Pardon me, but I'm suffering from plague fatigue. Big Pharma never tires of resurrecting the specter of the 1918 flu pandemic. While there is doubt that it was actually caused by a flu virus, it is certain that 675,000 deaths in the U.S. are attributed to this contagion.

But excepting this WW I plague, the U.S. has been plague-free despite numerous attempts by Big Pharma to ignite fears of its return. In 2003, it was the bird flu that the press proclaimed would ravage the nation. Three years later the media hyped a replay of the bird flu.

It was the horse flu in '07. Two years later the swine flu and the parrot flu followed the equine flu. Last year it was the dog's turn with the canine flu.

Excepting the very elderly, the sick, and others with a compromised immune system, they passed with little effect.

Now it's Ebola's turn. It's a horrid affliction that is raging in Africa and casting its shadow over the U.S.

The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry likened the ominous threat of Ebola to the never-ending battle against polio and AIDS. But this writer says, let's hope so. Indeed, if Ebola proves as life threatening as polio and AIDS, we have nothing to fear.

Paralytic polio cases in the U.S. are zero among the unvaccinated and about 150 among the vaccinated. Yes, vaccination increased one's risk. While many manifest symptoms of this malady, for almost all of the infected it is dismissed as nothing more than a cold, for others it is asymptomatic.

As for AIDS, if one does not engage in homosexual practices or is not contaminated by a transfusion with tainted blood, his chance of contracting this disease is another goose egg. AIDS is more a political cause celebre than a societal scourge.

Ebola, however, is indeed endemic in West Africa where sanitary conditions range from non-existent to abysmal. In these squalid areas, open defecation is the norm, streets function as open sewers, drinking water is routinely contaminated with pathogens, and malnutrition further exposes the populous to infections.

Ebola doesn't even make the list of top ten diseases in West Africa. Malaria, AIDS, and cholera, each exact a far greater toll than Ebola. For example, in all of Africa 10,000 are infected with Ebola while in West Africa alone there are more than three times as many suffering with cholera. Yet profit-driven western medicine ignores the root causes of these pestilences in favor of vaccines and pills.

Just about everyone has heard about the black death, a pestilence that rolled over medieval Europe in the 14th century leaving tens of millions dead in its wake. But you may not be familiar with the fact that every year three or four cases of this disease occur in the U.S. with zero deaths. Not tens of millions of fatalities mind you but only infections numbering in the low single digits with zero---there's that number again---deaths. Why?

A high level of community sanitation, personal hygiene, individual health, and when necessary, antibiotics, protect the U.S. population from this blight. But there's one more arrow in our defense quiver.

Big Pharma is leaving the lights on late searching for a vaccine or chemical concoction to be made available for a price at a local pharmacy that will save us from this latest bogyman. But at our disposal is a far more powerful protector than any man-made nostrum: our immune system.

Given sufficient sleep, adequate exercise, and nourished with nutrient-dense foods rich in vitamins C and D, a robust immune system will manufacture antibodies in response to an Ebola invasion just as it does every day to dozens of other viral and bacterial invaders.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA