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The Ebola Epidemic: A Chance to Embrace Natural Medicine

In recent weeks the Ebola epidemic has made headlines all over the world. Ebola is a highly infective and fatal viral disease that deserves to be taken very seriously.

However, as always, such outbreaks are immediately being instrumentalised by those interest groups that have established a global business with diseases and the fears that accompany them – namely, the pharmaceutical investment business.

In this situation, with the World Health Organization (WHO) having now declared the spread of Ebola in West Africa as an international health emergency, it is necessary to discern facts from fiction and present viable solutions to those affected as patients and those responsible as political stakeholders.

Ebola is caused by a virus of the class of filoviruses that are characterized by producing hemorrhagic fever. This means that the virus is affecting the vascular system in a way that causes leakages, leading gradually to, and ultimately massive, blood loss and death.

In the current public debate one scientific fact has gone largely unnoticed: the Ebola virus is causing disease and death only in humans and subhuman primates.  Other natural hosts of this dangerous virus are not known to develop the disease.

According to the WHO these ‘protected’ hosts also include antelopes, porcupines and fruit eating bats. Remarkably, even though these animals can carry the Ebola virus for many years, they remain unaffected by it.

There is an explanation for this fact. Most animals synthesize vitamin C in their bodies in huge amounts. Vitamin C, being one of the most powerful antiviral agents of nature, is apparently able to prevent, or at least limit, the disastrous health consequences of the Ebola virus.

In the case of fruit-eating bats, an animal unable to synthesize vitamin C, their diet consists almost exclusively of fresh fruits that are high in vitamin C content.

In contrast, humans cannot produce a single molecule of vitamin C in their bodies and frequently suffer from vitamin deficiencies due to insufficient dietary intake. This makes the human body susceptible to Ebola and other viruses.

Thus, it is not surprising that the characteristic symptoms of the Ebola infection – massive blood loss through leaky blood vessel walls – bear a striking resemblance to the well-defined vitamin C deficiency symptoms of the sailors’ disease, Scurvy

The antiviral properties of vitamin C and certain other micronutrients have been proven beyond any scientific doubt. Moreover, their benefits in augmenting and improving the immune system have been recognized by no less than nine Nobel prizes. 

It is therefore high time that local, national and global health authorities – and particularly the World Health Organization – take advantage of these scientific facts and promote them as primary public health measures to contain the Ebola epidemic. 

In the absence of this happening we encourage you to disseminate this important information as widely as possible through your personal contacts and social networks.

By Matthias Rath, M.D.