Tetanus, the disease.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

At the moment, the information resource for tetanus is best accessed here: http://www.beyondconformity.org.nz/resources/tetanus

[Wonder-Full]

OK, a few questions.

DD had a deep wound in her knee from some glass almost 3wks ago. I dealt with it as posted elsewhere on here. However, my question...if say the wound didn't bleed out right from the furtherest point of the wound (and if the hydrogen peroxide wasn't able to get right in there) and it got sealed over and there was tetanus bacteria trapped in there...

Is it possible to fight off tetanus and show a few "symptoms" without it turning nasty? A few days back at the 2-2.5wk mark after the injury dd had random headaches over 2 days and various aches in one arm and one leg (not the injured leg) - several times over the 2 days. No fever (in fact perhaps slightly low temp of barely 36 degrees underarm).

Coincidence or perhaps something more?

I dosed her on SA (not particularly a lot but maybe 2gms total a day) over these days and nothing more has happened. We're now 19 days after the injury occured.

Also, I tried googling but mostly came up with pro-vaccination information - does one develop tetanus immunity through natural exposure?

[3monkeys]

This is my very basic understanding of tetanus

* its a soil microbe, and also something to do with manure, so maybe its a fecal microbe? Its definitely a bateria anyway :)
* its anerobic (doesnt need oxygen, so what does it use? dunno)
* its a spore forming bacteria
* it can grow in closed wounds because it is anerobic

And thats my very very basic first contribution :D

[Quickening]

does one develop tetanus immunity through natural exposure?

My undestanding of bacteria is that you don't become immune to it in the way you could against a virus. But you can get a "natural immunity" against tetanus by creating the right conditions in your body that make it impossible for the bacteria to take up shelter and do damage.

It depends on the state of your own natural flora - there are things that can damage it - being born in hospital, being formula fed, eating junk that depletes the natural flora and feeds pathogens and gram neg microbes, being born by a caesarean section, being fed solid food too soon, not being exclusively breastfed etc. Those things hugely impact your natural flora in the earlly stages of life and it is difficult to reverse the damage at the initial stages later on in life but it can be done. Oh and antibiotic use how does one forget that, so many babies and little kids are dosed up big on abs!

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

OK, a few questions.

DD had a deep wound in her knee from some glass almost 3wks ago. I dealt with it as posted elsewhere on here. However, my question...if say the wound didn't bleed out right from the furtherest point of the wound (and if the hydrogen peroxide wasn't able to get right in there) and it got sealed over and there was tetanus bacteria trapped in there...

Is it possible to fight off tetanus and show a few "symptoms" without it turning nasty? A few days back at the 2-2.5wk mark after the injury dd had random headaches over 2 days and various aches in one arm and one leg (not the injured leg) - several times over the 2 days. No fever (in fact perhaps slightly low temp of barely 36 degrees underarm).

Coincidence or perhaps something more?

I dosed her on SA (not particularly a lot but maybe 2gms total a day) over these days and nothing more has happened. We're now 19 days after the injury occured.

Also, I tried googling but mostly came up with pro-vaccination information - does one develop tetanus immunity through natural exposure?

Okay, I can see I need to get on to this. My back has taken as much computer work as it can today, and I need to lie down.

I will start another thread bearing these questions in mind.

Yes, you can develop natural immunity (aka antibodies) to tetanus from natural exposure. There are full text medical articles on that topic on the net. The WHO admits to that, but then on the word on "one" expert who considers natural immunity "inadequate" considers that natural immunity is of no consequence :giggle:

wow. You would have thought if it was of no consequence, tetanus would have wiped the world out long before a vaccine :rolleyes: but we can't talk nonsense like that, can we?

[Wonder-Full]

Thanks Quickening!

MT, I will look forward to reading what you put up when you can.

Thanks!

[justine]

I had a tetanus jab once about 15 years ago and my arm really hurt for a about 5 days. Ouch I can still remeber it.

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

It is so rare. I think about 50 odd people get it in the USA every year, with about 12 or so deaths. This, despite huge chunks of the population (we're talking 10s of millions) being either unvaccinated or inadequately vaccinated, according to official records. Blood surveys are done at random on samples of the pop. and they show that anti-body titres are often low.

In NZ it is just as rare. I think it is about 1 or less deaths per year.

In both cases nearly all the deaths are in elderly people, who die of a lot of diseases more often than the younger segments of the general pop. because they have weaker vital forces, weaker immunity in general.

I worked out once that an American would have 45 times more chance of dying from being struck by lightening, than from tetanus. :rolleyes:


So what gives? Were we all saved by the mass drive to vaccinate? That's the official line of course, but there are huge anomalies in that argument. First of all, why is almost no-one younger than 50 dying from it? We know many people lack antibody.

And why was it a pretty rare illness even before mass vaccination began in the 50s and early 60s? I have a late Victorian era medical book, written by very pro-vaccine doctors, and under tetanus they casually refer to it as a fairly rare illness!

If you believed present medical officialdom we should all be dropping like flies from tetanus if it wasn't for the shot....but history shows this not to be true. Sure, tetanus was a bit more common than today, but it was still relatively rare an occurence. I have read not a few Victorian novels (ie. Dickens, Austen, Brontes etc.), and have yet to come across a reference to tetanus. I have read a reasonable whack of history too, and have noted deaths by famous and not so famous personages in the 19th, 18th, and earlier centuries, from things like heart attacks, ague, fevers, Tb, syphilis, strokes, cancer, alcoholism, etc.

But not tetanus.:confused:

Has there been some kind of gigantic conspiracy by anti-vaccinators to rewrite history??!

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

For the record, the symptoms of serious tetanus are pretty striking, and are easily distinguishable from other illnesses. They can't use the argument (that old chestnut) that doctors are better now at diagnosing, and were all hopeless in the past.

[Spy]

Moreover, there is no lab test routinely used to confirm tetanus, it is still diagnosed clinically, i.e. based on symptoms.

If anything, they are now worse at diagnosing it, mainly because the entire medical establishment is rapidly losing both common sense and the ability to look at a live patient, paying attention to what they see. :eyeroll: And also because nobody expects VPDs to be anything real or visible anyway, so not only do they forget what it may look like, they honestly believe they don't need to know! :giggle:

[ema-adama]

I was reading about a case here in Israel where a fully vaccinated 34 year old construction worker contracted tetanus.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/319/7216/1049

Under the title "lesson of the week: Do not rule out a diagnosis of tetanus in a patient who has been immunised fully"

I would be interested in the full article.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

I was reading about a case here in Israel where a fully vaccinated 34 year old construction worker contracted tetanus.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/319/7216/1049

Under the title "lesson of the week: Do not rule out a diagnosis of tetanus in a patient who has been immunised fully"

I would be interested in the full article.

put the title "Tetanus in an immunised patient" into pubmed and then look down the list. Pubmed central has it as a freebie.

[ema-adama]

Thanks - It's a bit weird that the authors say that tetanus only happens in the unvaccinated in the USA, when that is not what the CDC says....

And he lived.

I was interested to know what his injuries were and how he sustained them and how they were treated initially.... at first glance this information does not seem to be available. He had had a booster 2 years prior to the accident.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

There was an interesting follow up to the Israel construction worker. Read the attached one called Vinson, and then for shits and giggles read Passen 86.

[gilima]

thankyou for that wealth of info on beyondconformity, I have bookmarked it for my older kids to read.