Life, Death, the Immune System, and RFK Jr.

             The immune system is the most complex system in the human body. It is the only system besides the nervous system that has a memory. Vaccines utilize that memory to prime the immune system to help prevent infection and save lives from infectious disease. Most vaccines are 100% protective. Others are partially or mostly protective.

            Every human cell contains its own miniature immune system. The cellular antioxidant system keeps cells detoxified, clean, and healthy. The critical active component of 80% of antioxidants, the part that does the real work, is composed of selenium-based proteins called selenoproteins. Without enough selenium, cells get sick and die.

            The human immune system consists of the kidneys, spleen, liver, thymus, lymph nodes, and white blood cells. It performs the same task for the entire body as antioxidants do for a cell, protecting the body from invading germs, and clearing it of toxins. Like antioxidants, the cells and organs of the immune system require more selenium than the rest of the body. That is because selenium assists immune system organs and cells to do their job. Biologists classify selenium as an essential trace element. They have dubbed it “the universally protective element” because it protects the health of cells, organs, plants, and animals. Because all animals and almost all plants require selenium, one might even call selenium the essential ingredient of life. Without selenium, higher forms of life cannot exist.  

            A healthy immune system and the selenium that powers it can prevent disease, retard disease progression, and often save lives from disease. Selenium and the immune system affect almost all aspects of health. Selenium helps slow the aging process, starting at the cellular level. As Professor Margaret P. Rayman of the University of Sussex explained in “The importance of selenium to human health” in The Lancet medical journal (2000,356:233-41), selenium helps multiple ways against cardiovascular disease, including preventing heart attack and stroke and reducing blood clotting. It strengthens a weak heart, helps against angina, heart palpitations, and arrhythmia, and protects blood vessels. Higher selenium levels can help both prevent and treat cancer and reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. According to Rayman, selenium has been shown to be effective against “HIV-1 and -2, coxsackie virus B3, hepatitis B and C viruses and the measles”. It is also effective against common colds and influenza, corona viruses, hemorrhagic fever viruses including Hantavirus, Ebola and Marburg, herpesvirus like chickenpox, and probably Zika, Lassa, polio, West Nile, and Mpox. As an anti-inflammatory it helps against arthritis, pancreatitis, asthma, stress, and other inflammatory conditions including many common skin problems like acne, eczema, and psoriasis. Selenium is highly concentrated in the thyroid gland and helps against hyper- and hypo-thyroidism, as well as most autoimmune diseases, like lupus. Supplemental selenium is also quite beneficial in acute trauma and burn conditions. It speeds wound healing. As a detoxifying agent, it is an antidote for heavy metal, uranium and alcohol poisoning. Among blood diseases, selenium helps against anemia, leukemia and sickle cell disease - SCD. Although selenium assists against numerous varied diseases and conditions, it is not considered an absolute cure for any.            

            Every human cell requires selenium. Bacteria, mycobacteria that cause tuberculosis and pneumonia, and almost all viruses from AIDS to Zika also incorporate selenium. Where do pathogens acquire their selenium? Viruses and microorganisms that infect the body steal their selenium from the cells and organs they infect. By depleting their selenium supply, germs make cells and organs sick. That makes people sick. That also upsets the prooxidant-antioxidant balance in the body. When a person is ill, supplementing selenium restores the healthy oxidative balance.

Because the active component of most antioxidants consists of selenoproteins, selenium supplements are the strongest antioxidant a person can take. Besides being a broad-spectrum antiviral, selenium is also anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, anti-bacterial and helps protect mitochondria. It is especially important for many aspects of women’s health and benefits in pregnancy six ways. Selenium helps with period pain, fibroids, menopause, autoimmunity, osteoporosis, and depression. It is in every cell of the body and concentrates in the brain. There it affects the mood. It helps against depression, anxiety, hostility, confusion and delays senility. Why don’t more people know about selenium? That is largely because until the mid-1960s scientists thought selenium was a poison. They now recognize how critically essential selenium is for overall health. But many physicians still dismiss it as a mere nutrient. Although the medical community often ignores it, an adequate selenium supply is as fundamental to health as water.  

Many dismiss selenium because it is not a drug. It is a low-cost nutritional supplement. But at higher doses selenium acts like a drug. That is why in 2014 after the Liberian Ministry of Health asked me to bring selenium to test on Ebola patients, a high daily dose of 1.2mg selenite increased the survival rate of Ebola patients by 54.5%. Nothing else was found to be that effective during the entire 2014-15 West African Ebola epidemic. If they had used a higher 2.0mg dose of selenium as I had recommended, they could have increased survival by closer to 75%. In 2020, out of 10,000 drugs tested, a selenium-based drug, Ebselen, proved most effective against SARS-CoV-2.

Although selenium provides all these positive health benefits, what else can explain its effectiveness? After I started taking selenium for HIV in 1999 and observed how strongly it increased CD4 white blood cell count, I wanted to understand at what point in cellular development that happens. After a decade searching, I finally found a medical journal article that reported that selenium affects the production of CD4 cells and improves the CD4/CD8 cell ratio where naïve lymphocytes are finally detailed, tested for autoimmunity, and released into the blood stream as fully functional cells - the thymus. Increasing selenium levels increases CD4 production by the thymus and improves the CD4/CD8 ratio. Lower selenium levels decrease CD4 count. That explains how the HIV virus causes AIDS – by depleting selenium, decreasing the thymus’s production of CD4. Supplementing selenium back into the body increases CD4 count. Then HIV disease is reversed but not cured. To do that a person needs to add antiretroviral drugs - ARVs. ARVs work by suppressing the HIV replication that has been depleting selenium, thus allowing selenium levels to gradually rise and CD4 cells to increase. What is so special about CD4 cells? CD4 cells act as the generals of the immune system army. They direct other immune system white blood cells when to activate, where  to move, and when to stop. CD4 count and selenium levels move in tandem. When selenium and CD4 cell levels are high, so is immunity. When they are lower, a person’s immunity diminishes. Once a viral or other infection depletes enough selenium, vital organs fail, and a person expires. Supplementing enough selenium back into a person before that occurs makes all the difference. Why don’t more people know this? The American medical system is complex. Preventative health education is not a primary goal. Profits often come before people. If more people stayed healthy longer by making sure they got enough selenium, there would be less illness, less need for extremely expensive treatments, and fewer patients ending up in intensive care and on ventilators during viral respiratory pandemics.

How much selenium does a person require to stay healthy? Every food contains minute amounts of selenium. People need a minimum of 70mcg daily, but more can be better, especially if a person has any health problem or is older. Many multivitamins contain about 35mcg of selenium. However, most people can benefit by supplementing about 100mcg daily. People over sixty may need 200mcg daily. If a person has an acute infection like influenza or Covid-19, they need 400-600mcg for the few days until they recover. Cancer patients may need 200-400mcg or even 600mcg if they are on chemotherapy and want to reduce negative side effects. Selenium is safe with no side effects.

What about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., America’s Secretary of Health and Human Services? Unfortunately, Mr. Kennedy was addicted to hard drugs for years. That evidently affected his critical thinking and judgement. Making millions annually representing anti-vaxx, and pseudoscientific groups subverted his ethics and detached him from scientific reality. In his book The Real Anthony Fauci, in addition to questioning the foundation of modern medicine, the Germ Theory of Disease, Kennedy praises Dr Peter Duesberg as a hero. Dr Duesberg is most famous for falsely claiming HIV does not cause AIDS and that AIDS drugs were poison. Against the strong recommendation of the World Health Organization, Duesberg convinced President Thabo Mbeke of South Africa not to provide antiviral drugs to HIV+ South Africans. Over the next eight years, that caused an additional five million South Africans to become infected. That was the greatest increase in AIDS cases in history. And Kennedy esteems Duesberg as a hero! Would anyone want RFK Jr. to be in charge of their nation’s medical system? No. RFK Jr. and his antivaccination ideology will be a clear and present danger to the life of every American once the highly anticipated H5N1 avian flu becomes transmissible between people and then immediately goes pandemic. H5N1 may be two, five, ten or more times as deadly as Covid-19. Praying has never shown any effect in stopping a pandemic. It is easier to pray away the irresponsibility and greed of RFK Jr. than to pray away the next viral pandemic that will surely come in time.          

The editor of the Washington Post wellness page claims no supplement can boost immunity. However, according to the primary measure of immunity, CD4 count, selenium strongly boosts immune function. Selenium supplements work as a broad-spectrum antiviral medicine. In addition to some broad-spectrum antiviral NF-kappaB inhibitor drugs like low-dose aspirin and naproxen, selenium can be used to save lives from a future H5N1 flu pandemic. It should have been used as both early and late therapy to save lives from Covid-19. Tragically, it was not.     

 Howard Armistead is author of “The Report of the Technical Working Group on Selenium” for the Zambian Ministry of Health  (2007), and the books Understanding Covid-19, How 500,000 American Lives Could Have Been Saved (2023), and Dear Bill Gates, How to End Serial Pandemic Failure HIV-1 to Covid-19. (2022) Both books are available on Amazon.com.  Mr. Armistead has consulted for the Ministry of Health (MoH) of Zambia on H5N1 and HIV, and the MoH of Liberia on Ebola. He has studied the intersection of viruses and immune function since 1990 and has attended over 57 AIDS conferences worldwide.