ways we can as yet scarcely imagine.

"The fact is that we have been taught to accept vaccination as a sort of involuntary communion, a sacrament of our own participation in the unrestricted growth of scientific and industrial technology, utterly heedless of the long-term consequences to the health of our species, let alone to the balance of nature as a whole."

While Dr. Levy recommends the use of homeopathic nosodes to his clients, he says that there are limitations to vaccinating even with these side-effect-free remedies. "The nosodes are effective and safe, but what they are doing essentially is putting a band-aid over a susceptibility. Somewhere down the line you are going to have to deal with that susceptibility in one disease form or another.

"So, from my perspective, the alternative to using nosodes is to treat the cat constitutionally [the use of single remedies that match the total symptom picture of the chronic or acute state of health]. When you do this, you improve the immunity, resistance to disease, and so forth.

Basically, it offers the same and perhaps greater protection than the nosodes, but it does it from the inside out, rather than pasting a band-aid over the top."

Mitchell Fleisher, M.D., in a recent letter to Yoga Journal, would seem to support the same perspective: "The vast majority of the profes­sional classical homeopathic community does not advise the use of homeopathic or allopathic vaccines in the long-term prevention of communicable diseases. Rather, professional homeopaths would prescribe a single, specific remedy, based upon the totality of the individual's symptoms... that is intended to strengthen the immune system and assist the defense mechanism in overcoming disease."

The letter goes on to point out that there is a great deal of evidence for homeopathy's ability to handle viral epidemics. During the 19th century, homeopathy enjoyed a surge of popularity when it was found to be extremely effective in dealing with the epidemic diseases that spread throughout the country. In fact, during a cholera epidemic in Cincinnati in 1849, only 3 percent of homeopathic patients died, compared to 48 to 60 percent of the conventionally treated patients.

Dr. Levy points out that if given immediately after exposure to a known disease, nosodes can prevent the development of clinical disease. Of course, we are often unaware when our animal companions are exposed to diseases. But Dr. Levy offers hope: "Viral diseases such as feline leukemia, feline infectious peritonitis are usually incurable with conventional medical treatment (antibiotics, steroids, etc.). However, they frequently respond very quickly and favorably to homeopathic treatment."

Deciding not to vaccinate or to use the homeopathic nosodes can be difficult.  W. Jean Dodds, DVM, has begun studies on the effectiveness of nosodes, funded in part by the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association. Hopefully, some solid evidence that these remedies work will give people alternatives to the legally required conventional vaccines.

But of course, even the nosodes, as free from side effects as they are, do not guarantee absolute freedom from disease. Only a perfectly healthy creature, human or animal, can consider this possibility.

So making a decision implies taking more responsibility for your cat's health. Such responsibility will probably involve nutritional support, as well as alternative methods of dealing with viral and bacterial infections, should they arise.

If you give all the vaccinations a conventional vet suggests and your cat develops a tumor, certainly no one is going to blame you. "You did all you could" would probably be the standard condolence. Perhaps some might blame all the pollution in our environment.

But we may be looking in the wrong place for the substance of this pollution. Perhaps, as has often been the case, "the enemy is us." With our pride in science's ability to do better than nature, we may just have created another Frankenstein that lurches beyond our control.

 Tiger Tribe September/October1992