Is SARDS An Autoimmune Disease?

Is SARDS An Autoimmune Disease?

This is a guest post by Paula Cook.

Butter P, our 7 year old American Dingo, suddenly lost her eyesight in December of 2013. Once we established she had the hormonal imbalance ACEIS, Dr. Plechner's protocol was administered.  Her eyesight has been restored, she's lost weight and is happy and energetic.  She's acts like a young pup.

Now that her eyesight has returned, I've been doing as much research as possible to better understand SARDS.  I'll do everything I can to help Butter P live a happy, healthy life.

I've come across quite a few "scientific facts" that I find very questionable and feel some of this can be very misleading and possibly not really important for the successful treatment of SARDS.

SARDS is widely accepted by the scientific community as an autoimmune disease. However, a few research publications still say SARDS is not autoimmune because no anti-retinal antibodies have been identified.

Autoimmunity can still be involved without humoral anti-antibodies being created, as it can also occur with the cell-mediated type of autoimmunity which is created by certain immune cells that destroy the patient's own tissue without causing the creation of anti-antibodies. This happens to be Dr. Plechner's belief, and he does not stand alone with his thinking.

Whether SARDS is an autoimmune disease or not, isn't an important issue for me.  But since it seems to be an important question for many, even though it's only academic and doesn’t seem clinically important in the treatment of SARDS, I decided to write about this and share my research findings.

I've provided a link from the Wikipedia page "Autoimmune Disease". While scrolling down the page, you'll see a huge list of human diseases believed to be autoimmune, but not yet "proven" by the research community.

It's my understanding that it's not a clinician's job (Dr. Plechner's) to prove that SARDS is an autoimmune disease or not, since it does not affect his proper treatment.  It's the responsibility of the research branch of medicine with all their money, facilities and research laboratories to decide this or not.

I do notice that Wikipedia has the "sudden acquired retinal degeneration" (SARDS) page classified as a "low level" priority for editing and updating, so I doubt the research community has placed SARDS as a high level research project either. From my standpoint, SARDS, which is being diagnosed more and more frequently, should be listed as a high priority.

I feel the research community has failed for almost 50 years to do research and double blind studies that will PROVE that Dr. Plechner has found a successful protocol for ACEIS (Plechner's Syndrome) that will cure many diseases, including SARDS. Dr. Plechner reports that if proper SARDS treatment is begun as soon as possible, that there is eyesight return in as high as 75% of the SARDS patients he treats.

In my mind, this is where the giant kink in the wheel has occurred. Dr. Plechner has released all kinds of research information and clinical studies, but it's not his place to do double blind studies to prove his research.  In fact, it would be unethical for a practicing clinician to do double blind studies, where you have to "not treat" half your patients and let them get sicker or maybe even die.  Both Dr. Plechner and myself believe that it is the responsibility of every practicing clinician to treat every patient to the best of their ability.

I asked Dr. Plechner about this and he said "Can you imagine doing double blind studies on already clinically blind dogs to merely write an article for a medical publication? Whatever happened to the Hippocratic Oath that we as veterinarians have accepted and have promised to live by?"

The only reason I keep bringing up this question of autoimmunity is because it seems more important to the medical profession to prove whether or not SARDS is an autoimmune disease, than successfully treating the actual SARDS disease itself.

Since this seem to be such an important issue, it must be taken up by the medical research community, and not by Dr. Plechner. I know he has many patients to treat, which are far more important!

I feel the information is available on the internet for everyone to decide for themselves. But personally, my analysis is that SARDS is widely believed to be a cell-mediated autoimmune disease and we're waiting on the research community to do their job and prove or disprove it.

Looking at the huge list of human autoimmune diseases that still need to be proven, I'm not holding my breath that during my lifetime they'll get around to the proper and needed research on such a "low priority" disease as SARDS, especially since the veterinary profession has decided for the SARDS owner that "blind dogs can live good quality lives", nor do many of them see a connection with other health problems, which I think most of us pet owners do clearly see.

Since SARDS is an autoimmune disease, the longer this disease goes without being treated, the greater the chances are that a SARDS patient will succumb to other autoimmune diseases and cancer!

I know that most of you that have SARDS pets have been dealing with your pet's autoimmune disease much longer than I have, but I've been very angry that some of the veterinarians I approached wouldn't even look at Dr. Plechner's research and successful protocol findings, when they themselves, have no answers nor treatments. I realize their concerns, but if they're so afraid to "think outside the box" when they have no treatment, I personally don't believe they should be in a profession that deals with "life and death" every day!

If you detect a bit of rage in me, I will definitely admit that's true! The veterinary profession's mantra "blind dogs can live a good quality life" just makes me furious.  This "diagnosis" gives them the easy way out to not even look at Dr. Plechner's research, because they feel they've done their job and administered the "treatment", which is "learning to live with a blind dog", is more than adequate, and that SARDS patients will go on to live happy, healthy lives because after all, these dogs have great secondary senses, and having lost their sight should not really be important to them!

I feel very blessed that we found Dr. Plechner in time to bring Butter P's sight back.  I know there are many permanently blind dogs that could have been helped if only his research had been accepted, used and believed! While I'm euphoric for Butter P, I also feel guilty for my happiness, since I know there are many blind dogs out there that should have been helped, but were not.

Sadly I also realize that many pet owners may have to accept the fact that their dog has gone blind, even if their blindness did not occur from SARDS.

But for us, this sudden SARDS blindness became impossible to live with for both Butter P. and for us, as a family. Butter P's loss of eyesight become even more important to me than the possibility of her developing future diseases without proper treatment.  Maybe that sounds not caring of me, but I experienced the absolutely horrendous results that the blindness caused both Butter P and our family.

Butter P has always been a “crazy” happy kind of dog. The only thing we ever worried about with her wonderful enthusiasm was the possibility of her hurting someone, when she "thrashed" around on them, because she was so happy to see them.  Butter P obviously loved everyone and could not contain her happiness, which everyone shared with her.

Butter P is actually my 21 year old daughter's dog and has been with her at college this last year, but came back home with me, during my daughter's semester breaks.  Butter P always checked out whomever knocked on my daughter's door; friends, pizza delivery, etc.  She was always friendly. But unfortunately, when she lost her eyesight, she became lost and terrified.

For the first time, she became aggressive and barked at people in a very, scary way because she could not see them and was frightened. She felt she needed to protect my daughter from intruders that she could not see.  It was heartbreaking to see her in this miserably distressed state.

As I mentioned earlier, Butter P's an American Dingo. This is a dog breed discovered in the wild in the late 1970's in the Savannah River Region.  Their DNA is traced back to root DNA, a "primitive" dog classification with no European DNA found.  So when we saw her becoming territorial and aggressive, we started thinking "wolf, wolf!". We wondered what she was capable of if she reached back into her root DNA to compensate for her sudden blindness.

My daughter quit having friends over, which as some of us know, is a devastating lifestyle change for most college students.

Even as a pup, we couldn't find a dog toy that she didn't completely destroy in 60 seconds or less, so Butter P's strength was not taken lightly.  I've seen mention of SARDS dogs being scared to walk around, etc.  Butter P didn't slow down or miss a beat.  She was very smart about mapping, but she still just went full speed ahead, crashing her head and face into everything.

When Butter P came home for the four week Christmas holiday, it was complete chaos. The entire holiday was miserable.  Since she was now barking at everything, we had to separate her from our family and exclude her from the holidays, while she whimpered in rooms she now didn't recognize, since she was newly blind.  I wouldn't let her be around my young nieces and nephews, since I was afraid they might pet her while she was sleeping or make a sudden move (as children do) and Butter P might "go crazy".

Blindness was unbearable for Butter P and it was unbearable for us too.  We were trying to figure out ways to create a "good quality life" for Butter P. We would never consider finding another home for her or "putting her to sleep", but SARDS didn't feel like it was a life worth living for both Butter P and for our family.

When I found Dr. Plechner's research and studied all the owner's success stories, I knew we would get his protocol administered even if we had to take Butter P all the way to California to Dr. Plechner.  When I contacted other veterinarians that knew nothing about his protocol, all they did was to warn us about the possible harm or side effects that might happen using Dr. Plechner's protocol and treatment plan. My response to them was "she's already HARMED"!!!

I personally would rather have Butter P live another year or two with eyesight and happiness, than her live her life as it was before, without beginning Dr. Plechner's protocol.

In closing, I've decided that much of this scientific talk is above me and it's not something I choose to spend the rest of my life trying to understand. As long as Butter P is doing great and has her life and eyesight back, I will just sit back and marvel at this miracle.

I mentioned the "miracle" word to Dr. Plechner and he humbly said, "It's just a very simple treatment. Butter P had a hormonal imbalance and the treatment corrected it."