Shorts


Jule Klotter

Parasites and Diabetes

In searching Google Scholar, I found several studies that have investigated the presence of intestinal parasites in patients with diabetes. The consequences of having diabetes and hyperglycemia include decreased T cell function and decreased activity of polymorphonuclear leukocytes that are at the frontline of immune defense. Also, intestinal barrier function becomes impaired. As a result, people with diabetes can become more susceptible to intestinal parasites—both protozoan (e.g., Giardia intestinalis, Entamoeba histolytica, Blastocystic hominis) and helminths (e.g., roundworm, hookworm, tapeworm).

A 2021 cross-sectional study of 152 diabetes patients in Ghana found that 12.5% of the patients had intestinal parasites.1 The researchers examined a single stool sample from each patients using direct wet mount, formol-ether concentration, and modified Ziehl-Neelsen staining methods. Giardia lamblia and Entamoeba histolyrica were the most common parasites found.

“Fasting blood glucose level was a significant risk factor for acquiring intestinal parasites,” according to the researchers.1 Most of the patients with parasites had fasting blood glucose levels greater than 11.0 mmol/L (198 mg/dl); the average level was 14.34±2 (~258 mg/dl). The authors note that the use of other laboratory techniques (e.g., molecular and immunofluorescence) may have detected more parasite infections than the method used.

A 2021 Egyptian study that compared 100 diabetic patients with gastrointestinal symptoms (e.g., diarrhea, flatulence, abdominal pain) to 100 non-diabetic controls found a higher, but statistically non-significant incidence of parasitic infection in people with diabetes (44% vs. 32%; p=0.08).2 Patients with uncontrolled diabetes were more likely to have parasitic infections than patients with controlled diabetes (77.3% vs. 22.7%; p=0.014); and those with complicated diabetes were more likely to be infected than those with uncomplicated cases (79.5% vs. 20.5%; p=0.043).

Although many of the studies linking parasitic infection and diabetes are from tropical and/or less developed countries, recent Townsend Letter articles by Omar Amin, PhD, of the Parasitology Center (Scottsdale, Arizona) report that parasitic infections are common in the United States as well.3  In his article “Detecting Parasites,” he explains that detecting such infections can be tricky because parasites have complex life cycles and often do not shed consistently: “This means that the parasite may be present in the stool for two, three, or four days a week, but not the rest of the week.” Because of this, he recommends that at least two or three stool samples, taken on different days, be used to determine whether parasites are present.

In addition to gastrointestinal symptoms, parasites can cause a number of other symptoms, including fatigue, skin rashes, dry cough, lymph blockage, allergies, nausea, muscle and joint pain, and headaches.


Medical Licenses and Misinformation

An Assembly bill (No. 2098), introduced in the California legislature on February 14, 2022, requires the medical boards overseeing professional conduct to take action against any licensed MD or DO for “[disseminating] misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.” In its decision whether to take disciplinary action, the board is supposed to consider whether “the licensee departed from the applicable standard of care and whether the misinformation or disinformation resulted in harm to patient health.”

This legislation follows the lead of the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), which on July 29, 2021, released a statement that said: “’Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.’” The California bill, which was amended on April 20, 2022, does not limit a doctor’s speech to the general public; rather it focuses on information that doctors give to their patients “in the form of treatment or advice.”

As California health care attorney Richard Jaffe, Esq., explains in a letter to the California Assembly Committee on Appropriations, covid data and research is still evolving, making it problematic to identify true “misinformation.” He wrote:

Moderna is now seeking FDA approval of its vaccine for children under 6 even though its clinical trials efficacy rate is 37%, which is a number many consider to be sub-par. If the vaccine receives such approval, will it be covid misinformation to advise parents against that vaccine because of the low efficacy rate?

Some countries have taken quite different approaches to lock-downs and vaccination…. Is it going to be prosecutable covid misinformation for California physicians to consider the pandemic policies of countries who objectively have had a more successful approach to the pandemic that what we have seen in the United States?4

Some state medical boards are acting against “misinformation” without a state law to back them up. In a high-profile case, Maine’s medical board suspended Meryl Nass’ medical license in January 2022 for ‘spreading misinformation’ and ordered her to undergo a neuropsychological evaluation. Doctors who are ordered to get such an evaluation are automatically reported to a national physician data, which prevents them from getting a job or license in another state; also, their case and any patients’ records send to the board enter public domain and become accessible to the media. “Since the Maine Medical Board wanted to ‘out’ me publicly, I feel no compunction about telling my side of the story to the public, and I will continue to do so,” she explained in a January 13, 2022, blogpost.5

Dr. Nass is board certified in internal medicine and has spent most of her 40-year career evaluating and treating patients with complex illnesses like fibromyalgia, Lyme, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War syndrome, and multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). She co-authored the published 1999 case definition for MCS and became an authority on the use of anthrax in biological warfare, after investigating an anthrax outbreak that occurred during Rhodesia’s civil war over 40 years ago.6

When covid hit, Dr. Nass began treating patients for a one-time fee of $60 with the aim of keeping them out of the hospital. The Maine medical board criticized her charting; she would make notes about the many text messages, phone calls, and email communications she had with her patients, but the board considered these communications “telemedicine visits’ that should have included a history and physical. The board also received two reports that she had prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for covid patients.

Dr. Nass, herself, also attracted board attention by asking for a policy change after she told a “white lie” to a pharmacist in order to acquire hydroxychloroquine for a high-risk covid patient; Nass said it was for a Lyme patient. Pharmacies were refusing to give the drug to patients with covid: “’…I wrote the Maine Medical Board of Licensure and told them that my patients can’t get a potentially life-saving drug unless I tell a white lie, which is unacceptable.’”

Dr. Nass told Matt McGregor at The Epoch Times “’None of the organizations, like the FSMB or AMA, or state agencies that have threatened or suspended doctors’ licenses, has had the courage to put into writing how they define misinformation and disinformation…..Do you want to live in a state that says the law is what we think it is, but we’re not putting it in black and white?’”7

[UPDATE:  A federal judge granted an injunction in two cases challenging AB 2098; see Richard Jaffe’s article in the April 8, 2023, Townsend e-Letter.  Also, Dr. Nass continues to fight the Maine medical board; her fourth hearing was on March 2, 2023.


WHO Pandemic Treaty

During a special session of the World Health Assembly (November 29-December 1, 2021), this decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed to assess the benefits of developing an international pandemic treaty and launch negotiations with delegations of the 194 countries that are WHO members. In early March 2022, the Council of the European Union agreed to negotiate.8

The World Health Organization says the treaty would “promote an ‘all-of-government’ and ‘all-of-society’ approach, integrating health matters across all relevant policy areas (e.g. research, innovation, financing, transport).” Reports by The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic (https://theindependentpanel.org/) made several recommendations to strengthen WHO’s authority. WHO anticipates that the treaty will be ready for a vote by May 2024.  The WHO held public hearings about the treaty on April 12-13, 2022, and again in June.

Tess Lawrie, MBBCH, PhD, a British medical doctor and research consultant, took part in the hearing on April 13. Dr. Lawrie is the CEO of Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy (E-BMC Ltd.) and is an external analyst for the WHO, serving as a guideline methodologist (assesses evidence, compiles it, and makes recommendations).

In an April 13 blogpost, she wrote “…the WHO is proposing a global pandemic agreement that would give it undemocratic rights over every participating nation and its citizens….Whether your country’s elected government would agree or not, the WHO could impose lockdowns, testing regimes, enforce medical interventions, dictate all public health practice, and much more.”9

WHO is a captured agency; WHO’s susceptibility to pharmaceutical interests has been of concern for decades. Forty-four years ago, Halfdan Mahler, WHO director general from 1973-1988, claimed “’the industry is taking over WHO.’” That was before WHO changed its financial policy (about 20 years ago); instead of being funded solely by member nations, WHO began accepting money from the private sector.

In a 2015 review article for Journal of Integrative Medicine & Therapy, Søren Ventegodt says that WHO recommends many drugs that independent researchers who performed meta-analyses for Cochrane found to be ineffective and/or harmful.10  Ventegodt also recounted the WHO’s actions during the 2009 swine flu epidemic—actions that included inciting panic with its prediction of millions of deaths, calling for the closure of national borders and public meeting places, and pushing the use of vaccines and drugs that later turned out to be ineffective and harmful. Shortly before deeming the mild 2009 flu a pandemic, WHO had changed its definition of pandemic “from meaning ‘millions of deaths’ to mean a non-dangerous infection that spreads worldwide….”

Over and beyond conflict-of-interest concerns, an international pandemic treaty that gives one agent the authority to make decisions affecting the entire world is, in the words of Australia’s leading clinical immunologist, Professor Robert Clancy, “foolhardy”:

It is foolhardy to even suggest that a ‘one size fits all’ response to a pandemic crisis across geographic zones characterized by hugely different parameters, could possibly be covered by a central bureaucratic process—the need for local decision making is of prime importance. The rule of science and the rule of the doctor-patient relationship must determine any response to a pandemic, and current experience where the rule of the narrative has so distorted disease outcomes—supported by the WHO—must make very clear the foolishness of rewarding incompetence and corruption with even greater powers.11

World Council for Health (https://worldcouncilforhealth.org) is among the groups that is working against the pandemic treaty and is, instead, advocating for transparency, open debate and dialogue, the right to choose and refuse treatments, and human rights and civil liberties.

This column was originally published in Townsend Letter, July 2022.


References

  1. Sisu A, et al Intestinal parasite infections in diabetes mellitus patients: A cross-sectional study of the Bolgatanga municipality, Ghana. Scientific African. 2021;11;e00680.
  2. Waly WR, et al. Intestinal parasitic infections and associated risk factors in diabetic patients: a case-control study. J Parasit Dis. June 9, 2021.
  3. Amin O. Detecting Parasites. Townsend Letter. January 2022;41-47.
  4. Jaffe R. My Analysis and Opposition to AB 2098 to the Assembly Appropriations Committee. April 29, 2022.
  5. Nass M. My side of the story, and the Constitutional protections that I believe are being abridged by the Misinformation Witch Hunt. January 13, 2022. https://merylnassmd.com/my-side-of-story-and-constitutional_13/.
  6. Meryl Nass’s CV.  https://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/.
  7. McGregor M. ‘There’s No Law’: Physician Experienced in Investigating Biological Warfare Challenges Medical Board’s Misinformation Allegation. The Epoch Times.  February 8, 2022.
  8. Council of the European Union. Towards an international treaty on pandemics. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/towards-an-international-treaty-on-pandemics/
  9. Lawrie T. Urgent—My video call with the WHO this morning. April 13, 2022. https://drtesslawrie.substack.com/p/urgent-my-video-call-with-the-who?s=r
  10. Ventegodt S. Why the Corruption of the World Health Organization (WHO) is the Biggest Threat to the World’s Public Health of Our Time.  J Integrative Med Ther. January 2015;2(1).
  11. Lawrie T. We told the WHO we don’t want its pandemic treaty—now what?  April 27, 2022. https://drtesslawrie.substack.com

Published May 6, 2023


About the Author

Jule Klotter joined Townsend Letter’s staff in 1990. Over the years, she has written abstract articles for “Shorts” and many book reviews that provides information for busy practitioners. She became Townsend Letter’s editor near the end of 2016.