Prions: Infectious Agent or Symptom? Why Researchers May Be Headed the Wrong Direction.

Could it be that prions are the damage caused by an autoimmune disorder? Might prions be the symptoms, rather than infectious agents? The implications for some of modern medicine's most prized procedures, in particular, vaccinations, are immense.

by Heidi Stevenson

29 December 2010

Prion diseases are among the most mysterious and frightening of all. They are untreatable and fatal. Their uniqueness is fairly new to our awareness, though scrapie in sheep has been known for a couple of centuries. The primary theory has it that they're caused by rogue proteins, which act as infectious agents.

Could it be, though, that prions are the damage caused by an autoimmune disorder? That is, might prions be the symptom, rather than infectious agents? If true, then the implications for some of modern medicine's most prized procedures, in particular, vaccinations, are immense.

There's a smoking gun suggesting that prions are the result, not the cause of disease. Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune disorder in which the immune system turns on a person's own joints. To study treatments for it, a tried-and-true method is used to create a disease in mice that's virtually indistinguishable from rheumatoid arthritis in humans. Mice are simply injected with collagen, which is the most abundant naturally-occurring protein in mammals.

Let that sink in: We know how to create rheumatoid arthritis in mice. Yet, rather than consider how that might apply to humans, scientists simply use those arthritic mice in experiments of treatment methods.

Adjuvants and Autoimmune Disorders

An adjuvant is a substance added to a vaccine for its ability to increase the immune response to the desired disease, such as polio or influenza viruses. Squalene is now a commonly used adjuvant. It's used by the body in a wide array of functions, including manufacturing Vitamin D, steroid hormones, and cholesterol. Injecting collagen into mice causes a condition that is virtually indistinguishable from human rheumatoid arthritis by inducing the immune system to attack collagen. And we're told that squalene is safe!

Little concern is focused on what causes rheumatoid arthritis when there's so much money to be made treating it. However, if we can just get past that, we might note that, if rheumatoid arthritis can be caused by injecting the natural substance, collagen, into a mouse, then a similar mechanism might also apply in humans. If a substance that occurs naturally in the body is pushed into it through an unnatural mechanism, then that substance can be seen by the immune system as an invader, and the immune system will defend against it. Defense against a substance naturally found in the body is the definition of an autoimmune disorder.

Prions, Questionable as Infectious Agents

Consider the fact that prions are not living things. They are simply deformed bits of protein. The prions-as-infectious-agents concept assumes that a deformed prion somehow causes others to also become deformed. Why they would do that is unexplained. They are not recreating themselves, as in cellular division, and they are not procreating. For some reason, the theory has it that they mysteriously make others become deformed, too.

Prions have no innate imperative to recreate themselves, as infectious agents do. The nature of an infectious agent is that it uses its host to recreate itself, either by tricking the host into acting as the agent of its duplication or by using the host as a source of sustenance. A prion does not, and cannot, do either. It is, in fact, inert.

Logically, prions bear more resemblance to the debris left by infectious agents or the fight against them than they do to the agents themselves. The prions-as-infectious-agents theory presumes that bits of protein somehow go rogue, become deformed, and then somehow make other proteins take on the same deformity.

Before considering prions to be infectious agents, one should find a means by which they infect, though some have been postulated. All appear to grant some sort of autonomy to these incomplete bits of protein. One should also find a reason for a prion to act in such a manner—and that detail seems to have been ignored by most researchers. Why should a deformed and inanimate bit of material seek out nondeformed bits and deform them? And how do they do it?

The bigger question, though, is why is there such a focus on prions as infectious agents? The answer is probably found in profits. Big Pharma and Big Medicine are focused first on profits, which means that their interest is primarily in treating disease, rather than prevention. Second—and perhaps even more significant—promoting the concept of prions as infectious agents instead of as symptoms of an autoimmune disorder may be necessary to cover up a growing scandal in vaccinations.

Immune System Function

The immune system attacks anything that it sees as not part of its own body. Normally, this distinction is made when a substance enters the body through an abnormal means, such as the nose or digestive tract, or being forced through the skin. Thus, bacteria or viruses that find their way into the blood stream through cuts or enter the lungs through the nose are seen as invaders and then attacked anywhere they're found in the body.

When completely strange substances manage to enter the body, there's no problem. The immune system sees them as foreign, and when they appear anywhere in the body, attacks and disposes of them. However, when a substance similar to one that naturally occurs in the body enters abnormally, it's seen as an invader and is attacked. Thus, when collagen, which exists in every joint, enters through an injection, the immune system sees it as an invader, and it's attacked wherever it's found.

A prion is a bit of protein. If it enters the body through the nasal passage or an injection, it would be taken as an invader by the immune system. It would then cause the immune system to attack parts of the body that contain a similar protein.

In Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, damaged proteins are found in the brain. They're described as folded, and conventionally considered to be infectious agents. However, nowhere is an explanation offered for how they infect. What in a bit of deformed protein could possibly cause it to infect an organism, or even more significantly, cause others to also become deformed? That is, after all, what's claimed—that these bits of proteins have both motive and means to procreate, and also that turning other proteins into deformed ones is somehow an act of procreation, rather than equivalent to creating a zombie army.

However, if we view prions as protein bits damaged by a deranged immune system, then there's no need to promote inanimate proteins into life forms that mimic procreation by turning healthy proteins into deformed zombies like itself.

Variations of Prion Diseases

A new neurological disorder, Immune Polyradiculoneuropathy (IPR), is known to be caused when workers in abattoirs breathe aerosolized pig brains from using high-speed saws on them. IPR is similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), which is similar to bovine spongiform encepalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease. All of these are prion diseases.

If it isn't an infectious agent, how could an aerosolized bit of pig brain be so dangerous? When it enters through the nasal passages, it would be seen by the immune system as something that comes from outside—as other, as an invader. So, antibodies to that bit of protein are created, and it's then attacked by the immune system where it's found in the body—the brain.

There are several known varieties of iatrogenic prion diseases. Human growth hormone extracted from pituitary glands of cadavers, when injected into people have been known to cause CJD. Corneal grafts, skin grafts, and electrode implants have caused CJD. The presumption has been that infectious prions are transmitted, but in all these cases of iatrogenic prion diseases, there's no need to imagine prions marching about creating zombies. In all cases, natural proteins are placed into the body through invasive means, which as explained above, can result in an autoimmune response against them.

Some prion diseases are considered familial, that is, they're believed to be inherited. Those also fit the model of an autoimmune disorder far more easily than the assumption that inheriting a particular gene somehow results in the body creating an infectious agent that turns normal protein bits into zombified prions.

Kuru is a prion disease similar to CJD that is found only in the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea, a cannibalistic group that eats the flesh of the deceased. Women and children get the disease far more often than men. It's generally assumed that this is because the men eat the more desirable body parts, and that they are less likely to be infected. Another view, though, might be that it's the women and children who prepare the food. They would be more likely to breath in bits of tissue or take them in through cuts and scrapes, thereby developing an autoimmune response to them.

Research Supporting Prions as Symptom, Not Cause

Back in 1997, research in the UK produced a study published in the journal Medical Hypotheses, An autoimmune response causes transmissible spongiform encephalopathies that proposed that misfolded prion protein (PrP), though "generally accepted as causing transmissible spongiform encephalopathies", are actually "the result of an autoimmune response to the host PrP".

Implications of Prions as Symptomatic of Autoimmune Disorders

If prions are not infectious agents, but are symptoms of an autoimmune disorder, the implications for modern medicine are immense. It means that all vaccinations, by their nature, must be potential causes of autoimmune diseases. Forcing substances that are similar to the body's tissues in through injections or nasal sprays holds the potential of devastating illnesses.

Consider that many medical procedures involve inserting natural substances that come from animals, such as heart valves and collagen grafts in spinal surgeries—and that they're known to result in prion diseases.

Aren't we seeing a huge increase in autoimmune disorders of all types in today's world? At the same time as the general rise in diseases like asthma, which is an autoimmune disorder, we're also seeing previously little known or unknown prion diseases arising, such as IPR from aerosolized pigs' brains. The rise of prion diseases is a fairly new phenomenon, roughly coinciding with the rise in vaccinations and invasive medical treatments that utilize health tissues from animals and other humans, as in transplants.

We're seeing enormous increases in multiple sclerosis. While not generally considered a prion disease, it has a remarkably close relationship to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. It, too, is marked by the loss of neural tissue. The insulating lining of neurons is attacked by the autoimmune system. In fact, a wide range of modern neurological disorders appear to be autoimmune diseases, including macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF), Gulf War Syndrome associated with squalene, CJD, IPR from aerosolized pigs' brains, and other less well known conditions.

Massive amounts of money are spent chasing the prions-as-infectious-agents chimera, with the goal of finding ways to treat them and bring a bonanza of profits to Big Pharma and Big Medicine. We know from the history of such treatments that effectiveness is nearly always low or nonexistent, and tremendous harm results. However, modern medicine profits from treatment, rarely from prevention, and virtually never from cure. It's quite natural to misdirect research away from something that could cut into those profits—prions as the symptom of autoimmune disorders caused by medical procedures—and towards something that could increase profits—prions as infectious agents.

Vaccinations

A likely cause of prion diseases, among other autoimmune disorders, is ignored: vaccination. More and more, vaccinations utilize adjuvants, and one becoming common is squalene. It has been implicated in Gulf War Syndrome. Nonetheless, rather than pulling it off the market, it is becoming omnipresent in vaccines.

Squalene and other implants of material similar to what's in our bodies are sold as safe because of that similarity. Instead, though, it appears to be as bad as, possibly worse than, the injection of other vaccine additions known to be poisonous, like aluminum and mercury. Obviously poisonous additives generally cause a fairly rapid response. However, prion-autoimmune disorders are often known to take years, even decades, to develop.

We're already living amidst an epidemic of chronic disease. Are we faced with the prospect of far more, and far more devastating, autoimmune disorders in the next few years? Will the burden of autism, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, alzheimer's, and cancer be just the beginning?

Are profits so important that the health of the people can be sacrified on its altar? Obviously, the answer to that is yes. The specter of prion disease-inducing vaccinations being omnipresent is not the stuff of nightmares. It could very well be our reality.

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