Is Immunotherapy with Mycobacterium Vaccae Appropriate to Crohn’s Disease?

It is highly likely that the inflammatory bowel diseases are all infections, but the question remains as to the identity of the causative organism or organisms. Accepting that they are infections is more important than knowing the identity of the organisms themselves, or knowing the precise genetic makeup of persons whose response to such infections will be to develop these diseases. Their aetiology is likely to be bacterial rather than viral, and for a number of reasons these bacteria are unlikely to be present in the tissues in their conventional form. The very slow progression of these diseases in most cases, their very slow response to antibacterial agents, and the difficulty experienced in demonstrating them in the tissues all suggest that the pathology of the disease is an excessive response to a small number of very slowly growing organisms for which the term “slow bacteria” seems appropriate (1).