RECENTLY, WE WORKED WITH A DOCTOR AND A DAYCARE CENTER in Salt Lake City to conduct a placebo-controlled study that would test whether our colostrum strawberry chewables for children could reduce the incidence of infectious disease in such a crowded setting. The study was never completed— but for good reason. Here’s why.

It has to do with a little boy named Hunter Shepherd. You see, Hunter, one of the participants in the study, was constantly sick. By the time he was 18 months old, he lived constantly with two sets of tubes in his ears for drainage due to chronic middle ear infections. He had never slept through the night. One of Hunter’s close relatives was a pediatrician who offered to provide medical care for the child. So health care costs were not a problem. Yet, perhaps as a result of this well-intentioned relative, Hunter had been given just about every antibiotic known to humankind. Unfortunately, this, shall we say, abundance and overuse of antibiotics only served to further weaken his immune function.

Within three days of starting on first-milking colostrum, Hunter was sleeping through the night. Within seven days, the fluid buildup in, and drainage from, his ears, nose and back of throat had ceased. It was a miracle to Hunter’s parents, but, frankly, it’s what we expect from a first-milking colostrum formula. It was almost as if he had been given a vaccination against middle ear and other common children’s infections. No wonder some health experts call colostrum the universal vaccine!

But there’s more.

Hunter’s story was not unique. After two months on the chewable strawberry tablets, the parents of the children receiving only the placebo chewables had begun to notice that the kids in the other group were almost all free from colds, flu, allergies, and other respiratory ailments. The parents noticed also that the children (suspected to be receiving the colostrum chewables) seemed happier and were developing better attention spans and listening skills.

The parents of the children on the placebo tablets demanded to know which children were receiving the real thing. When they learned that their children were not receiving colostrum but only placebo tablets, they demanded their children be given the real chewables. If not, they threatened, they would quit the daycare center. The owner could not bear to lose half her clients. We ended the study and put all of the kids on the strawberry colostrum chewables.