Vaccination and the eradication of disease: Smallpox (III)

Before continuing the story of smallpox - and the myth that its eradication was due to vaccination - I'd like to post this small item I just received from the National Vaccine Information Centre (http://www.nvic.org):

CONGRESS SET TO BAIL OUT BIG PHARMA IN SECRET
Washington, D.C. – A behind-the-scenes plan is reportedly taking shape in Congress to attach language to an unspecified conference report giving drug companies blanket immunity from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths.The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a watchdog consumer advocacy group critical of provisions in "The Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005" (S. 1873) sponsored by Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) and a similar bill in the House (H.R. 3970), calls the reported plan "an end-run by Pharma’s friends in Congress to take away the civil rights of the American people.
"In the past few weeks, public criticism about the proposed bail-out of drug companies has been mounting as Americans are being told that a pandemic bird flu is coming and drug companies are asking Congress to bar citizen access to the civil justice system when they are harmed by vaccines. Because the bird flu virus has not mutated into a form that is transmissable from human to human, questions have been raised as to whether irrational fear about bird flu is being generated in an attempt to stampede Congress into passing liability protections the pharmaceutical industry has been seeking for 40 years.
Pointing out that there are twice as many drug companies marketing vaccines in the U.S. today as there were in 1982 when NVIC was founded, NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher said, "It is a big lie that drug companies have been driven out of business by lawsuits in the past two decades. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 protected drug companies and doctors from almost all lawsuits. There are only a handful of vaccine injury lawsuits pending in civil courts but Pharma is on the brink of conning Congress into destroying Americans' Seventh Amendment Constitutional right to seek redress in a civil court in front of a jury of their peers".
(http://www.909shot.com). [For an expose of the avian flu hysteria, see Tim O'Shea's website:
http://thedoctorwithin.com/index_fr.php?page=articles/avian.php ]

Now back to the story of smallpox (continued from 11 and 15 November 2005). The first point made by Alfred Russel Wallace in his 1898 book [ http://www.whale.to/vaccine/wallace/book.html ] is that what Jenner had done a century earlier (in 1796) was bad science. His so-called experiments were based on folklore and he carried out no controlled experiments to test what should have been regarded as no more than a scientific hypothesis (What they were in reality were myths about the immunity conferred on milkmaids by previous exposure to cow pox). Vaccination was introduced before any controll experiments were performed. See also Tim O'Shea, "The sanctity of human blood: Vaccination is not immunization", Pages 14-31; http://www.thedoctorwithin.com ; See also the following: http://www.whale.to/v/hadwen.html

The second point made by Wallace is that dozens of qualified medical practitioners presented evidence to the Royal Commission on Vaccinations (during the late-1880s and early-1890s) documenting the fact that hundreds of individuals, known personally to these doctors, contracted smallpox after being vaccinated, during the early 19th century (in England). In addition, many of their patients came down with other illnesses and permanent injuries and/or died either from smallpox or from a variety of what we today would call "adverse reactions", after being vaccinated against smallpox. These doctors, who had vaccinated their patients because they had accepted and supported Jenner's theory, concluded, on the basis of their own, personal experiences with their own patients, that vaccination did not offer protection against smallpox AND that vaccination itself could cause disease, permanenet injury and death to an unacceptably high proportion of people. These physicians had all believed in vaccination until they tried it themselves. And their testimony is reported in the Parliamentary papers and is available to anyone who wishes to read them.

Amongst other things, Wallace highlights the following facts (for England and Wales), as reported in the Royal Commission Reports (some of the figures cited had been previously presented by Wallace himself, in an 1885 pamphlet, from a variety of government reports - see
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S374-509.htm ):

Between 1760 and 1800, that is, prior to the introduction of vaccination, the death rate from smallpox fluctuated but, overall, there was "a well-marked steady decline", with a decrease of 1000 deaths per million. This decline continued to 1820, after which the decline slowed until 1834, being so slight as to be "hardly noticeable". This had occurred during a period (1820-1834) when more and more people were being vaccinated. In 1838, forty years after vaccination had been introduced and strongly encouraged, there was a smallpox epidemic. After this there was a very slow decrease in the number of deaths per million due to smallpox to 1885, except for the largest smallpox epidemic on record in 1871-2 (almost 20 years after it was made compulsory in 1853).

Between the introduction of compulsory vaccination in 1853 and 1884, there was almost no decline in the smallpox death rate in the English population. By this time, in excess of 90% of the population were vaccinated and this was true at the time of the epidemic of 1871-2, when 97.5% of the population was vaccinated. This 1871-2 epidemic was responsible for the largest number of deaths on record.

During the period from 1886 to 1896, a period of greatly falling numbers of vaccinations, there was a clear decline in the smallpox death rate. The decline was continuous and rapid, at a time when less and less people were being vaccinated.

Wallace also showed that, by and large, other contagious diseases, like measles, whooping cough and diphtheria, showed a similar pattern of decline in deaths, even though there was, during the 19th century, no vaccination against these diseases. Indeed, some diseases, such as the plague, had disappeared by the time Wallace was writing - and had been absent for two centuries - again without vaccination. Yellow Fever and typhus also disappeared without vaccination, Wallace pointed out. Wallace stated that it had been improvements in sanitation that had been responsible for the disappearance of these diseases and the decline in the morbidity and mortality of others. He did not mention the case of puerperal fever (also known as childbed fever) which was eliminated by the simple expedient of getting doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies! Yet, during the 1821-22 epidemic, childbed fever had killed one in six women admitted to Viennese hospitals in labour. Even in "normal" times, when there was no "epidemic" as commonly defined, 9.9% (1,989) of women admitted to the Viennese maternity clinic between 1841 and 1846 (out of a total of 20,042) who were attended to by medical students (rather than midwives) died giving birth (The death rate of women attended by midwives was 3.3%!). "Giving birth on the streets of Vienna was safer than within the walls of the city's most prestigious medical centre" (Richard Horton, "The fool of Pest", The New York Review of Books, Volume 51, Number 3, 26 February 2004; www.nybooks.com/articles/16914). No vaccination; just plain old washing handz (It is therefore remarkable that, according to a recent study, only 32% of doctors wash their hands in hospitals in between treating patients (See www.pubmed.org ). This is difficult to square with doctors' self-righteous denunciations of mothers who question the wisdom of vaccinating their infants!) . Ignac Semmelweis (1818-1865), the doctor responsible for this innovation, was vilified by the medical and scientific establishment and " died in Vienna broken and alone, abandoned by his family and his colleagues in a Viennese lunatic asylum" (ibid). He revealed, wrote Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, "how professional eminence and authority could breed crass stupidity and bitter jealousy" (ibid). It may be difficult to believe, but it took several decades for the 19th century medical establishment, which was so enthusiastic about compulsory vaccination, to accept Semmelweis's "innovation" (hand-washing).

The clearest evidence for the total ineffectiveness of vaccination, Wallace pointed out, came from the example of towns like Leicester, which rejected vaccination after the 1871 epidemic and, by the time Wallace wrote (1898), virtually noone was being vaccinated (Leicester did, however, take sanitation seriously, correctly regarding improvements in hygiene and sanitation as the key to health).

During the 1871-2 epidemic, when both Birmingham and Leicester were well-vaccinated, both towns had 35 deaths from smallpox per 10,000 population (Leicester had 327 cases of smallpox per 10,000 population; Birmingham 213). In 1894, by which time Leicester had been rejecting vaccination for over 20 years and Birmingham had thirty times the vaccination rate of Leicester, the figures had changed dramatically. Between 1891 and 1894, Birmingham had 63 cases of smallpox per 10,000 population; Leicester had less than a third of that number (19). Birmingham had five deaths from smallpox per 10,000 population, Leicester, 1.1 (or less than a quarter of Birmingham's death rate).

Both the 1885 pamphlet and the 1898 book present data such as the above - and many, many more (for example from Prussia and Bavaria: from the British army and navy; and from Ireland and Scotland) - to point to "the damning evidence of the absolute inutility of the most thorough vaccination possible". Wallace wrote in 1898: "It is all what Americans call 'bluff' " [I can't resist the temptation of giving one more set of figures, from Wallace's 1885 pamphlet. Dr Keller, the head physician of the Imperial Austrian Railways, gave the following figures for a population of 60,000 employees, officals and their families, for the years 1872-1873: There were approximately 2,000 cases of smallpox, with 18% of these dying from the disease. Amongst children (who had come down with smallpox) in the first year of life, 60% of the vaccinated and 45% of the unvaccinated died; amongst children in the second year of life (who had smallpox), 54% of the vaccinated and 38% of the unvaccinated died; amongst those over the age of two (who had smallpox), 13.76% of the vaccinated and 13.15 of the unvaccinated died. These figures - if they show anything - show that vaccination makes no difference to adults but that it is actually associated with a significant increase in the death rate amongst babies and infants under the age of two].

Neil Z Miller, in his book, "Vaccines; Are they really safe and effective?" (1992; Revised edition 2002), quotes some of the above but continues the story into the 20th century. During the 10-year period, 1882-1891, when 82% of the population of England and Wales was vaccinated, there were an average 933 deaths per annum from smallpox. During the 10-year period from 1892-1901, 67.9% were vaccinated and there were an average 437 deaths each year. By the 1912-1921 period, the percent vaccinated had fallen to 42.3 and the average number of deaths to twelve per annum. During 1932-1941, only 39% of the population were vaccinated and deaths from smallpox averaged one a year. Miller, too, presents numerous statistics to demonstrate, not only the total ineffectiveness of vaccination against smallpox, but its tendency to cause serious harm, including death. Amongst other things, Miller quotes an official from Highgate Hospital who said that, during the 1871 epidemic, of the 950 cases of smallpox, 870 (or 91.5%) had been vaccinated.

There is much, much more than the above, which is but a tiny sample of what is available to anyone who cares to read about it. Similar figures can be cited for each of the diseases against which we currently vaccinate babies and infants (including measles, whooping cough and diphtheria). In addition, the so-called "adverse effets" - unwanted illnesses, permanent injury and death - continue to multiply. There is also at least the QUESTION of why cancer has increased to such tragic proportions that more than a third of the population (of both Australia and the USA) can expect to get some form of cancer during their lifetime. According to the World Health Organization, seven million people die fom cancer every year. Twenty million people suffer from cancer worldwide and this figure is expected to increase to 30 million over the next 20 years. Ten million new cases are reported every year; this is expected to increase to 15 million new cases annually by 2020 (World Health Organization web site - Cancer : http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/facts/cancer/en/). Many doctors and scientists, including Wallace himself, considered, in the late 19th century, before they were silenced, that it was mass vaccinations that were responsible for the observed increase in the incidence of cancer at that time. In his 1885 pamphlet, Wallace cited figures showing a 77% increase in the death rate from cancer between 1854 and 1882. Today, we avoid such unpleasant questions (I'm not suggesting that there may not be many other environmental causes for the cancer epidemic we are currently experiencing. I'm simply noting the absence of any serious research to examine the question of a possible link between vaccinations and cancer).

I leave it to the reader to make up her own mind, preferably after checking the figures provided above. At the end of the day, however, we would do better to trust our own inner wisdom, our "inner physician", before we trust any external authority in matters that concern our health and wellbeing. Of course, if you have the time, you should certainly check these things out for yourself. There is no shortage of material out there (See the following amazing list of publications, many of which can be viewed online: http://www.whale.to/vaccines/smallpox14.html )But when all is said and done your best guide to avoiding illness and disease and experiencing genuine health and wellbeing is your own inner knowing, so long as you can shut out the noise (emanating from the mass media and the various experts) which is constantly attempting to cripple this innate faculty. That is what "becoming conscious" entails. That is what we mean by "conscious living".