Rethinking How We Measure Immunity

… using measles as an example

The concept of immunity is often oversimplified, equating the presence of serum antibodies that are INSIDE of you with protection against infection. This protection is impossible as those serum antibodies cannot stop something from coming through the epithelial barrier from the OUTSIDE, only react to it when it does. Finding and measuring antigen specific serum antibodies inside a person only indicates previous exposure to that antigen or virus. Serum antibodies can enable quicker responses to subsequent infections, but they do NOT guarantee protection. In fact, some people who were vaccinated against the measles, and had a measured antibody response, got symptomatic measles when later exposed.

Serum antibody levels naturally wane over time. This renders them undetectable despite having a prior infection, even though that person may have long lasting immunity. Therefore, whether you have detectable serum antibodies or not does NOT correlate with immunity. So, a more comprehensive approach to assessing immunity involves measuring mucosal IgA antibodies and cytotoxic T-cell reactions, where protections against infection truly exist.

Mucosal IgA antibodies, produced in mucosal tissues, provide a more accurate measure of protective immunity. This is your first line of defense as mucosal IgA antibodies neutralize pathogens at the mucosal surface, preventing infections. Mucosal antibodies are created by specialized B-cells that will secrete protective IgA antibodies right back into the mucus after a natural exposure. Here’s the key: you can only get protective mucosal secretory IgA antibodies by having something come through the epithelial barrier from the outside to the inside as in natural exposures. You cannot get protective mucosal IgA by injecting something inside of the body. Injections only result in serum antibodies INSIDE of you that do not last nearly as long as mucosal IgA that offers sustained protection on the OUTSIDE where it really matters. This is why a shift will occur from injectable products to inhalable or ingestible products, a dangerous approach that is a subject for another day.

Your second line of defense is a layer of tissue resident Cytotoxic T-cells that guard that epithelial barrier. When they detect foreign proteins being made in the epithelial cells, they send an apoptotic signal to those cells. The cells destroy themselves in a noninflammatory way and are quickly replaced with new ones. The infection is stopped before anything foreign can get past the barrier.

We can detect these layers of protection, so I propose that a far better way to assess immunity to ANYTHING is by measuring mucosal IgA antibodies and Cytotoxic T-cell reactions. We can do this today by measuring antigen specific IgA from mucosal swabs and antigen specific cytotoxic T-cells from blood samples. The question is, why aren’t we doing this to verify protective immunity before injecting people with dangerous and toxic products that can’t provide that protection anyway?

Back to measles as an example. The measles vaccination induces internal serum antibodies only... sometimes. I say sometimes because there are people who get injected and do not get an antibody response. This is because the numbers and potencies of the viral particles will vary from batch to batch. The measles shot contains whole measles viruses that have been weakened or attenuated. But there is no way for the vaccine recipient to know how potent the viruses in the shot are, nor how many are in it. Vaccine manufacturers admit this, and that's why some recipients get full blown cases of the measles, and some won't get an immune response at all. Plus, the number of viable particles in each shot can vary as much as TEN-FOLD, allowable by law.

Again, it’s a crap shoot. There is no way to know how many particles each child gets, nor the potency. Even if the particles in the shot do create an immune response, the response is the creation of serum antibodies INSIDE the body that cannot prevent a natural measles infection from crossing the epithelial barrier from the OUTSIDE. Therefore, injected children do get exposed to the natural measles virus, do become infected, and can spread it to others. Simply put, as long as we keep injecting the measles virus into children, the measles will always be with us, because it will shed from the vaccinated child. Thanks for reading, and thanks for staying smart.