The medical profession is continuing to immunise children against a variety of diseases, despite strong evidence that inoculation is ineffective, an expert in homeopathy told delegates at a conference at the weekend.
Dr Richard Moskowitz, a Harvard graduate, practised as a doctor before turning to homeopathy, an area of health care which focuses on treating the whole patient, rather than one particular illness. He was in Ireland to address more than 200 people at the Irish Homeopathic Conference at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Dr Moskowitz has carried out extensive work on vaccine-related illness and said that in addition to potential side-effects of inoculation, society was now rearing children who had not been allowed to build up natural immunity to diseases.
By administering vaccine to babies, doctors were changing the programme of the body's immune system, yet nobody knew the long-term effects of this. Inoculation against disease had to be repeated throughout an individual's life.
"We are dealing with a vast biotechnology industry which is manufacturing new vaccines with the idea that it is fine to pile on one after another." Hepatitis B was an example of this. "This has traditionally been an illness of intravenous drug-users and more recently of haemophiliacs, through blood-bank contamination.
"But since we've never effectively targeted the drug population, the new idea is to get babies before leaving hospital and they will be protected for life. Except that's false," said Dr Moskowitz.
He was one of three medics speaking at this weekend's conference organised by final-year students of the Burren School of Homeopathy, one of two such colleges in Ireland.
The president of the Irish Society of Homeopaths, Ms Jane Tottenham, explained that homeopathy, where patients are given minute doses of a substance in order to stimulate the body's own healing power, is becoming increasingly popular and is widely practised by doctors in countries such as Belgium, Israel and South Africa.
Homeopathy is recognised in Ireland by the health insurance company, BUPA, but not by the VHI; however, Ms Tottenham said her organisation would work for that recognition.
Homeopathy has a long history in Ireland, said Mr Francis Treuherz, a London-based homeopath who works in private practice and for the National Health Service.
He has written a book entitled Homeopathy during the Irish Potato Famine, about Joseph Kidd who used homeopathy to treat typhoid patients and later became Benjamin Disraeli's doctor.