I recently posted an article describing my disdain that two out of three babies receive antibiotics by their first birthday.

A Canadian physician sent me a letter describing my views as:

"Simplistic to say the least. If you would care to look at infant mortality rates in the "pre-antibiotic era" you will be amazed to find that most babies were killed before their first birthday by "everyday" infections, like streptococci, that are routinely treated and therefore a life "saved" today by your enemy, antibiotics."

This well-intentioned but misinformed physician has not done his homework. He speaks with scientific authority as if he had lived through that age and is accepting similar commonly held tenets that are used in the justification of vaccines. Namely, this logic implies that the introduction of these procedures is solely responsible for the improvement in deaths from infectious diseases.

What cannot be debated is the fact that infectious diseases are declining. But are they declining from the use of antibiotics and vaccines or are there other contributing factors?

In the United States during the mid part of the last century there was a dramatic decline in the occurrence and mortality of scarlet fever. This decline in severity began in the 1930s, BEFORE the advent of antibiotics for the treatment of streptococcal disease, and continued up to and including the 1970s. The death rate declined from 72 percent in the pre-antibiotic area to about 7 percent to 27 percent thereafter.

It is likely that improved nutrition and hygiene are largely responsible for the improvement in infectious diseases, not antibiotics, as even in the post-antibiotic era the death rate can be as high as 27 percent.

Should antibiotics be used? Absolutely. I am not opposed to their use in every circumstance, only to the reliance on them in situations where they are obviously of little or no use. In my experience that is well over 95 percent of the time they are prescribed.

Ideally, you will be able to use this information to spread the truth about the true cause of disease. It is encouraging, however, to see that the trend of antibiotic abuse by physicians is decreasing.

Having said that, I did receive a number of letters from physicians from non-U.S. countries denouncing the fact that I did not praise antibiotics because they have saved so many lives of children that would have died in earlier times.

It is clear that there are indeed times when antibiotics are needed and will benefit the person taking them. However, in the larger picture they are widely over-prescribed and, in my experience, rarely required if the adult or child is receiving optimized nutrition.

What most physicians fail to realize is the enormous influence that sugar and grains have on the immune system. If you eat a typical American diet, you will likely obtain a variety of infections due to this immune impairment.

However, even an optimally fed infant will acquire infections. This is just the natural process of growing up. This is not necessarily a bad thing as many parents fear.

Many traditional medical circles now accept the hygiene hypothesis -- the idea that children who experience frequent infections and inflammations in early childhood will strengthen their immune systems and be less prone to allergies and asthma than children who rarely experience such infections.

Unfortunately, the hypothesis hasn’t penetrated the population rapidly enough to prevent the inevitable health traumas resulting from the antibiotics given to our infants.

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