May 22, 2006

Self-medication with hookworm

Kuro5hin has an intruiging first-hand tale of a person who cured his asthma by deliberately gaining and maintaining a hookworm infestation. Although this has been proposed as a possible treatment for Crohn's and other auto-immune diseases, the necessary extensive research has not yet been done. In addition, if it is found to be effective, then the particular mechanism that the hookworms use would be analysed and, if possible, turned into a much safer medicine than being a host for parasitic organisms.

Based upon what I read, and what I learned about the hookworm I decided that I was going to try and infest myself with hookworm in an attempt to cure my asthma. I was not willing to wait ten or more years for the drug companies to bring a drug to market. It was obvious to me that hookworm, for a healthy adult with a good diet, are quite benign.
...
At this point I came to the conclusion that short of bribing a research assistant or stealing samples from a lab I would have to go to the tropics and walk around barefoot in human excrement. Not an attractive proposition, but then neither is not being able to breathe, and the breathing thing was going to last the rest of my life.

But where to go to find these hookworm?

Intensive searches of the WHO website turned up just one map showing hookworm distribution in only one country: Cameroon.