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The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear— fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable.
What he wants above everything else is safety. – Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956)
Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
– Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Not a scintilla of truth as to the benefit of vaccination or
of anti-diphtheritic serum, is in existence, except statistics. And statistics are lies. Two kinds of lies. Deliberate lies and stupid lies. I have spent too much time behind the scenes where medical statistics are made to have a particle of faith in them.
– F. N. Seitz, Mechano-Therapy Specialist, 1908
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie— deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
– John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–1963)
Belief and fear are powerful influences to the psyche. Because hier- archical powers have exploited these human vulnerabilities, they have unfortunately shaped the world.
People are led to believe that because the world is a dangerous place, only governments and large institutions can provide protection because they are bigger and more knowledgeable than small com- munities. Rules and restrictions are put in place. Those who believe this lose trust in their own capability and thus surrender thinking and decision making to others.
Doctors are no exception to this phenomenon. Medical practitioners cede their independent thinking to texts, advisory panels, and tradi- tions, which vary depending on political influences of the times.
In medical school, doctors are taught to view the human body as a random mistake-ridden vessel that has to be forced into submis- sion with surgery, antibiotics, antihypertensives, antihistamines, anti-inflammatories, and other medical interventions. The natural extension of this paradigm over the past 100 years has been for the medical profession to condition human beings not to trust any- one but certified medical doctors to fix these defective aberrations of creation.
In the late 1800s, Dr. Charles Creighton wrote a comprehensive report that was published in the Encyclopedia Britannica.781 His con- tribution, which presented a great deal of detail, found many serious problems with the medically promoted procedure of the time called vaccination. He critiqued numerous facets, including the history of Edward Jenner’s discovery, risks of vaccination, effectiveness of vac- cination and revaccination, and vaccination legislation.
His piece also contained numerous data tables that did not rein- force the benefit of vaccination, including figures of deaths from the skin disease erysipelas after smallpox vaccination. By 1903 the
781 “Vaccination,” Encyclopædia Britannica, The Henry G. Allen Company, New York, vol. XXIV, 1890, pp. 23–30.
Encyclopedia Britannica contained the same piece, but with all the tables removed.782
By 1922 Dr. Creighton’s vaccination contribution was completely eliminated and replaced with a new entry, “Vaccine therapy.”783 This item contained only a brief paragraph that referred to the original smallpox vaccine invented by Edward Jenner. It stated that smallpox vaccination provided immunity, and if by chance smallpox was con- tracted in a vaccinated person, the disease would only run a “mild” course.784
The rest of the article discussed different applications of vaccine therapy and concluded that vaccination would eventually find even more applications and become recognized as an important tool to combat disease. Ideology and myth had displaced verified historical documentation. The history of the phenomenally successful non- vaccinating experience in Leicester, the documented vaccine-related diseases and deaths, the 1872 smallpox pandemic, the fact that smallpox had shifted to a mild disease in spite of declining vaccina- tion rates, the spreading of foot-and-mouth disease via vaccines, and the amazingly successful use of apple cider vinegar against smallpox were all trampled under the heels of conventional medicine’s grow- ing dominance.
The new literature that was distributed to the public and doctors was predominantly mythology about “Jenner’s great discovery.” From here, the idea of dangerous germs and lifesaving vaccines came to dominate medical and societal thinking.
Vaccination was successfully implanted into the minds of the masses as the most effective means to prevent disease. Next came diphtheria antitoxin in 1895, and then diphtheria vaccination starting in 1920.
782 Encyclopedia Britannica, The Saalfield Publishing Company, Akron, Ohio, 1903, pp. 6119–6121.
783 “Vaccine Therapy,” Encyclopædia Britannica, The Encyclopædia Britannica Company, New York, vol. XV, 1922, pp. 319–321.
784 Ibid.
A cascade of research on vaccines for other diseases was subse- quently funded and pursued with great enthusiasm. Not surprisingly, after 1900, while provocation polio was on the rise, so was the prac- tice of many intramuscular injections for many vaccines and medical treatments. Here are the vaccines that were used in New Zealand at the end of 1911:
That list might seem bizarre, but the same type of bamboozlement was occurring in the United States. Senate hearing minutes from 1972 reveal the details of the 32 “worthless vaccines” that were licensed and on the market.786 The estimated cost of the vaccines, which were “of little value and perhaps even harmful,” was esti- mated to be “astronomical.” Some of the vaccines had been on the market for 20 years.
Here is the list:
serobacterin in vaccine mixed
785 House of Representatives, 1912, Appendices to Parliamentary Journals, Session 2 V. iv. Page 108 of the Director General of Health’s report.
786 Consumer Safety Act of 1972, Hearings before the subcommittee on execu- tive reorganization and government research, 92nd congress, second session,
S. 3419, April 20, 23, and May 3, 4, pp. 346–348, 435.
The manufacturers included Eli-Lilly, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and Parke Davis.
From the beginning, vaccination was promoted by vastly exaggerat- ing the benefits, and unrealized promises were repeatedly made. Whenever possible, any problems or disasters were concealed from the public. In the early 1900s, Dr. Charles Cyril Okell, a high-ranking expert in the field of infectious diseases,787 wrote numerous articles published in a wide variety of medical journals. He pioneered the first attempts (on himself) using a scarlet fever bacteria toxin in the United States. Shortly before his premature death in 1939, he wrote his final work, which was effectively a deathbed confession. In it, he noted the gross distortion of the benefits of vaccination and the con- cealment of mistakes.
. . . the immunisation of the masses has been undertaken with almost a religious fervour. The enthusiast rarely stopped to
787 H. J. Parish, “Charles Cyril Okell,” Journal Hygiene, May 1939, vol. XXXIX, no. 3, pp. 217–224.
wonder where it would all finish or whether the fulsome promises made to the public in the form of “propaganda” would ever be honoured. Without propaganda there can, of course, be no large-scale immunisation, but how peri- lous it is to mix up propaganda with scientific fact. If we baldly [in plain or basic language] told the whole truth it is doubtful whether the public would submit to immun- ization . . . Accidents and mistakes must inevitably happen and when they take place what might have been a highly in- structive lesson is usually suppressed or distorted out of recognition. Those who have had to take detailed notice of the immunisation accidents of the past few years know that to get the truth of what really went wrong generally calls for the re- sources of something like the secret service.788
During this time of vaccine obsession, infectious agents were mis- takenly envisaged as causative for many medical conditions. Pellagra caused diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death. Today it is known to be caused by niacin or tryptophan deficiency. However, there was a time when doctors believed that pellagra was induced by a virus. Dr. Ralph Scobey remarked on pellagra in 1952.
Harris (1913) was able to inject . . . filtered tissue mate- rial from pellagra victims into monkeys to cause a corre- sponding disease in these experimental animals. He concluded from these experiments that a virus was present in the injected material and that was the cause of pellagra. If the work of Harris had been followed exclusively, various strains of “virus” might have been discovered and a vaccine, effective in experimental animals might have been developed . . .789
Perceived risk of a disease seems to increase after the development of a vaccine. For instance, measles and chicken pox were widely
788 Charles Cyril Okell, “From a Bacteriological Back-Number,” The Lancet, January 1, 1938, pp. 48–49.
789 Ralph R. Scobey, MD, “The Poison Cause of Poliomyelitis and Obstructions to Its Investigation,” Arch Pediatr, April 1952, pp. 172–93.
thought to be routine childhood illnesses until the vaccines were available. Then, concern over complications of infection moved to the forefront of discussion. After the risks were broadcast, fear set in, and most people quickly give up their responsibility and decision making. They thought they were accepting a smaller risk to avoid a bigger one. Belief and fear merge and keep the majority obedient to vaccine mandates. There may have been some protest from parents who knew measles and chicken pox were normal and harmless childhood illnesses, but eventually those voices became silent.
Opposition to vaccination was and still is deemed to be only from those who don’t understand science and, because of their foolhardy resistance, can bring on more disease and death. From his 2011 book Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, Dr. Paul Offit discusses his belief in Edward Jenner and the first vaccine.
In 1796, Edward Jenner invented a vaccine that eliminated smallpox from the face of the earth . . . In 1898, the British gov- ernment finally gave in, appeasing angry citizens by passing a conscientious-objection law. People who didn’t want to get a vaccine didn’t have to. Within a year, the government issued more than two hundred thousand certificates of conscientious objection. By the late 1890s, vaccine rates plummeted. In Leicester 80 percent of babies were unvaccinated . . . Anti- vaccine forces had won the day . . . As a result, England became Europe’s epicenter of smallpox disease and death. For anti- vaccine activists in England, the freedom to choose had become the freedom to die from that choice.790
What is conspicuously missing is evidence to support the statements made. Data and graphs are not presented to prove what he says, which in turn influences what other doctors believe. Paul Offit simply makes the statement that England had become an “epicenter of smallpox disease and death” in the late 1800s. The belief that Offit
790 Paul A. Offit, MD, Deadly Choices—How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, 2011, pp. 106, 125.
is an expert in infectious diseases and thus an expert on history and vaccination overrides any need for his readers to request proof of his statements.
In a 2011 article, Saad Omer made a similar statement on how the decrease in the use of the smallpox vaccine resulted in a resurgence of smallpox. The decline in vaccination was, according to Omer, a result of “irregular physicians” who did not follow the orthodox medical model.
Despite the challenges inherent in establishing a reliable and safe vaccine delivery system, vaccination became widely accepted as an effective tool for preventing smallpox through the middle of the 19th century, and the incidence of smallpox declined between 1802 and 1840. In the 1850s, “irregular phy- sicians, the advocates of unorthodox medical theories,” led challenges to vaccination. Vaccine use decreased, and smallpox made a major reappearance in the 1870s.791
Statements like this that influence mass belief are not borne through evidence or historical documentation. In many places in the world, including Leicester, England, vaccination rates had been high through the 1800s. Strict laws in England, Massachusetts, Chicago, and other places ensured extremely high vaccination rates of 90 percent or more. Despite this, there were repeat epidemics of smallpox which culminated in the 1872 smallpox pandemic that killed large numbers throughout the world, even in populations that were highly vaccinated.
791 Saad B. Omer et al., “Vaccination Refusal Endangers Public Health,”
Epidemics, 2011, p. 171.
By the 1880s, vaccination rates had declined in Leicester and in England. Conventional thinking of the time falsely predicted that there would be a resurgence of disease and death from smallpox as it would “spread like wildfire” through the unvac- cinated population. Despite the dire
Note that the graph (17.1) shows that there was almost always a spike up in small- pox deaths coincident with increased vaccination cov- erage. This fact is opposite to conventional medical belief.
predictions, the Leicester Method was effectively implemented in place of vaccination for the next 60 years (Graph 17.1).
Data was gathered showing a greater fatality rate in those vaccinated versus not vaccinated. In this 1928 letter published in the British Medical Journal, the author noted his and the almost “universal med- ical belief” in vaccination while presenting statistics showing the op- posite for the years 1923–1926.
“. . . the fatality rate among vaccinated cases was just five times as great as among unvaccinated cases.”792
There were those in the medical community who were relieved that the failure of compulsory vaccination never gained much public scrutiny. Instead, the focus was shifted to new types of vaccinations.
Compulsory vaccination which once had the suffrage of the nation has now hardly a serious supporter. We are ashamed to jetti- son the idea completely and perhaps afraid that if we did the accident of some future epidemic might put us in the wrong. We prefer to let compulsory vaccination die a natural death and are relieved that the general public is not curious enough to demand an inquest. In the meantime our attention is diverted to other and newer forms of immunisation.793
792 R. P. Garrow, “Fatality Rates of Small-Pox in the Vaccinated and Unvaccinated,” British Medical Journal, January 14, 1928, p. 74.
793 Charles Cyril Okell, “From a Bacteriological Back-Number,” The Lancet, January 1, 1938, pp. 48–49.
All the problems from smallpox vaccination have long been forgot- ten. Officially recorded deaths from cowpox and other effects of vac- cination, including the dreaded skin condition of erysipelas, are never mentioned. Jaundice and syphilis were also spread through the practice of arm-to-arm vaccination.
Smallpox vaccination’s virtually unchallenged belief momentum has existed for so many decades that it is rarely contemplated, let alone challenged. Most history books that make mention of Edward Jen- ner’s discovery quickly conclude, without any or with only scant evi- dence, that it was only of enormous benefit. Some mention in more detail the anti-vaccine movement, but it is always cast in the light that foolish, uneducated protestors were in dangerous opposition to settled science.
In actuality, the facts show the opposite of the belief (Graph 17.2). As vaccination rates declined in England, so did the deaths from smallpox.
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Graph 17.1: Leicester, England, smallpox mortality rate vs. smallpox vaccination coverage from 1849 to 1910.
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Graph 17.2: England and Wales smallpox mortality rate vs. smallpox vaccine coverage rates from 1873 to 1922.
In his book, Paul Offit also states that, before the use of the pertussis vaccine, 7,000 deaths occurred each year from whooping cough, and afterward there were only about 30 deaths.
Whooping cough (pertussis) is a devastating infection. Before a vaccine was first used in the United States in the 1940s, about three hundred thousand cases of whooping cough caused seven thousand deaths every year, almost all in young children. Now, because of the pertussis vaccine, fewer than thirty children die every year from the disease. But times are changing.794
A 1988 paper in the medical journal Pediat- rics made a similarly inaccurate claim. The table to the left shows the official numbers from two 5-year peri- ods 20 years apart. By the time the pertussis vaccine was intro- duced in the late 1940s, the total deaths were on average about 1,200, not 7,000.795
Year | Total | Population | Deaths |
1926 | 10,331 | 117,399,000 | 8.8 |
1927 | 8,095 | 119,038,000 | 6.8 |
1928 | 6,507 | 120,501,000 | 5.4 |
1929 | 7,550 | 121,770,000 | 6.2 |
1930 | 5,908 | 123,077,000 | 4.8 |
Average | 7,678 | 120,357,000 | 6.4 |
1946 | 1,273 | 141,389,000 | 0.9 |
1947 | 2,018 | 144,126,000 | 1.4 |
1948 | 1,173 | 146,631,000 | 0.8 |
1949 | 746 | 149,188,000 | 0.5 |
1950 | 1,062 | 150,688,000 | 0.7 |
Average | 1,254 | 146,404,000 | 0.8 |
% Change | 83.6% | 25.2% | 87.5% |
What is more notable is that, during those 20 years, the population increased by about 25 percent. Such a large increase in population makes it important to determine a normalized death rate. From
794 Paul A. Offit, MD, Deadly Choices—How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, 2011, p. xii.
795 Vital Statistics of the United States 1937 Part I, US Bureau of the Census, 1939, pp. 11–12; 1938 Part I, US Bureau of the Census, 1940, p. 12; 1943 Part I, US Bureau of the Census, 1945; 1944 Part I, US Bureau of the Census, 1946, p. XXII–XXIII; 1949 Part I, US Public Health Service, 1951, p. XLIV; US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003; www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-01.pdf.
normalized numbers, we can see that the deaths per 100,000 had decreased by 85 percent during those 20 years. The odds of dying from whooping cough had dramatically decreased from 1 in 15,625 to 1 in 125,000. This change occurred before the use of any vaccine. The clear downward trend in the death rate before the introduction of the vaccine is never acknowledged.
Many vaccine enthusiasts claim that antibiotics were also responsi- ble for the decline in morbidity and mortality. But the death rate from whooping cough had been declining since the 1920s, long before antibiotics were used in the United States. An examination of the data from 1920 onward shows a continuous downward trend in the death rate from whooping cough (Graph 17.3). It is difficult to see any significant impact on overall death rate after the introduc- tion of the whooping cough vaccine program. A magnified view of the same data from 1940 to 1970 also shows a continuous down- ward decline in death rate (Graph 17.4).
If pertussis vaccination was important to the overall decline in deaths, there should be a large noticeable drop in the death rate shortly after the introduction of the vaccine. Yet there is no observable effect. The statement “because of the pertussis vaccine, fewer than thirty children die every year from the disease” is not supported by the official data. Clearly, like smallpox, other factors were involved in the change of whooping cough from a significant killer to a milder disease.
In the 1970s, England experienced a large drop in pertussis vaccina- tion rates. The data shows that there was no massive increase in deaths as would have been expected if vaccination impacted mor- tality. Authors from a 1984 study confirm that “fears about whoop- ing cough vaccine caused a dramatic fall in immunisation rates and
in consequence a large increase of notifications. Despite this increase the number of deaths has not risen . . .”796
The prediction that there would be 7,000 annual deaths from whooping cough without vaccination had absolutely no basis in reality.
Paul Offit discussed the same decrease in DTP vaccination in England in the early 1970s. As vaccination rates dropped, it was believed that there would be a severe epidemic which would result in increased deaths from whooping cough.
Year | Total | % DTP |
1970 | 15 | 78 |
1971 | 26 | 78 |
1972 | 2 | 78 |
1973 | 2 | 78 |
1974 | 13 | 77 |
1975 | 12 | 59 |
1976 | 3 | 38 |
1977 | 7 | 39 |
1978 | 12 | 31 |
1979 | 7 | 35 |
1980 | 6 | 41 |
1981 | 5 | 46 |
1982 | 14 | 53 |
1983 | 5 | 59 |
1984 | 1 | 65 |
The year before [1975] Wilson’s paper, 79 percent of British children were immunized. By 1977, the rate had fallen to 31 per- cent. As a consequence, more than a hundred thousand children con-
tracted whooping cough, five thousand were hospitalized; two hundred had severe pneumonia; eighty suffered seizures; and thirty-six died. It was one of the worst epidemics of whooping cough in modern history.797
Was this, in fact, an out-of-the-ordinary epidemic? Since Dr. Offit does not specify the years he used to obtain his 36 deaths or provide any reference, we have to go to the official data ourselves and locate
796 T. M. Pollock, E. Miller, and J. Lobb, “Severity of Whooping Cough in England Before and After the Decline in Pertussis Immunization,” Archives of Disease in Childhood, vol. 59, 1984, p. 162.
797 Paul A. Offit, MD, Deadly Choices—How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, 2011, p. 16.
the area in question.798 The years from 1976 to 1980 (shaded box in the table) were the ones when vaccination rates were at their lowest. Using official statistics, the number of deaths in those years totaled 35, which is almost exactly the same number that Dr. Offit used in his claim. The deaths from the previous 5 years, 1971 to 1975 (dash outlined box in the table), while vaccination rates were higher, totaled 55, or about 1.5 times greater than what Dr. Offit de- scribes as the “worst epidemic in modern history.”
Deaths from 1974, when vaccination rates were near their peak of 77 percent, were about the same as the year with the lowest vaccina- tion rate of 31 percent in 1978. Even more startling is that, during the year 1971, when vaccination rates were at their peak of 78 percent, deaths were the highest, at more than two times the rate of 1978 when vaccinations were at their lowest, 31 percent.
Examining data starting from 1940, 17 years before pertussis vac- cination began in England in 1957, it is clear that there was a general downward trend in deaths (Graph 17.5). Whooping cough deaths were on the decline as they had been for about 100 years and were essentially unaffected by the amount of vaccination coverage. The official data does not match Paul Offit’s declaration that the pertussis vaccine is responsible for the enormous decline in deaths.
A similar interpretation of historical data on measles can be found in a 1980 paper from the American Journal of Public Health. The authors state:
Death rates due to measles have paralleled measles case rates and have shown a striking decline since the licensure of mea- sles vaccine in 1963.799
798 Record of Mortality in England and Wales for 95 years as provided by the office of National Statistics, 1997; Health Protection Agency Table: Notification of Deaths, England and Wales, 1970–2008.
799 Sister Jeffrey Engelhardt; Neal A. Halsey, MD; Donald L. Eddins; and Alan
R. Hinman, MD, “Measles Mortality in the United States 1971–1975,”
The authors include a graph (17.6) showing a large decline in measles deaths after 1963. This information is presented as a logarithmic graph that magnifies the small change in the death rate after 1963. On the other hand, a graph (17.7) displaying the percent decline from the peak death using the exact same data shows that before 1963, the death rate had already decreased by more than 98 percent. A “striking” decline of 98 percent before 1963 is not men- tioned at all by the study authors.
In a 2007 article from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the authors indicated that from 1953 to 1962, an average of 440 people died from measles. By 2004, however, the death rate had fallen to zero, indicating a 100 percent reduction in deaths attributed completely to the vaccine.800 Again, although this information is technically accurate, it misleads by omission of the understanding of the massive reduction in deaths before the introduction of the vac- cine. From the data, it is evident that through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the death rate had significantly declined, and any impact from the measles vaccine was minimal (Graph 17.8).
Data from England and Wales shows that there was a massive decline in death from measles well before the introduction of the measles vaccine. The graph (17.9) displaying the percent decline from the peak death rate exhibits that the mortality rate for measles had fallen by almost 100 percent before the use of the vac- cine in England in 1968.
In that same 2007 JAMA article, the authors show that from 1934 to 1943, 4,034 people died from whooping cough, and by 2004 there were a mere 27 deaths. They state that there was a decline in “per- tussis deaths by 99.3 percent” because of the vaccine. This statement
American Journal of Public Health, vol. 70, no. 11, November 1980,
pp. 1166–1169.
800 Sandra W. Roush, MT, MPH; Trudy V. Murphy, MD; and the Vaccine- Preventable Disease Table Working Group, “Historical Comparisons of Morbidity and Mortality for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in the United States,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 298, no. 18, November 14, 2007, pp. 2155–2163.
is disingenuous and, as usual, leaves out the details of the bigger pic- ture. As you can see in Graph 17.3, whooping cough deaths had been on the decline well in advance of the vaccine, which was obviously not the major factor in that decline. A bigger infectious killer during the 1800s, scarlet fever, which was eradicated without the use of a mass vaccination program and before the use of antibiotics, is not mentioned at all in the JAMA paper, presumably because it is not considered a vaccine-preventable disease.
Actually, there was a scarlet fever vaccine made of strep toxin, but most people today are unaware of it. The vaccine was first used in 1912 in Russia and later widely in the United States, Hungary, and Poland.801 By the 1930s, the toxin vaccine was known to have serious consequences.
Immunization against scarlet fever through the use of the Dick toxin has found but limited application because of the number of the injections required and the severity of the attendant reactions.802
Active immunization against scarlet fever has been practiced rather haphazardly since it was first introduced by the Dicks in 1924. Their method required the inoculation of the raw unmodi- fied erythrogenic toxin at five weekly intervals using 500, 2,000, 8,000, 25,000, and 80,000 skin test doses. In some series, reversal of the Dick reaction was reported in 90% to 95% of the persons so treated. A subsequent attack rate of 0.5% in the inoculated as compared to 14% in some uninoculated control groups was ob- served. However, such severe reactions were encountered in from
801 U. Friedemann, “Epidemiology of Children’s Infectious Diseases,”
The Lancet, vol. 2, August 1928, pp. 211–217.
802 Gaylord W. Anderson, “Scarlet Fever Immunization with Formalinized Toxin: A Preliminary Report,” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 28, no. 2, February 1938, pp. 123–136.
10% to 30%, occasionally more, of the immunized subjects that this offered serious objection to its widespread use.803
Perhaps one of the saddest chronicles of such medical betrayal to its own is reflected in a case report series of student nurses who suc- cumbed to lupus after they underwent vaccination with typhoid- paratyphoid vaccines followed by numerous mandatory scarlet fever toxin injections. All were healthy upon admission to nursing school, and all died about one year after vaccination, following drawn-out, painful illnesses.
. . . first injection of 500 skin test doses (STD) of scarlet fever strep- tococcus toxin with no ill results. One week later, the second injec- tion of 2000 STD’s was given and was followed by joint pains and fever. She remained in bed for 3 days at that time, but did not report to the health office. Nine days later, she returned and re- ceived the third injection of 8000 STD’s, after which she developed severe arthralgia in the fingers and knees and a sore throat. She was hospitalised for 5 days, during which a low grade fever was found. Physical findings showed a red throat and a large area of hyperemia extending from the site of the injection on the left arm down the forearm midway to the wrist. She received aspirin with some improvement and discharged on December 7, with the diag- nosis Dick-toxin reaction. She returned to the clinic on December 12 and her inoculations were continued. Epinephrine usually ac- companied these injections.804
The case description continued. Two months after the last lot of injections, the trainee nurse was readmitted to the hospital with swelling and pain of the ankles and toes and tenderness of the joints of both hands, which had been constant since the first Dick test five
803 M. Schaeffer and J. Toomey, “Immunization Against Scarlet Fever with Tannic Acid-Precipitated Erythrogenic Toxin,” Pediatrics, vol. 1, 1948,
pp. 188–194.
804 L. F. Ayvazian and T. L. Badger, “Disseminated Lupus Arythematosus Occurring Among Student Nurses,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 239, no. 16, October 1948, pp. 565–570.
months earlier. The diagnosis was “rheumatic arthritis.” She was given aspirin, but two weeks later the pain came back and she developed chills and fever, sore throat, and cough. One month later, the trainee nurse was readmitted to the hospital for two weeks, and during this admission a streptococcus vaccine was started in small doses, but because of her severe reaction further vaccines were refused. The diagnosis after this admission was “rheumatoid arthritis and infectious mononucleosis.” Four months later, the trainee nurse noticed skin eruptions over her nose and both cheeks, and her saliva became foul. The skin and cheeks, upper lips, and the bridge of the nose were covered with purplish-red, mottled, and indurated rash eruptions. Two months later, the eruptions spread over much of the body. A year later, the trainee nurse died. All three cases in this report are equally stunning regarding the complete persistence and lack of regard for the damage to the nurses as it was being done.
So, there is a reason most people haven’t heard of the scarlet fever vaccine. Vaccination belief today will hold up better if nobody knows about it. Certainly mandatory vaccines to health-care workers would come under closer scrutiny if nurses today had any idea how appar- ently disposable they have been in the past.
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Graph 17.4: United States whooping cough mortality rate from 1940 to 1970.
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Graph 17.6: United States measles mortality rate from 1912 to 1975 on a logarithm plot.
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Graph 17.7: United States measles mortality rate from 1912 to 1975 in percent from the peak.
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Graph 17.8: United States measles mortality rate from 1930.
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Graph 17.9: England and Wales scarlet fever, measles, and whooping cough percent from peak mortalityrates from 1838 to 1978.
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We are not saying that vaccines had absolutely no impact on deaths from these infectious diseases, but by using historical statistics, it is clear that most authors’ claims regarding the lifesaving effect of vac- cination are markedly exaggerated, and risk is continuously de- nied or underplayed. Despite the fact that “vaccines were responsible for the massive decline in deaths” is based on a false foundation, it permeates medical thinking all over the world. State- ments found in medical literature uniformly exaggerate the benefit of vaccination.
Today we might not think of these diseases as being very seri- ous because, thanks to vaccines, we don’t see them as often as we used to. But they can still be deadly. Measles used to kill hundreds—sometimes thousands—of people a year . . . Years ago, diphtheria was a widespread and greatly feared disease. Through the 1920s, it struck about 150,000 people a year and killed about 15,000 of them. Since then, these figures have dropped considerably, thanks to parents who have gotten their children vaccinated against this terrible disease.805
It is difficult to underestimate the contribution of immuniza- tion to our well-being. It has been estimated that, were it not for childhood vaccinations against diphtheria, pertussis, mea- sles, mumps, smallpox, and rubella, as well as protection afforded by vaccines against tetanus, cholera, yellow fever, po- lio, influenza, hepatitis B, bacterial pneumonia, and rabies, childhood death rates would probably hover in the range of 20 to 50%. Indeed, in countries where vaccination is not prac- ticed, the death rates among infants and young children re- main at that level.806
Nobody can deny the truth that, during the 1800s, infant mortality was extremely high. Even though there were decades of vaccination for smallpox, the overall child mortality remained unchanged (Graph
805 “Parent’s Guide to Childhood Immunizations,” US Department of Health and Human Services, 1994.
806 Irwin W. Sherman, Twelve Diseases That Changed Our World, 2007, p. 66.
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17.10). By the late 1800s and into the early 1900s, extraordinary changes were made that radically altered the landscape. If the small- pox vaccine was as important as claimed by officials, then during the era of strict vaccination laws child mortality should have decreased. Instead, the death rate remained flat, or in the case of children under one year of age the death rate actually increased during the era of strict vaccination laws and high vaccination rates.
Earlier work by Dr. Robert Watt showed that, although there had appeared to be a decrease in deaths after the introduction of vac- cination, deaths from other causes increased. The overall death rate for children remained unchanged.
. . . the work of Dr. Robert Watt, who tabulated the deaths of chil- dren less than 10 years of age in Glasgow during the 30 years centering around the introduction of vaccination, and showed that as smallpox decreased other children's diseases increased and that child mortality had been little affected by the change.807
Not only were all infectious diseases declining during the late 1800s, other poverty-related deaths such as those from diarrhea also waned (Graph 17.11). By the early 1900s, life had dramatically improved. Children were less likely to die from many diseases they had suc- cumbed to only decades earlier. Most vaccines and other medical interventions appeared much later and were only minor players in comparison to all other interventions that took place.
807 Walter F. Willcox, “Decrease in the Death Rate,” Introduction to the Vital Statistics of the United States, 1900 to 1930, p. 20.
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Graph 17.10: Leicester, England, mortality rates by age categories and smallpox vaccine coverage from 1838 to 1888.
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Graph17.11: Leicester combined mortality rates from various infectious diseases and diarrhea from 1838 to 1910.
In the big picture, the belief that vaccines were instrumental in changing our world from a disease-plagued horror to our modern environment is not reflected by the evidence. Nonetheless, this deeply ingrained ideology penetrates societal consciousness. Popu- lar present-day books such as The Panic Virus reinforce a flawed concept of successful vaccination beginning with smallpox.
In the book, the story of Edward Jenner and the “relative safety” of the vaccine are introduced, along with the misunderstood concept of “herd immunity.” Using this lore, the stage is set for the author to discuss the reasons some of us resist such a spectacular discovery. As is customary by vaccine proponents, the case for vaccination is never supported with real data but only assumptions. Instead of attempting to think for himself or analyze any of the numerous available data on his own, the author defers to “experts.”
This leaves us with two choices: We can either take it upon ourselves to do a systematic analysis of all the available infor- mation—which becomes ever less feasible as the world grows more complex—or we can trust experts and the media to be responsible about the information and advice they pro- vide. When they’re not, whether it’s because they’re naïve or under resourced or lazy or because they become true believers themselves, the consequences can be severe indeed.808
Fear of disease, plagues, and death underlie the narrative of the book. The struggle, according to the author, is between those who believe in vaccination and those who question the paradigm. It is a battle between those who understand the so-called “well-established history and evidence-based medicine” and those who do not. We are told that we must accept the belief of the media and experts unless they too are misinformed and do not recognize the already established pro-vaccine position. Thus, all bases are covered in order to delineate anyone with an education and a well-informed
808 Seth Mnookin, The Panic Virus, Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 18.
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opinion that is against the theory of vaccination as unscientific and dangerous.
The belief momentum is so great that the authors of these types of books never take into consideration the possibility that there could be a fundamental problem with their base assumption, and neither does the media that supports them or their readers. The authors become another layer in the false belief, which further builds upon itself. Those who accept the belief are accepted by the group. Anyone who questions the belief in vaccination is attacked and vili- fied both within and outside the medical profession. Vaccine faith is supposed to be unquestioned because history has allegedly demon- strated the value of vaccination.
Do you think it has?
Fundamentally, we must evaluate the soundness of all ideas no mat- ter how deeply ingrained. British philosopher John Stuart Mill said:
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors.
Often, when one objectively searches for information, facts are uncovered that can be in shocking contrast to the original under- standing. The truth may be uncomfortable, inconvenient, and unpopular, but in the end, if it is the truth, it must be embraced regardless of the cost.
Year after year, layer after layer, the vaccine belief built upon itself until today children are subjected to dozens of vaccines by second grade. Most parents are uncomfortable with this barrage of chemi- cals, disease, and animal residual. They pray and worry after their children are injected. If they seem unscathed after a few days, they think all is well, and they did a good thing. They may not consider the potential for long-term effects from vaccines or the complete absence of safety data on the vaccine program their children are participating in.
What if the hierarchy is wrong? What if the idea of vaccination is fundamentally flawed? What if we have yet to see the real effects on the immunity of the herd?
To date, despite the existence of thousands of never-vaccinated chil- dren, there has not been a “completely vaccinated” versus “never vaccinated” study to compare the difference between the short- and long-term health of both groups.
Nobody—not even the most educated immunologists—understands or can describe the complete cascade of events that occurs after in- jecting a vaccine. If physicians realized how little is known today about the immune system and vaccines, they would be duty bound to tell patients that there are no accurate scientific answers.
Because the whole truth isn’t told, adults are the only line of defense for themselves. Until the minds of pediatricians are emancipated, parents will remain the best line of defense for their children.
The reality . . . is that vaccinology, as portrayed to the public today, amounts to writing religion on the back of ignorance.