BODY WARS FINAL SCRIPT
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Audio/Narration
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V/O
The developed world has declared war.
War against microscopic bugs that most of us never see…
…and rarely know by name.
The enemy’s invisibility has only increased our fear...
… and caused a steady stream of volunteers to arm themselves and join the escalating conflict.
But recently, there’s been a growing wave of protest…
… led by scientists who believe that ultra-hygienic, modern living has unwittingly made enemies of our oldest allies.
In this “dirty war”, the growing number of human casualties may actually be victims of friendly fire.
BODY WARS
V/O
The developed world is battling a mysterious health problem.
Despite having higher standards of medical care and hygiene than ever, diseases once extremely rare are now on the risei.
It’s a crisis that has doctors, scientists and public health officials struggling to understand the cause.
The answers they’re finding threaten to turn our idea of healthy living upside-down.
NATSOT 400m Individual Medley
V/O
American swimming superstar Tom Dolan has become the world’s fastest 400-meter medley swimmer... twice.
His second world record shattered the first by almost three-quarters of a secondii.
It was a remarkable performance … especially since just before the race, Dolan was inhaling oxygen from a tank... just so he could catch his breath.
TOM DOLAN
"You know I ended up the day of my 400IM just trying to repeat this gold medal and I'm in the medical tent for the 4 or 5 hours between prelims and finals, just breathing in an oxygen tank so that I don't have to force my lungs to work any harder than they already do..."
V/O
Like 17 million other Americans, Tom Dolan has chronic asthmaiii.
TOM DOLAN
"… for people who don't have asthma it's a tough thing to describe. I mean… the analogy I use sometimes is think of being locked in a closet that's filled with smoke and trying to breath. And it's a very claustrophobic feeling...
V/O
Tom’s asthma is a common form of immune disorder –when the human body becomes its own worst enemy.
TOM DOLAN
“ … it's happened to me a couple of... a bunch of times now, mostly in workout, where I've had trouble breathing and I've started to hyperventilate and passed out in the water and they've had to pull me out of the water and take me in an ambulance to the hospital…”
V/O
Like many such diseases, the exact cause of asthma is a mystery, making it difficult to treat, and leaving sufferers in fear of its effects.
TOM DOLAN
"… It's a helpless feeling because you can't control anything and once you go past that point and start to hyperventilate, or worse, you know there's nothing you can do and you're totally reliant on other people helping you and that's a very scary feeling..."
V/O
Around the world, asthma rates have doubled in just 15 years.
Today, there are at least 150 million sufferers. But it hasn’t struck all societies with equal force.
While it afflicts up to 30% of children living in developed countriesiv, asthma remains rare in developing nations with less hygienic living conditionsv.
A number of poorly understood diseases share this alarming trend according to immunologist Graham Rook.
GRAHAM ROOK
“There are three groups of diseases that are increasing in frequency in the developed countries.
Firstly there are the allergies, which are diseases like asthma and eczema and hayfever…
… and then there are the autoimmune diseases, things like Multiple Sclerosis and Type-1 Diabetes, which are diseases where the immune system is attacking your own body…
…and finally there are the inflammatory bowel diseases – Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease.
Nobody knows quite what those diseases are, but what we do know is that all these three groups of disease are to do with regulatory disorders within the immune system.”
V/O
The cause of these diseases is as elusive as any stealth weapon….
But whatever it is, it’s turning our own defense systems against us.
In each one of us, the immune system defends the body against harmful infections …
… and eliminates sick cells before they multiply and trigger serious disease.
But in people with allergies and autoimmune disorders, the immune system seems incapable of functioning correctly.
It mistakenly attacks harmless substances… and in an ever-increasing number of individuals, launches assaults against the body itself.
Although it might seem logical to blame parts of the Western lifestyle, like rising levels of stress and pollution… medical researchers are now considering a radical alternative:
It’s called the “hygiene hypothesis”.
It says, by getting rid of dirt and bugs we may actually be making ourselves sickvi.
JOEL WEINSTOCK
“… maybe it isn’t something that we’re being exposed to, maybe it’s something we’ve lost. Maybe it’s something we’re not being exposed to… that we’ve taken away.”
“Your immune system and mine is a consequence of what we’ve encountered throughout our lifetime. So are we teaching our immune systems improper behaviour because of lack of natural exposure to environmental factors that we’ve evolved in for hundreds of thousands of years?”
V/O
Today’s urban lifestyle and environment isolate us from a range of natural micro-organisms.
That might sound like good news. But the “Hygiene Hypothesis” says our isolation may have devastating consequences for our health… and our children’s.
V/O
We’ve long recognised the importance of play for a child’s development. Now medical researchers are recognizing the importance of what they play in.
GRAHAM ROOK
“If a child is kept too clean we think the regulatory pathways which stop the immune system from doing things it shouldn’t do simply don’t get into place.”
V/O
From a very early age, Helen Martin felt an instinctive fear of dirt.
HELEN MARTIN
“When I was about the age of two or three… … whenever I went out in the garden, if I had a scrap of dirt on my hands I used to come in to have them washed…. used to come in running around with my hands out… Mummy, Mummy. I’ve got dirty hands.”
V/O
Despite doing all she could to avoid dirt, by age 11, Helen fell seriously ill.
Eventually her doctor concluded she was suffering from a potentially life-threatening inflammatory bowel disease.
It’s thought to result from the immune system repeatedy attacking bacteria within the intestines… but the bacteria are not the problem.
During these misguided assaults, the intestinal lining is damaged by “friendly fire”…
… and the effects can be severevii.
HELEN MARTIN
“When I was 15, I was very sick and the flare up that time manifested itself as not only diarrhoea, but my bowel narrowed to such an extent that nothing was passing through…”
V/O
The situation was so serious that Helen’s only option was immediate surgery.
Her surgeon was shocked when he saw the toll the disease had taken.
HELEN MARTIN
“… during the surgery he saw what a state my insides were… he said to my parents he literally had to chip away at some of the bowel because it had just become totally calcified. It had become solid.”
V/O
Diseases like Helen Martin’s were extremely rare just decades ago.
Today, they’re rapidly spreading through some of the world’s wealthiest countriesviii.
Here, the immune systems of up to 20% of people are running amok, causing more than 80 different illnessesix.
According to the hygiene hypothesis, that’s because our immune systems are not being taught how to behave properly.
PAUSE
Hygiene-obsessed westerners now spend billions of dollars every year on anti-bacterial cleaning productsx.
Most never give a second thought to banishing germs and worms from their lives.
A growing number of medical researchers are worried about this trend.
Immunologist Polly Matzinger believes that suddenly taking away the dirt and micro-organisms that have bombarded us throughout history is a big mistake.
POLLY MATZINGER
"We have evolved over zillions of years from primitive organisms through slightly less primitive organisms through vertebrates through mammals and to us… and we've made it, and our immune systems have helped us make it, and… people, for want of understanding, are trying to throw all that millions of years of education away."
"It's like ignoring the laws of physics. You know, ignore gravity, you're gonna get in trouble. Jump off a cliff, you’re going to get into trouble. Ignore evolution, you’re going to get into trouble.”
V/O
If sterile environments could protect us from disease, then spacecraft ought to be healthy places to live.
Isolated from most earthly germs, astronauts’ immune systems should remain at peak fitness.
But according to gastroenterologist Joel Weinstock, that’s just not the case.
JOEL WEINSTOCK
Astronauts in space become immune compromised. When they come back their lymphocyte counts are low and they have impairments, and NASA assumes it’s related to Zero-G…
…and I look at it and I say, you put these people in a sterile capsule eating irradiated food and what’s happening to their intestinal flora? And if you sit in an environment that’s so clean and so sterile for 6 months or a year, is it possible that some of the immune impairments they’re seeing in these people are result of lack of bacterial and viral exposures rather than Zero-G?
V/O
None of us live in a totally germ-free environments, but these laboratory mice do.
The isolation has had a disturbing effect on their immune systems.
POLLY MATZINGER
"Lymph nodes… these are the glands that swell when you get sick, they blow up, they blow down again… they hardly exist in these mice. There are cells that act as libraries for the little pieces of the bacteria and the viruses and the worms that you've seen in the past...They don't exist in these mice, or at least they're not well developed.
So, if the immune system doesn't interact with the environment, it doesn't develop right."
V/O
With no sparring partners to learn from, it also appears that inexperienced immune systems won’t behave right.
GRAHAM ROOK
"… indeed it can be shown that such animals are more susceptible to certain types of autoimmune disease and you can modulate the extent to which they are susceptible by putting back selectively different bacterial flora… just by changing their bacterial experience.”
V/O
Throughout evolution, every one of our ancestors was born into a world full of dirt, germs and parasites.
Their immune systems had to confront every threat…
… and with each generation, the human body’s knowledge of how to defend itself grew.
POLLY MATZINGER
"While cave men were dragging women by their hair into caves, and killing all those animals, and battling each other for territory, the immune system was doing battles nobody even knew about. It was battling things that were invisible. It was battling things we hadn't a clue were out there… and yeah. Without the immune system we’d all be dead.”
V/O
We still need our immune systems to fight our biological enemies, but in the urban world it’s hard to learn who the real enemies are.
We separate ourselves from the soil, drink treated water and eat increasingly processed food.
The hygiene hypothesis says each of these factors plays a crucial role in the mis-education of the immune systemxi.
POLLY MATZINGER
“I don’t know which bacteria I would have liked my children to have... I just know that I would have liked them to have had some. Being sterile is not a good idea. Ignoring all that evolution is a bad idea.”
V/O
Every year, millions of children in the developing world die from infectious disease …
… but in hygienic western societies, allergic disease is now a far more common threat to children’s health.
Epidemiologist Julian Crane says these immune-related illnesses are the price we pay for drastically reducing childhood infections.
JULIAN CRANE
“A series of studies from many different parts of the world all suggest that there is this relationship between infections and developing allergic disease. The more infections you have, the less likely you are to become allergic.”
V/O
Wellington, New Zealand, is a typically hygienic first-world city. It also has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the asthma capitals of the world.
Peter Cole and his family are one of the reasons why. He, his wife and his three daughters all suffer asthma.
PETER COLE
“When you have a family affected with asthma it is something that you are always conscious of. The best you can ever hope for is that you manage the situation so well that it doesn’t impede on your lifestyle all the time.”
V/O
To manage their asthma, Peter and his family must constantly medicate themselves, just to stay alive.
PETER COLE
“Asthma can be very scary. My wife and I had a son. He died seven years ago.
Part of the reason he died was because of his asthma, so it is definitely a condition that you have take very seriously, because it has the potential to kill and it can turn nasty at any time. A child can be fine one minute and can be gasping for air the next.”
PETER COLE
“It can be very heart-wrenching watching a child gasping for air or coughing, coughing spasmodically and not being able to stop.”
PETER COLE
“Most of our activities are indoor activities because we cant do a lot of things like most other families take for granted like going for bike rides or play sports even go down to a local park and kick a ball around. We cant do that. The best we can hope for is that we can go for a walk together on a beach or something like that.”
V/O
Ironically, the indoor lifestyle asthma imposes may be partly to blame for the Cole family’s woes.
On average, city-dwellers now spend around 90% of their time cocooned in artificial environments which shut out almost all the natural world’s life forms.
Australian environmental health specialist Dr. Mark Donohoe believes that much like life in space, life inside these apparently safe cocoons is actually far from ideal for our healthxii.
MARK DONOHOE
“I think people think of their home as their spaceship… as if they are hermetically sealed, you know, with “shh shh” shutting door, that prevent us from being attacked...”
“Far from it being a space station in the sense of an oasis against which the world, you know, can’t get in, what we’ve done is stop the natural world getting in…and therein lies the problem.
It keeps kids from the very thing that allows them to develop strong immunity and grow up to be healthy...”
V/O
In suburban Sydney, Mark Donohoe specializes in diagnosing and managing a range of debilitating immune-related illnesses.
Their victims are often forced to take refuge in their homes. But according to Dr. Donhoe, these environments contain many of the strongest triggers for the very symptoms they’re trying to avoid.
In their drive for cleanliness, westerners have introduced a range of increasingly powerful chemicals into their homes.
More and more of us also regularly expose our bodies to powerful antimicrobial productsxiii.
Mark Donohoe argues that this is a surefire recipe for disaster.
MARK DONOHOE
“You cannot pretend that all the rest of biology is the enemy, without destroying our own health along the way.”
“We have come to the end of a golden age where we thought this would go on forever, We will just murder the microbes, we will get rid of them all, humans will be the healthier without it, and thank God we didn’t succeed because without the microbes in our bowel we don't develop normal, brain function doesn't develop, immunology doesn't develop, growth is poor.”
V/O
Few of us realise that while ridding our houses of germs, we may also kill off helpful bacteria inside our own bodies.
We even declare war on these microscopic tenants by taking a drink of water from the faucet.
MARK DONOHOE
“Chlorination of water has its upside of killing organisms in water, but the ideal is to remove the chlorine before it gets into a human because that chlorine continues to sterilize even when in the gut.”
V/O
Doctors Hugh Dunstan and Tim Roberts from Australia’s Newcastle University, are experts on the human gut’s microbial ecosystem.
Their team of “dirt detectives” analyses the faeces of immune-related disease sufferers.
They’re discovering the links these diseases have with the digestive system’s natural microbial balance – or lack of itxiv.
HUGH DUNSTAN
"In our gut we have something like two and a half kilograms, sometimes three, sometimes three and a half kilograms of bacteria that actually reside in the digestive tract. This is usually a bit of a shock to people. They have the misconception that bacteria are always the causes of disease but they in fact play a very important role in sustaining our health."
V/O
This “faecal forensics” team has confirmed that modern chemicals and antimicrobial agents can upset the healthy balance of bacteria in our digestive tract.
Harmful bugs then begin to multiply, causing a range of problems associated with autoimmune disease and allergies.
HUGH DUNSTAN
“...what we are beginning to see from our research is a strong picture is that the balance of micro-organisms, particularly E. Coli in the gut, is changing in patients with these chronic illnesses."
V/O
Among bacteria, E. coli is public enemy number one. But in reality, only one strain of E. coli deserves this fearsome reputation.
Many others actually play a vital role in converting food into energy for our muscles and chemicals for our brains.
Once again, it appears that our fear of germs has got out of balance with the facts.
HUGH DUNSTAN
"Certainly it would appear that what we're seeing on the television is the premise that all bacteria are bad things, and we, I think, have basically declared war on them…”
V/O
Since the invention of the microscope, our fear of the invisible lifeforms that inhabit our world and our bodies has grown steadily.
For some, this fear has risen to all-out phobia.
JEAN HERMANSON
“My mother, when I was growing up… … always, always had us washing our hands, all the time. And we couldn’t touch our faces because we were getting germs by our face.”
“Anything ever hit the floor… you drop a kitchen dish cloth on the floor, scoop it up and you’d get a clean one, and I do the same thing today. I mean, if anything touches anything that has any bacteria or germs on it you don’t go near it.”
V/O
Although Jean Hermanson was brought up to fear and avoid germs, her own immune system has proven to be her worst adversary.
Jean suffers from Multiple Sclerosis – another increasingly common auto-immune disease. It claims 200 new victims in the U.S. every week … most between 20 and 40 years of age. xv
Repeated attacks by Jean’s immune system have scarred her brain and spinal cord.
These scars disrupt electrical signals travelling around Jean’s body. The effects range from weakness, numbness and fatigue to visual disturbances and confusion.
Jean’s illness has literally turned her into one of the modern world’s countless walking wounded.
JEAN HERMANSON
“I think one of the most difficult things with MS is the “invisible” symptoms. You know people, they’ll often say, “well, you look just fine”, or they don’t believe me, or “oh, she’s got a bad attitude you know”… and it’s not attitude. It truly is a physical fatigue.”
V/O
The cause of MS remains unknown. But some scientists believe that a lack of education leads the immune system to attack the brain and nervous system by mistakexvi.
MARCO SALVETTI
"The immune system is acting against infection but infection is not there, so what takes place is a fictitious infectious context where the immune system operates in the absence of infection."
V/O
Despite decades of research, immunologists still don’t know exactly what calls our immune systems into action.
A new model of the immune response called the “Danger Model”, rejects the common idea that our bodies are at are war with all micro-organismsxvii.
Polly Matzinger says a healthy immune system doesn’t attack anything unless it harms you first.
POLLY MATZINGER
"Danger model goes like this: You have a community. You have police… and tourists can come in, and vacationers can come in, and immigrants can come in, and you have dogs and cats and chickens and all kinds of things… … and the police never react until somebody calls them and says, "somebody's breaking windows", and then they go do something… …
… and that's how the immune system works. It never reacts until somebody calls them, a cell calls them, and says... somebody's doing damage."
V/O
In people suffering MS and other immune-related diseases, the immune system seems unable to tell the difference between locals, tourists and “window breakers”xviii.
As a child, Jean Hermonson’s immune system had little chance of learning to pick enemies from allies.
After falling ill at age five, her doctors prescribed a course of treatment to kill off any bacteria that made their way into her body.
JEAN HERMONSON
When I was growing up I had pneumonia and rheumatic fever… …and my mom did follow the doctors orders which was that I should be on an antibiotic until I was sixteen. And so I was on penicillin from the age of five to sixteen, one dose a day.
V/O
According to the hygiene hypothesis, repeatedly wiping out the body’s bad bugs also kills off the good onesxix.
GRAHAM ROOK
“… the organisms which we consider to be important for the education of the immune system are not, for a normal individual, in any way dangerous. It looks as though the system may have chosen as its sparring partner -as its educational input- not organisms which risk killing it, but simply organisms that are always there in the environment.”
PETER ARKWRIGHT
"Only a small percentage of all the bacteria that we come across in everyday life actually cause diseases. There are thousands, tens of thousands, millions of different types of bacteria and the number of diseases that are caused by bacteria are only a very small percentage..."
V/O
In Rome, research into Multiple Sclerosis is beginning to overturn the notion that germs can only be harmful.
In this case, it appears putting a certain type of bacteria back into the body may be one way to slow the disease’s devastating impactxx.
Marina Zenobi has been battling MS for over a decade.
Although her disease was diagnosed at a relatively early stage, Marina still suffered frightening symptoms…
… and she knew they could get much worse.
MARINA ZENOBI (translation)
“Initially it started with problems with my legs, and so walking was difficult. I had just gotten married and so the idea of having a family and children was important, perhaps not immediately, but that was the idea. Instead, eveything came to a stop, as if waiting for something that was about to happen.”
V/O
Then Marina heard that neuroscientists Marco Salvetti and Giovanni Ristori were testing a radical therapy at the University of Rome.
She volunteered for their trial, hoping to stop MS from ruining her life.
V/O
Dr. Salvetti’s team injected 14 MS patients with a tuberculosis vaccine.
The vaccine uses a live mycobacterium closely related to the one that causes TB.
The scientists believed that since TB is one of our oldest adversaries, its close cousin could make an effective sparring partner for the immune system.
MARCO SALVETTI
"Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is also one of the ancient important microbes our immune system has been used during the years to cope with, so it provides many, many antigens which are perhaps very important for the fitness of our immune system."
V/O
Dr. Salvetti hoped the live mycobacteria would grab the immune system’s attention… and remind it that its proper job is not to attack healthy cells in the nervous system.
MARCO SALVETTI
"Some immune systems in some people, if they don't find microbes may begin fighting against self-constituents of the body."
"Our immune system has been brought up in a sense by microbes. So it needs… it still needs microbes to work appropriately."
V/O
Dr. Salvetti’s volunteers weren’t expecting a miracle cure. The brain lesions caused by MS are irreversible… but they prayed for an end to the attacks by their own immune systems.
Dr. Salvetti doesn’t claim to answer those prayers, but the results of the trial do offer a significant ray of hope.
MARCO SALVETTI
"…what we did was to monitor disease activity before and after vaccination and what we found was that first of all that we did not observe any increase in disease activity... "
V/O
After just one dose of microbes, the average number of immune system attacks in the patients was reduced by half.
MARCO SALVETTI
"This decrease was quite significant. I would say it was comparable to the decrease you can observe with current accepted treatments. So this is promising for future trials."
MARINA ZENOBI
“This is already a major advance. It makes the replases milder and less serious. So I manage not to suffer too much from sudden crises.”
MARCO SALVETTI
"We are convinced that this is really preventative therapy…"
"… It may also be, in the most optimistic interpretation of the data, we may really reach some kind of more long lasting protection. This has to be established."
V/O
The complex relationship between our immune systems, environment and lifestyle means the mysteries of autoimmune disease could take years to solve.
But it already appears that the cure for one terrible disease may just be a regular dose of a once-familiar parasite.
TRANSITION
V/O
17 years ago, Bernie Brown began suffering a chronic health problem.
His doctor finally concluded he was suffering from the inflammatory bowel disease known as Crohn’s Disease.
The shock of the diagnosis was worsened by the news the disease had no known cure.
BERNIE BROWN
" … umm… it's hard to explain exactly how you feel because the first thing you wonder is, am I going to feel like this the rest of my life, and your quality of life has just gone downhill to the point where... it's just shocking."
BERNIE BROWN
"I worked as an investigator for a federal agency… ah… where there was a lot of demanding activities that I was involved in..."
"Whether you’re in a process of apprehending someone or if you're sitting on a surveillance and you're looking this house and you may have to sit there for hours and hours on end, and then all of a sudden, you know… you have this urge to go to the bathroom. What do you do?”
V/O
Powerful chemicals produced by a hyper-reactive immune system inflame and scar the intestines of Crohn’s Disease sufferers…
… but Bernie discovered surgical removal of damaged tissue didn’t stop his debilitating symptoms for long.
BERNIE BROWN
"Soonafter I had this surgery… in my checkups with the doctors they had gone in and they had done more tests and discovered that the Crohn's disease had reoccured…”
V/O
Dr. Joel Weinstock specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory bowel diseasesxxi.
In some Western societies these diseases now afflict 1 in every 250 people between the ages of 20 and 40. Just a lifetime ago they were virtually unknown.
Despite years of searching, doctors have failed to find any micro-organism that could be the cause.
This prompted Joel Weinstock to to look instead for something that may be missing.
He concluded that along with certain types of bacteria, we’ve shut out another of our immune system’s oldest sparring partners – parasitic worms known as helminths.
JOEL WEINSTOCK
“It’s a wormy world and traditionally we’ve always been exposed to these organisms. It’s only in modern history where we all wear shoes and walk on sidewalks and have perfect sanitation…
... and it occurred to us that the rise in Crohn’s Disease seemed to parallel the loss of these organisms in our society. Any country that seems to be de-worming, getting rid of these parasites from their children, seemed to be developing very rapid increases in these immunological diseases.”
V/O
By eliminating these microscopic freeloaders, Dr. Weinstock believes we’ve unwittingly upset the balance of our immune systems.
This imbalance leads some to launch devastating attacks on bacteria that normally live in our intestines.
JOEL WEINSTOCK
“What may be happening in the intestine of patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease is that in the process of trying to keep those bacteria in check, that it’s overreacting, that’s it’s using the wrong circuitry to keep those bacteria in the middle, so to speak… and then we start using these other circuits that are destructive.”
BERNIE BROWN
“Lack of energy, pain in lower abdomen, feeling tired all the time. I can remember at times walking along and having cramps to the point of just doubling over and going to the ground – it was that bad.”
V/O
After enduring years of painful symptoms, Bernie heard about a research trial being conducted by Dr. Weinstock at the University of Iowa.
The treatment was highly unusual, but by this time, Bernie was prepared to give almost anything a try.
JOEL WEINSTOCK
"This tube contains the biological agent that we're using to treat patients with inflammatory bowel disease. We give them about 2000…25 hundred eggs… in some juice to drink. The eggs are obtained from parasitic worms that are grown in the laboratory and the worms produce the eggs which are then purified and rendered safe and useful for use in people.”
V/O
Dr. Weinstock hoped putting parasites back into the bodies of his patients would dampen their over-active immune systems.
By keeping them busy fending off parasites, maybe their damaging attacks on the intestines would come to an end.
JOEL WEINSTOCK V/O
“The first patient we gave it to, needless to say, we were very nervous… watched the patient carefully. A couple of weeks went by and nothing happened. The patient didn’t get sick. The patient didn’t get better. We knew the agent was alive.. we weren’t disappointed, we were very happy to see we didn’t hurt anybody.
But then about two and a half weeks into the treatment the patient calls up and says that he’s better… that his diarrhoea’s stopped, his pain’s disappeared, that his fatigue had vanished and many of the chronic symptoms he had had disappeared.”
V/O
One after another, each of the trial subjects went into remission and showed no side effects.
They now come back for a swig of juice and worm egg every three weeks – the average time it takes the immune system to flush the microscopic worms from the body.
To Bernie Brown, it’s the best drink he’s ever had.
BERNIE BROWN
“Dr. Weinstock… this is very special. It’s a life changing drink.”
BERNIE BROWN
"It was just the difference between night and day. It's just like I'd almost been reborn. I mean, it's like for all of these years you felt so miserable and then all of a sudden you felt so good. I mean, it's hard to remember when you felt that good."
JOEL WEINSTOCK
Probably in years to come we’re going to understand our relationship to our environment much better and we may want to re-establish exposure to some of the things we’ve lost. We don’t want to go back to living in dirt or drinking contaminated water, and getting salmonella, cholera… but we may want to go back in a controlled way to be exposed to things that we know are healthy for us and our children.
TRANSITION
V/O
A wave of experiments is now revealing why we should repair our relationship with our old microscopic allies.
Meetings that bring children and these ancient lifeforms together could prevent a lifetime of human suffering.
V/O
At age 11, Rachel Shelton is already a veteran of the modern world’s body wars.
For most of her life, she’s been battling the skin allergy known as eczema or dermatitis.
Today Rachel’s preparing to defend her title as queen of the local carnival... but often, her illness has made her a prisoner in her own home.
RACHEL SHELTON
“... when you can see you friends going out and you can’t actually go out with them, it’s really... disappointing... cause you really can’t do the things they can do.”
ANGELA SHELTON
“... by the time she was 7, there just wasn’t a part of her that wasn’t full of eczema, from her eyelids that couldn’t open proper ‘cause they were all split to the backs of her ears to her hair... just everything was just covered and that’s when we had to spend most of our time in hospital.”
“... you don’t understand it yourself so how can you explain it to a child? So... it’s about working together is what I’ve always said.”
V/O
Eczema is triggered the immune system reacting aggressively to a range of common substances, from dust to chlorinated water and food additives.
PETER ARKWRIGHT
"The way most people think about eczema is it's a rash that itches. For the person who actually has eczema, it's actually an itch that rashes."
ANGELA SHELTON
"…uncontrollable itching all the time. No rest through the night. She's just literally up scratching. She's in tears. Sometimes she gets so frustrated I've actually seen her using hair brushes to scratch her skin with and there's absolutely nothing you can do for her. So from that point of view, I think it's the most horrendous thing."
V/O
In desperation, Angela Shelton enrolled Rachel in an immune system “re-education” experiment being conducted by Dr. Peter Arkright from the University Manchester in Englandxxii.
ANGELA SHELTON
"… she actually deteriorated so much, and she also got the asthma as well, which is quite common that they come together… … and at that point I really felt that I couldn't cope any more. I really felt that, this is it. This is our life... and it's horrible."
DR ARKWRIGHT (to Rachel)
“What’s happening to your diet..?
ANGELA: “We’re nearly there… there’s just a coup0le of things we can’t have…
RACHEL: Like there’s milk – we had this drink of milk, see and then all of a sudden I just went bang…and it was really , really, reallly, really itchy”.
V/O
Dr. Arkwright says modern hygiene has reduced disease, but it’s also left our immune systems badly under-educated.
PETER ARKWRIGHT
“I suppose as a pediatrician I view the immune system a bit like a child in terms of how a child’s educated…and if you want a child to develop well in the community then you need to educate them from an early age.”
V/O
Dr Arkwright’s immune system “re-education” experiment began by examining 40 children’s dermatitis-affected skin.
He then injected half the children with a solution containing dead bacteria known as Mycobacterium vaccae.
They’re common in soil and untreated water.
The rest of the children were given a harmless placebo.
Their skin was re-examined after a month and then again, 3 months later.
The result of the mycobacterial treatment was highly encouraging.
PETER ARKWRIGHT
"The 20 children who had the placebo had very little change in the severity of their atopic dermatitis while the children who had the vaccine, the M. vaccae, actually had a 50% reduction in the surface area affected…"
DR ARKWRIGHT:
“Now lets start at the top. Your face looks really good now.”
RACHEL:
“Yeah it’s a lot better “
ANGELA:
“She’s tons better than she used to be. She’s done well”.
V/O
This outcome suggests that just a single exposure to the right bacteria can help teach a child’s immune system the right way to behave.
It’s another piece of evidence for the hygiene hypothesis and a welcome breakthrough for Rachel, her family and friends.
RACHEL SHELTON
"I think the injection that he gave me did really help a lot…”
... I'm getting better now, so they're really pleased with me cause they can do more things with me when I'm getting better.”
PETER ARKWRIGHT
“… bacteria stimulate the immune system and educate the immune system… … Firstly it obviously stimulates the body to fight the infection, and in another way it actually suppresses other parts of the immune system which damage the body."
ANGELA SHELTON
"All I can say that as a mother of a child who's got eczema… who's had it so severe that she's been unable to walk… to see your child having had one injection be able to go out and play and do normal things that normal children can do, to go to school for a full day, all because of one injection… To me, it's been a Godsend.”
V/O
It’s far too early to call this mycobacterial vaccine a cure.
However, scientists are hopeful it may eventually help conquer a range of allergic diseases… including one that’s now alarmingly common:
Asthma.
V/O
Every morning, Darren Hammond reaches for the one thing that all asthmatics keep close at hand - his inhaler.
Whether he’s at home, the office, or simply getting out and about, having one nearby is both comforting and potentially life-saving.
But having to inhale drugs every time his immune system gets needlessly upset is something Darren would happily do without.
DARREN HAMMOND
“I would love nothing better than there to be a way I didn’t have to do that… If I could get an injection once a year or every six months even… that would mean I wouldn’t have to worry about taking any of the preventers or reliever. That would be fantastic.”
V/O
After reading an article on the Wellington Asthma Research Group in New Zealand, Darren volunteered for their research trialsxxiii.
They’re testing whether the experimental treatment for Rachel Shelton’s eczema might also help prevent asthmaxxiv.
So far, Darren’s been involved in two preliminary trials using mycobacterial preparations.
According to research group epidemiologist Julian Crane, rigorous tests over coming years may well lead to the development of an effective asthma vaccine.
JULIAN CRANE
“A bacteria is an enormously complicated thing, very small, but there is an enormous complexity there, and probably what switches on the immune system is only a tiny fraction of it… … we will actually be able to tease out just the key components that are important for doing that.”
V/O
With similar research underway around the world, many asthmatics are hopeful their inhalers may one day be nothing more than a distant memory.
TOM DOLAN
"To have the idea that, you know, you could have a shot and that would clear it all up… it's pretty amazing, and I think that… maybe it's now, maybe it’s a little bit later down the road… but sooner or later they're gonna find a way to fix this…"
TRANSITION
V/O
An increasing number of scientists now believe that carefully restoring our long-standing relationship with micro-organisms could bring a new era of peace to bodies at war with themselves.
These ancient allies may even be the key to treating the wave of allergic and auto-immune diseases now sweeping the modern worldxxv.
In the meantime, it may just be a good idea for us to lay down some of our antibacterial arms… and think twice about trying to live in a biological exclusion zone.
POLLY MATZINGER
“We separate ourselves from everything we can possibly separate ourselves from. Now the immune system doesn't do that. It's constantly connected. It's connected with everything. We ARE connected with everything... and when we try and cut ourselves off from everything, we are doing ourselves, as a species, a great disservice."
V/O
If we continue to fight and fear the microscopic creatures of the natural world, we may prove to be our own worst enemies.
MARK DONOHOE
“It is time to rethink our strategy of winning the war against microbes as if this was a literal war , as if this was another Vietnam War of humanity, that we can just go in and Napalm. It’s time to come back and say, well, what’s our normal relationship with these things?”
TRANSITION
POLLY MATZINGER
“For me, it's much more a conversation than a war. It's cells conversing with each other. It's cells conversing with the environment. It's a conversation. It's not a war. We're not at war with everything out there.”
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