Whooping cough is back: please beware of homeopaths, their remedies and their advice!

It had been reported that five infants under three months of age have died from whooping cough this year, as cases continue to spread across the country.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has reported 1,319 cases of whooping cough in England in March, up from 900 in February and bringing the total for 2024 so far to 2,800.

But there is help!

The “Leading Holistic Health Portal” (LHHP) informs us as follows:

As far as therapeutic medication is concerned, several remedies are available to treat whooping cough that can be selected on the basis of cause, sensations and modalities of the complaints.  For individualized remedy selection and treatment, the patient should consult a qualified homeopathic doctor in person. There are following remedies which are helpful in the treatment of whooping cough:

• Cuprum met – in whooping cough accompanied with convulsions, or when the paroxysms are long and interrupted…
• Coccus cacti – this remedy has paroxysms of cough with vomiting of clear, ropy mucus, extending in thick, long strings even to the floor…
• Belladonna – in sudden violent paroxysms of whooping cough, without any expectoration, and the symptoms of cerebral congestion…
• Spongia Tosta – excellent remedy for whooping cough; dryness of all passages; cough dry, barking croupy like a saw driven through a pine board…
• Corallium Rubrum – violent spasmodic cough, whooping cough; a very rapid cough, the attacks follows so closely as to almost run in to each other…
• Aconite – clear ringing whistling whooping cough, excited by burning sticking in larynx and trachea…
• Arnica Montana – paroxysms of whooping-cough excited by a creeping and soreness in trachea, bronchi or larynx, generally dry, often with expectoration of frothy blood mixed with coagula…
• Hyoscyamus – shattering spasmodic cough, with frequent, rapidly succeeding cough, excited by ticking, as from adherent mucus…
• Hepar Sulph – hoarse croupy night cough; deep, dull, whistling cough, in the evening without, in the morning with expectoration of masses of mucus…
• Drosera – Drosera is one of the remedies praised by Hahnemann; indeed, he once said thatDrosera 30th sufficed to cure nearly every case of whooping cough, a statement which clinical experience has not verified. Drosera, however, will benefit a large number of the cases, if the following indications be present: a barking cough in such frequent paroxysms as to prevent the catching of the breath…
• Mephitis – Mephitis is useful in a cough with a well marked laryngeal spasm, a whoop…
• Ipecac – Convulsive cough, where the child stiffness out and becomes blue or pale and loses its breath…
• Antimonium tartaricum – With this remedy the child is worse when excited or angry, or when eating; the cough culminates in vomiting of mucus and food…
• Cina –This is not always a worm remedy. It is a most excellent remedy in whooping cough. It has the same rigidity as Ipecac, the child stiffness out and there is a clucking sound in the oesophagus when the little one comes out of the paroxysm…
• Magnesia phosphorica – This is the prominent Schuesslerian remedy for whooping cough, which begins as does common cold. The attacks are convulsive and nervous, ending in a whoop…

So, why do we have so many cases of whooping cough?

The reason is, of course, the currently very low vaccination rates.

And why are they so low?

Could one reason be that some healthcare practitioners advise us wrongly?

What the LHHP does not tell us is the fact that homeopaths (and other SCAM practitioners) often advise against vaccinating children against whooping cough (and other infections). Take, for instance, this section from an article entitled: “The Homeopathic Option for Whooping Cough“:

In my medical opinion, this overemphasis upon a preventative vaccination strategy is largely due to conventional medicine’s inability to treat whooping cough once it is diagnosed. Physicians understand that antibiotics are likely to have minimal if any effect upon the course of the illness once the cough has set in, and the same applies to cough suppressants. Antibiotic treatment is believed to reduce transmission to others if prescribed at the onset of the illness, but the odds of diagnosing whooping cough at this very early stage are highly unlikely.

Clinical experience indicates that homeopathic medicine is a viable option for pertussis. However, mainstream medicine’s general unwillingness to consider any therapy that is not manufactured by PhRMA tends to blind it to potentially new and/or unexplored treatments. And in the case of homeopathy, there is a long-standing undeniable bias that assumes that it is just not possible that it can work because it defies conventional medical beliefs about the nature of illness and how it can be treated.

Really, a long-standing undeniable bias?

And I thought it was called evidence!

In conclusion, I urge everyone to follow the official recommendations:

The whooping cough vaccine protects babies and children from getting whooping cough. That’s why it’s important to have all the routine NHS vaccinations. The whooping cough vaccine is routinely given as part of the:

• 6-in-1 vaccine – for babies at 8, 12 and 16 weeks
• 4-in-1 pre-school booster – for children aged 3 years 4 months

If you’re pregnant you should also have the whooping cough vaccine – ideally between 16 and 32 weeks.

To this I might add: beware of the advice by homeopaths and other SCAM-practitioners who recommend against vaccinations.