A lousy business
- How an ordinary homeopath
and mother ended up killing millions
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A lousy business -
How an ordinary homeopath and mother ended up killing millions
by Mary Aspinwall, ISHom, PCHom
Published in Homeopathy Today September 2003
Money, money, money
Head lice are big business! In 1995 the UK market for conventional
head lice pesticide medicines was worth $23.5 million (US$).
Just three years later, the figure had more than doubled to
$48.5 million. This points to a fact that many families are
discovering: the conventional kill-destroy approach is expensive,
and it doesn’t work.
When I was at homeopathy college
I was told head lice could be successfully gotten rid of with
a dose of the homeopathic remedy Staphisagria. I duly tried
out that theory and was underwhelmed with the results. Thereafter
I always took a full case of the person with head lice and
then prescribed the best homeopathic match I could find. This
approach seemed to bring better results.
A couple of times in my practice,
I came across children who had been dosed with conventional
pesticide medicines so often that they seemed to have poisoning
symptoms: lethargy, pallor, dark circles under the eyes, loss
of appetite, nausea, and weakness. In one case, the homeopathic
remedy Nux vomica helped quite spectacularly.
I felt uneasy to think that
well-meaning parents were spending large sums of money and
were frequently dosing their kids with very poisonous substances,
Pyrethrum and Malathion (of DDT fame), often to a level way
beyond manufacturer’s recommended limits, because of
the problem of constant lice reinfestation.
The lice hit home
Despite a worldwide louse epidemic, my own family remained
blissfully untouched by the problem for a long time. However,
when my daughter reached the age of seven she finally got
the little brother she had had on order for a long time. Her
only-child world got turned upside down by a boy who found
life down here very difficult and made sure we all knew about
it! Suddenly she became infested with head lice. Susceptibility
is a much-overlooked issue in the lice debate. Why is it that
some children and most adults can sit next to someone who
is totally infested and emerge unscathed? (Answers on a postcard
please …)
Once we were forced to deal
with the problem directly, my husband and I set about investigating
the whole subject in depth. Thank God for the Internet, which
is a mine of wonderful information at such times. So here
is …
The low-down on lice
The head louse is a beautifully adapted six-legged wingless
breeding machine. Having found a new host, it uses its specially
adapted legs and claws to grab hold of the hair strands. It
will try to stay close to the scalp, often hiding in the thicker
hair at the back of the scalp or behind the ears where it
bites and feasts on blood. To survive, it will need to feed
daily on human blood and live in human hair. Contrary to popular
opinion, it will not give a hoot if the hair is clean or filthy
provided there is a heart beating somewhere beneath it!
We are family
Adult lice, from around two weeks old, can start to mate.
The female begins to lay eggs (nits). They are tear-shaped
and pinhead size. Using a natural glue on the hair strands,
she sticks the eggs near to the scalp where the warmth of
the head will help them to incubate. The unhatched eggs reflect
the color of their surroundings making them very difficult
to see in dry or wet hair. She may lay 6--10 eggs a day for
up to 2 weeks. Do the math and you’ll see that could
mean up to 140 offspring waiting to happen. Cozy and hidden,
her progeny will emerge around 7--10 days later. Once the
baby louse has hatched, its empty eggshell will glisten white
on the hair, making it easy to spot, but by that time the
little critters will already be out and about. In just 7--14
days the louse will molt three times until it is the size
of a match-head, then just like Ma and Pa it will start doing
the nasty too. 140 times 140 = 19,600. How many angels was
it that could fit on the head of a pin again?
The road less traveled
So much for know thine enemy. Next we had to decide what to
do about it. Philosophically and practically we had seen and
heard enough to know that the pesticide route was not the
way forward. Such antipathic approaches often cause the original
problem to escalate. Over time, more and more medicine is
needed just to get the same effect.
Antibiotics have given rise
to multi-resistant strains of bacteria, and the use of pesticides
has had a similar effect on the head louse. Whatever doesn’t
kill us makes us stronger, and the same is true for insects
and microscopic organisms. Natural treatments such as tea
tree oil claim to be safer, and perhaps they are, but they
still work on the same premise, namely they kill things by
poisoning them. This left one approach, the wet combing method.
Initially we tried a very fine-toothed metal comb designed
for combing fleas from pets. This caused many a tear before
bedtime (mostly mine in pure frustration) and was discarded.
No sex please we’re British
The Internet came to our rescue again when we found a charity
based in Britain called Community Hygiene Concern. They are
not a very sexy charity, concentrating exclusively as they
do on head lice and dog mess, so they have to struggle to
get any donations or money from public funds. (Toxicara, a
parasite, can spread to humans via dog feces, and can cause
blindness.) Nevertheless, they were determined to introduce
the concept of coitus interruptus to the world of the louse.
They had developed a set of five specially-designed, graded
combs and a wet combing regimen using ordinary conditioner.
This so-called Bug Busting method
was not only a very effective way of determining whether or
not someone had lice, but was also an excellent way of getting
rid of lice if they did. Like all great ideas, it was beautifully
simple: by Bug Busting with these special combs four times
every fourth day, you could actually break the lousy life
cycle and stop the critters from breeding. The combs were
so fine, they even removed the eggs and empty eggshells.
Contacting my inner primate
Reader, I bought the Bug Busting kit, followed the instructions
(rare enough for me), and got combing. I felt like a big mama
gorilla and really got into the grooming thing, but the moral
dilemma remained. Of course, there was nothing to say that
I had to kill those bugs once I’d combed them right
outta her hair, but setting them free in the garden would
just have meant a slow death from starvation. So I confess
I just squished them on some tissue and threw them on the
fire. I admire their powers of adaptation and feel they still
have a good chance of inheriting the earth, but if I have
to choose between a bunch of thirsty bloodsuckers and my beloved
daughter … it is a no-brainer. So to cut a long bit
of self-justifying rambling short, to my utter relief, the
Bug Busting kit actually did what it said on the box.
Contacting my inner entrepreneur
I was so impressed I bought 1000 … that’s the
kind of girl I am. I think it’s genetic. When my grandfather
died he left a legacy of hundreds of bristle toothbrushes.
I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time (just after
World War II). Not wanting to leave a similar legacy, with
the help of my techno whiz kid husband I wrote to every elementary
school and health board in Ireland to tell them of our discovery,
and soon after, we started mailing out the comb kits to desperate
parents.
They liked them. What’s
not to like? They are cheap. One kit can treat loads of kids.
Your kids don’t risk getting poisoned. The lice are
history. The parents told their friends and parents’
associations. I started being invited to speak on regional
and national radio shows, and we started to get big orders
from health boards and schools who wanted to encourage simultaneous
Bug Busting efforts to cut down the risk of reinfestation.
Live and let die
That was all many moons and several thousand Bug Buster kits
ago. So now here I sit at my laptop … a mass murderer
and that’s why I’m praying that next life I don’t
come back as a Pediculus capitas.
*To find out more about Bug Busting, visit http://www.chc.org/bugbusting
About the author:
Mary Aspinwall studied at the London College of Homeopathy
and is a Dynamis School graduate. She is a Registered member
of the Irish Society of Homeopaths. In 1992 she designed the
best-selling Helios Double Helix homeopathic medicine kits
for home use, foreign travel, and childbirth and wrote A Basic
Guide to Homeopathy. She now has a large, busy holistic health
center in the South West of Ireland, teaches for the Irish
School of Homeopathy, and together with her saintly husband
runs www.homeopathyworld.com. You can read more of her cases
and articles there.
© Mary Aspinwall
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