Wakefield’s Transfer Factor Therapy Never Competed with the Measles Vaccine

Monocyte IgG receptors respond to transfer factor, which may cascade into temporary cellular immunity from disease.  Most of the immune mediated response in humans using transfer factor therapy is considered experimental. 

Wakefield’s product is considered a type of transfer factor therapy.  He designed it primarily to treat secondary infections (enter-colitis) caused by a virus (measles) in the gastrointestinal tract.  When he says the transfer factor may be used as a “vaccine” this is to qualify the drug as a secondary agent in creating short term immunity from infection, which occurs not through the generation of antibodies but through the boosting of the immune system in general.

The measles vaccine, which is now only offered in the trivalant MMR claims to provide long-term immunity well beyond what any transfer factor therapy could ever hope for.  The critical differences lay in the mechanism of vaccine derived immunity, which is through antibody production not a general short-term boosting of the immune system.   The two drugs would not be in competition with one another – they would be used clinically for different purposes and could be responsibly used in tandem with each other to prevent secondary infections brought on my the MMR, particularly in the GI tract.

Further reading on transfer factor therapy (WebMD, n.d.).