PART 1

I had to break this up into three parts because it was longer than I expected it to be.

A little background about “Dr” Glidden:

“Dr” Glidden is a “doctor” in naturopathy, so he’s not really a doctor to begin with. As we all know, naturopathy is an alternative medical practice and is not rooted in science or evidence based medicine. Naturopaths are the modern day snake oil salesmen who prey on the gullible for their own profit. How many of these “doctors” have their own websites set up selling some sort of modern elixir to sooth what ales you? “Dr” Glidden’s own website is set up to sell his DVDs and Books (http://drglidden.com/online-store/). Funny, users in /r/conspiracy bemoan “big pharma” for their profit motive, yet they have no problem touting the works of “big naturopathy.” If you take a cursory look through axolotl’s posting history, his posts are a virtual cornucopia of “big pseudo-science” links on amazon.com. And who has the profit motive? At least with “big pharma” we get some good out of it. Without “big pharma” we’d still be living in the middle ages. Without “big pharma” we’d still have to worry about death from an infection every time we cut ourselves or stepped on a rusty nail; we wouldn’t have Tylenol and chemotherapeutics, we wouldn’t have insulin for diabetics. In short, we’d have shorter lives with a poorer quality of life.

A quick overview of the immune system:

The immune system is made up of two parts: innate immunity and adaptive immunity. Innate immunity is comprised of our barriers, secretions, phagocytosis, neutrophils, natural killer cells, and the complement pathway. Barriers such as skin and mucous membranes prevent infectious organisms from invading the inside of our bodies. They are why we can have S. aureus bacteria live on our bodies without causing infection (unless it enters an open wound). Secretions provide a thick medium which is difficult for invading organisms to cross. It’s also a way to get rid of those invaders that make it inside our bodies. Phagocytosis is the process by which macrophages engulf smaller invading pathogens and destroy them. Neutrophils are one of the five types of leukocytes and they contain lysosomes which destroy bacterial invaders. The job of natural killer cells is to destroy viruses and bacteria that invade our cells and also to destroy some types of tumors. The complement system is extremely complex but it works to phagocytize, lyse, invading organisms. Vaccines are not really designed to take advantage of or activate the innate immune system. Adaptive immunity is made up of humoral immunity (antibodies) and cell-mediated immunity (T lymphocytes). Humoral immunity is mediated by B-lymphocytes. B-lymphocytes produce antibodies that fight against a particular antigen. In order for a B-lymphocyte to activate, it has to be exposed to an antigen. Activation is a multistep process. It involves first recognition of an antigen through binding to a B-lymphocyte surface receptor – sometimes this process requires the help of CD4+ helper T-lymphocytes. Next, those lymphocytes proliferate, creating more antibody-creating B lymphocytes. Finally, those cells differentiate into either plasma cells (those that produce antibodies) or memory cells. Memory cells are how we become immune to an infection – they are why we only get chicken pox once in our lives. They are also the cells that we use in order to create vaccine induced immunity to a disease. Cell-mediated immunity is mediated by T-lymphocytes. CD4+ and CD8+ co-receptors are those that bind to antigens. CD4+ helper T-lymphocytes activate CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocytes as well as B-lymphocytes, which as we know, create antibodies. CD4+ helper cells are also involved in the release of interferons and interleukins. CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocytes destroy cells that have been invaded by viruses, cancerous cells, and damaged cells.