Theresa MacPhail is the perfect example of Nasrudin’s allegory of the drunk searching for his keys under the streetlight. Not because he lost them there, but it’s the only place he can see. Her book, Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World published by Random House this year, pores over scientific texts and panders to allergy experts studied opinions. Rarely looking over her spectacles for the cause of the peculiar rise in allergies since 1890, even more dramatically since 1990, then unable to see what’s directly under her nose.
Even though she trained as a medical anthropologist, she’s too entwined with the culture to separate out her own participant biases from field based observations. She’s got a significant amount of skin in the maws of the Medical Monopoly field.
Her father died of anaphylactic shock from a bee sting in his neck while driving. The pharmacist where they pulled into, refused to provide the prescribed injection of epinephrine or adrenalin, because of FDA regulations.
She has wicked hay fever every spring and summer since 2015, developed while teaching a full course load at uni and writing a book about influenza, The Viral Network: A Pathography of the H1N1 Influenza Pandemic put out by Cornell University Press in 2014. "‘we live with them and thus … have become viral ourselves’. Through her education in laboratory practices, working at Hong Kong University and Atlanta-based US Centers for Disease Control and attending many global health conferences.” So completely captured.
After her fourth bout of respiratory infections, she was shipped off to an otolaryngologist, an ear, nose and throat specialist who diagnosed allergies to pollen. She spends whole seasons indoor to avoid the worst of her symptoms, runny or clogged nose, red eyes, irritated throat. A Jungian would have a field day with this.
“Over the last decade, the number of adults and children diagnosed with mild, moderate or severe allergies” continues to increase like a hockey stick handle since 1990. Not just in wealthy, white urban populations where they were first diagnosed in Vienna. Allergies have gone global, with an estimated 30-40% of the planet suffering from some form of allergic disease, from foods, air borne or skin contact.
Very few are life threatening, although deaths make headlines, but quality of life is severely affected, while costs increase astronomically from treating symptoms and avoiding common food items and other allergens as possible. Stress, anxiety, fatigue, brain fog, gut discomfort, headache, skin eruptions, sinus compaction are all symptoms of allergic immune disruption.
Dr. Clemens von Pirquet, a pediatrician and early immunologist coined “allergy” in 1906, after observing “some children given smallpox vaccines made of horse serum (common then), would react poorly to a second dose, developing a rash at the injection site, itching or inflamed skin and a fever.” Exposure to a foreign substance, horse serum (not the viral antigen they were meant to develop defensive immunity towards) by injection was his explanation for cause.
He and his partner Schick, decided the immune system could make “mistakes”, make us sick as well as protect us from infection. Up until then, antibodies were presumed entirely beneficial, like angels fighting off disease pathogens. Suddenly they became light bearing fallen ones, spreading inflammation and “hypersensitive reactions” to “otherwise harmless agents.”
Naturally this was dismissed by other medical experts for a few decades, as the numbers of wealthier sufferers grew, making futile treks to physicians for relief. There was a danger they might turn to alternative therapies. Many did and continue to do so, often finding miraculous relief. MacPhail dismisses these anecdotal tales as unscientific, never been proven in a double blind test that she unearthed. Since her searches were strictly within bounds of the Medical Monopoly- even those claiming “holistic” or “integrated treatment”, she wasn’t likely to find the keys under the streetlight of molecular materialism.
She admits that how and why our immune system attacks our body is still largely a mystery to medical researchers, although many elements in the symphony of interactions have been identified. Autoimmune disorders involve immune inflammation and damage to personal organs and cell systems in a case of mistaken identity of self/nonself.
At least, that was the psychological metaphor used for half a century. Now, some immunologists like to think of “immune cells as curators”, constantly seeking like non-sleeping sharks for disturbing elements that don’t belong in their collections of self.
Allergies are “seen as variations of the same theme rather than as entirely different problems. Our immunity to disease and our tolerance of natural and man made substances can go awry.” Dr. Pamela Guerrerio, top food allergy researcher at the National Institute of Health, (NIH) admitted, ”we still don’t understand the mechanisms behind immune tolerance, or why we tolerate some things, but not others.”
The fractal field is still a conundrum after a century of medical science and untold billions in funding Medical Monopoly research and treatments. One might think the causes of our spiraling rates of both autoimmune and allergies would be a worthwhile investment, but this Stockholm syndrome medical journalist doesn’t go down those dark alleys. Even when the trail begins with vaccine injuries.
Be hard to sell your book if these were a major culprit in disrupting an infants and adults delicately tuned and infinitely complex immune system. Like the good student she’s always been, she can regurgitate the lessons she’s attended, without questioning uncovered topics, like evidence that undercuts the perfectly safe and effective inoculation narrative.