In the 1950s the accepted mantra of medicine, put forth by Nobel prize winner Paul Ehrlich, was horror autotoxicus, that the body could not and would not turn on itself. And this was the accepted science all through the first two-thirds of the 20th Century. It wasn’t until 1957 that a young post doc at the University at Buffalo by the name of Noel Rose discovered autoimmunity when he found that rabbits in his lab were developing antibodies that were attacking and destroying their own thyroids. But because this ran completely against accepted medical doctrine, even after this discovery, the idea that autoimmune diseases could exist – and that the body could turn on itself — was not widely accepted in medicine until the late 1970s. It took years before autoimmune disease was widely taught in medical school.
Even today, most doctors know little about these diseases or about the exact process by which our immune system turns from friend to foe. It’s only in the last ten years that scientists have been able to show in the lab exactly how the immune system, when it’s overwhelmed by foreign invaders such as chemicals and viruses, can go haywire and destroy our own tissue and organs in acts of “friendly fire.” The fact that these diseases have been challenging for the medical community to understand means that even today getting a correct diagnosis can be very difficult.
Most people who have an autoimmune disease see six doctors over four years before they get a diagnosis. One patient suffering from severe muscle fatigue and disabling weakness was told by a doctor she’d seen eight times: “We’ve given you every test known to man except for an autopsy. Would you like one of those too?” It was five years before she got a diagnosis of myasthenia gravis. The medical establishment often lacks a full understanding as to how to diagnose these diseases, dismisses women who complain of telltale symptoms, and often has little to offer in the way of effective treatment.
