Rabid Dog Saliva To Treat Behavioral Problems?

By DAVID on April 17, 2018
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

No, this isn’t recommended. An “alternative medicine” treatment for a 4-year-old’s behavioral problems involved using the saliva from a rabid dog. Yes, you read that correctly. It happened in Canada, and it’s already a big problem.

Naturopathic medicine is an alt-medicine which is supposed to use more natural substances that help trigger the body’s own self-healing properties. In this case, the child being treated is suffering from a few behavioral problems, including aggression, sleeping issues, and, to quote, the child would “hide under tables and growl.” Part of the boy’s sleeping problems came from nightmares he was having about “wolves and werewolves.” The Doctor says she thinks the boy’s problems came from a dog bite she suspected he received. The doctor put the boy on a treatment that you would give dogs for rabies, lyssinum. “The way I see it, he is coming back into a more human state from a slightly rabid dog state,” she says.

Canadian health officials strongly disagree with the treatment method though, obviously. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says “there’s no way I can understand why we would have anything that was meant to be saliva of a rabid dog approved for use in this country.” The treatment is designed to treat rabies in animals, and it’s basically a modified version of the rabies virus itself. You can see how injecting rabies into a 4-year-old is a problem. “It’s hard for me to believe as a physician that anything that was made from a very serious lethal infection … would have any therapeutic benefit… I also have concerns that this would be used for treating what sounds very much like a behavioural issue in a young child” Dr. Henry continued. But still, the original doctor says that the boy has improved. Either way, the College of Naturopathic Physicians of British Columbia has her back, saying they believe in the use of lyssinum. Check out some more info on the story and treatment here.

Around the site