This is the time of year that Big Media seeks to appease its biggest advertisers, Big Pharma, by helping to spread fear and panic about this year’s “flu epidemic.” They commonly quote sensationalized statistics, suggesting that you will die or become very ill unless you vaccinate. However, conveniently enough, even the Lung Association admits that the vast majority of these deaths associated with the flu are not from this illness at all but from pneumonia.1

This merging of statistics is rare in medicine or science, except when the economics of Big Pharma (or another big industry) are involved, as their bible seemingly becomes “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics” (in other words, how to use statistics to create fear and sell drugs). The fact that last year’s flu vaccine was a dismal 42 percent effective2is completely ignored by the media, though the 2014-15 flu vaccine was only 23 percent effective (and not surprisingly, virtually no major media reported on this fact).

The real problems from getting the flu are not from the disease itself but from the mismanagement of the disease by doctors and by patients. People with the flu mistakenly take aspirin or acetaminophen to “lower the fever” of the flu, but that is one of the worst things that you can do for yourself, unless one happens to have a fever with a high temperature of 103 degrees Fahrenheit or more (a very rare experience, except in infants). 

Generally, physicians and pathologists consider a fever to be one of the important defensive functions of the body. The fever is one of the methods that your body deploys to fight viral infection. During a fever, the body secretes increased amounts of interferon, an antiviral chemical. If a person takes a fever-lowering drug, the body doesn’t secrete this antiviral chemical as much, enabling the virus to overwhelm the sick person.

It is almost as though physicians don’t respect the “wisdom of the body.” Instead of using those conventional drugs to suppress a fever, a good physician or healer will help augment the person’s natural defenses to aid the resolution of the infection. The real reason that the flu epidemic of 1918 to 1919 killed so many people was not simply because of this viral infection but because a relatively new drug, called aspirin, was used in large amounts.3

New York City was found to have one of the lowest mortality rates from the flu than any major city in the U.S.,4 in part because the health commissioner of New York City was Dr. Royal Copeland, a homeopathic physician who discouraged the use of aspirin and encouraged safer natural methods, including homeopathic medicines.5

Copeland was later elected senator for the state of New York three times, and he wrote the famed Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, which was one of the most important consumer rights laws ever written because it empowered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate drugs — and it also gave federal recognition to homeopathic medicines as “drugs.” 

The Wisdom, Logic and Scientific Evidence for Homeopathy and the Flu

It is generally recognized that living organisms, including the human body, will go to extraordinary measures to survive. In doing so, it can and will create symptoms as defenses and as adaptive measures to fight infection or stress. When the human body is exposed to a flu virus, the body inflames into a fever as a defensive effort to fight the virus. During a fever, the body increases its number of T-cells and B-cells that help fight viral infection. 

The wisdom and logic of homeopathic medicines are that instead of suppressing symptoms with fever-lowering drugs, a nano-dose of a medicine that might actually cause a fever or flu-like condition will be used to augment the person’s immune and defense system. It is therefore no wonder that the first scientist to be granted the Nobel Prize in Medicine was Dr. Emil Adolf von Behring who discovered the tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. After he won this Nobel Prize, von Behring admitted that his discovery was inspired from homeopathy.6

Even though the extremely small nano-sized doses were considered impossible or improbable to have any biological effects, today the emerging field of nanomedicine and nanopharmacology is verifying the significant power of nano-doses of medicines. A 2015 report about the field of nanomedicine expected sales to be over $130 billion.7 It is only a matter of time before physicians, scientists and the general public realize that homeopathy was the “original nanomedicine.”

The bottom line is that our body’s hormones and cell-signaling agents are known to operate at nano-dose levels.8 Further, solid research published in one of the most respected scientific journals in the world, the American Chemical Society, has confirmed that homeopathic doses, even those at extreme dilutions, have significant amounts of nano-doses as verified by three different types of spectroscopy.9

Homeopathy as a Form of Homeo-Immunotherapy

Generally, homeopathic medicines are not prescribed for specific diseases but instead for specific syndromes of each disease. For instance, the syndrome of symptoms one person with the flu may have (fever, body aches and a frontal headache worsened by all types of motion, increased thirst for cold fluids and irritability with a desire to be alone) will require a different homeopathic medicine from another (who may have a fever, great fatigue, a headache in the back part of the head and no thirst). 

In fact, from a homeopathic point of view, it is strange and weird that people would think it is wise to use the same drug to treat everyone, even though people with the same illness may have totally different syndromes of symptoms. However, in homeopathy, there are select conditions for which certain specific homeopathic medicines can be effective for larger groups of people despite their differences in symptoms. 

The use of a homeopathic medicine called Oscillococcinum is an example of a remedy that can be effective for many people with the flu, though clinical experience suggests that it is most effective when used within 48 hours of getting flu symptoms. Although most homeopathic medicines are made from the plant or mineral kingdom, Oscillococcinum is unusual in that it is made from the heart and liver of a duck. 

Although this source may initially sound strange, it makes sense for anyone familiar with how influenza is spread throughout the world. Epidemiologists have determined that various birds, including ducks, carry influenza viruses in their digestive tracts. Most people today have heard of the “bird flu,” and this fact makes reference to this common source of the flu. 

The fact that homeopaths have used Oscillococcinum since 1925 verifies that homeopaths have incorporated this accurate and cutting-edge medical information for almost a century, considerably ahead of modern medicine. Ultimately, people who use this homeopathic medicine are therefore being given exceedingly small doses of various flu viruses, making this medicine a type of homeo-immunotherapy.