Vaccination programs have a herd effect. They reduce the chances of infection, even among the untreated. Since they improve communal immunity, there are fewer carriers of disease, and so the chance of infection declines, even in the unvaccinated. Unfortunately, this herd effect also occurs in reverse. If communal immunity declines, the probability of individual infection rises.

The real war is not against terrorists but with viruses. This reversal effect is threatening us with the biggest catastrophe in human history. The human immune system cannot function adequately without selenium. Green Revolution fertilizers fail to include this trace element and repeated cropping depletes it from the soil. Acid rain exacerbates the situation because selenium is not bioavailable in acid soils. Marine fish are usually a good source of selenium but global fisheries are also overexploited and being depleted. Widespread selenium
deficiency in food supplies, as a result, is causing a decline in the efficacy of the human immune system, increasing susceptibility to infection from numerous pathogens.

Conversely, field and clinical trials have demonstrated that viruses that encode for ( have the gene that allows them to produce) the selenoenzyme glutathione peroxidase thrive in selenium deficient populations. Such viruses include hepatitis B and C viruses, HIV-1 and HIV-2 and the Coxsackievirus B. Together, they have infected more than one-third of the Earth's population and are killing over seven million people annually. Nor has their diffusion peaked. Infection by any one of them lowers selenium stores, increasing susceptibility to infection by others. In consequence, hepatitis B and C, AIDS and myocardial infarction are all becoming more common as theresponsible viruses continue to spread.

The real war is not against terrorists but with viruses that encode for glutathione peroxidase, and they are clearly winning it. HIV-1 poses the greatest threat of all, as was recognized in 1992 by William A. Hasteltine, the chief retrovirologist at Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He pointed out "the future of AIDS is the future of humanity" and predicted that, by the year 2000, 50 million people would have been infected by HIV. By 2015 he anticipated a cumulative total of 1 billion cases. That is, he expected one-sixth of the global population to have been infected by HIV by 2015, implying a total collapse of human communal immunity. Hasteltine's estimates, to date, are proving too conservative. By the end of 2000, 57.9 million people had been infected by HIV, 21.8 million of whom were already dead. We are clearly on course for one billion or more HIV/AIDS infections by 2015, as our faith in drugs and vaccines fails us.Widespread selenium deficiency in food supplies, … is causing a decline in the efficacy of the human immune system.

While the war is being lost, there have been victories. In sub-Saharan Africa, Senegal stands as a rare success. With widespread polygamy and unprotected promiscuity, AIDS mortality ought to be extremely high. But it is not. In Dakar, HIV-prevalence amongst women attending antenatal clinics has remained static at one percent or less since the mid-1980s. Geologically, Senegal consists of a dried up Cretaceous and early Eocene sea. Calcium
phosphates for fertilizers are one of Senegal's chief mineral products. These are derived from phosphorites that are high in selenium. The country is selenium-enriched and, as a consequence, HIV-1 cannot diffuse in its population. Coincidentally, Senegal has the world's lowest cancer incidence.

The Chinese are also winning a battle against the Coxsackievirus B which causes Keshan disease, a fatal cardiomyopathy in inhabitants of the great seleniumdeficiency belt that crosses China from northeast to southwest. Widespread use of grain grown outside the belt, spraying soils and crops with selenium-enriched fertilizers, adding this trace element to livestock feed and to table salt have combined to cause a significant recent decline in Keshan disease.

Selenium also can reduce hepatitis B and C incidence. In Qidong Country, Jiangsu Province, new cases of hepatitis fell significantly amongst the 20,847 inhabitants of a township selected to receive table salt fortified with anhydrous sodium selenite. Over the same three years, there was no comparable infection drop insurrounding townships.

Selenium then has been able to greatly reduce the diffusion of the Coxsackievirus B and hepatitis B and C viruses in China. In addition, AIDS is rare in Senegal despite its sub-Saharan location. There seems only one logical conclusion to be drawn. If we are not to lose the war against viruses encoding for glutathione peroxidase, there must be a significant global increase in dietary selenium. Fortunately, as described, the Chinese are beginning to increase selenium intake in some regions by adding this trace element to salt, animal fodder and fertilizers. Agricultural supplementation programs are also underway in both New Zealand and Finland. Finland,the only country in the world with politicians intelligent enough to mandate the compulsory addition of selenium to all that country's fertilizers, has a much lower HIV infection rate than any of its Nordic neighbours.This strategy, if employed on a global scale and combined with realistic attempts to reduce acid rain, seems the most likely to halt, or at least slow down, the diffusion of HIV-1 and other viruses that encode for glutathione peroxidase. It will provide immediate benefits, is relatively cheap and easy to administer. It is the only available strategy that offers a realistic long-term future for our species.

Long-time HANS member, Dr. Harold D. Foster, was given the Doctor of the Year Award by The International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine in 2004.

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