Vaccine Politics
by Rick Fisk The first vaccine mandated by governments was the small pox vaccine. Today, you’ll hear any number of medical professionals refer to the vaccine as proof of Western military medicine’s superiority over any other discipline. The World Health Organization proclaims proudly to anyone who will listen that the vaccine has eradicated smallpox (yet for a disease "indistinguishable from smallpox," apply the same vaccine used to protect against smallpox). So prevalent is the favorable view of vaccines, that people who question this "truism" are ridiculed. But, when the vaccine had been about 100 years old (it is now over 200 years old), it had its detractors. One of them was a scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace was an interesting man. His list of accomplishments is stunning. Sometimes referred to in England as the "Grand Old Man of Science," he continued to produce papers into his 90s. A reluctant socialist, he felt that science and government didn’t mix and had no problem arguing against government involvement in science. Wallace focused on biology and zoology in his early career and turned to social issues later in life. One such social issue was vaccination. He noted in 1906 that doctors were not the best judges of a vaccine’s efficacy though they were continuously consulted on vaccination policy by government officials.
This quote is from a summary of his original arguments against mandatory use of the smallpox vaccine in 1889: Vaccination: Proved Useless & Dangerous. (Wallace wasn’t one for mincing words.) The 1889 work was an epidemiological study which showed that smallpox rates in London and the rest of England were not reduced at all by the mandatory use of the vaccine. In fact, other illnesses increased during the time that the smallpox vaccination was forced on the population suggesting that the effect on immunity was negative rather than positive as vaccination proponents kept asserting. The 1889 study was instrumental in influencing public opinion and ultimately forcing the repeal of laws making smallpox vaccination mandatory in England. Other European nations followed suit. The U.S. government’s medical and scientific organizations and the World Health Organization have disregarded Wallace’s findings, as well as a long list of subsequent papers and corroborations, and have proclaimed that the smallpox vaccine was a smashing success. This has occurred, in spite of the fact that there have been no counter-examples to disprove the contrary view. There have been many examples since which tend to support Wallace’s conclusions however. For instance, one of the most stunning antidotes to the idea that smallpox was eradicated due to mandatory vaccination is the Japanese example. The practice of "revaccination" was prevalent there (and in the British Navy) until their vaccination rate exceeded 100%! In spite of this, Japan faced huge smallpox epidemics. All told, the Japanese lost 48,000 people to smallpox, most of them vaccinated at least once. When the government stopped the mandatory vaccinations, the epidemics were finally arrested. Were the smallpox vaccination truly effective as a prophylactic, such an example could not exist. Unfortunately, there are dozens just like it all over the world. In 1904, the U.S. Army decided to forcibly vaccinate the Philippine population ostensibly to improve health conditions but more likely intended to protect military personnel. They touted its success when in the following two years smallpox appeared to be under control. However, from 1917 to 1919, in a population of 11 million that had a reported 100% vaccination rate, smallpox epidemics claimed over 70,000 lives out of 163,000 reported infections. By contrast, Australia, from 1900 to 1915, which never instituted a mandatory vaccine program, reported 3 deaths due to smallpox over the entire period. A doctor who treated smallpox victims in San Antonio near the turn of the century wrote of his experiences. Charles Campbell became so trusted by his patients and coworkers that they agreed to allow him to expose them to smallpox to help him prove his own theories about how smallpox was transmitted, treated and how its effects could be minimized. Only one of his patients received the pock marks so customarily associated with the disease and that patient’s pock marks were "done intentionally." Dr. Campbell’s belief, based on his observations and experience, was that smallpox was spread by bed bugs, a pest most of us haven’t had to experience in our lifetimes but is making a comeback. That the bed bug could be a vector makes logical sense given what we know about the spread of smallpox to Native American populations via blanket distributions. Viruses do not live for long periods of time absent a host; unlike bacteria which can lay dormant for decades while retaining viability. Bed bugs, like fleas, offer a convenient host for a virus and can live for weeks without food in unwashed bedding. Campbell’s work has been mostly ignored by the establishment medical community and the press. Why haven’t Campbell’s experiences, treatment results and the general knowledge of the smallpox vaccine’s danger been more prevalent instead of the current view that vaccines are a modern miracle? This puzzling contradiction doesn’t just apply to the smallpox vaccine. We’re told that polio’s low current rate of infection is due to the vaccine. However, a closer look tends to discredit that idea as well. Those who track world health statistics do not consider vaccination as having reduced disease rates by any more than 3% world-wide during the 19th and 20th centuries. The reduction in infectious disease has been attributed to sanitary improvements or natural immunity and natural disease cycles, not vaccination. Furthermore, since 1970, there have been no cases of polio in the U.S. which are not attributed to the vaccine itself. In spite of the overwhelming evidence against the benefits of vaccination, our own government health officials continue to recommend a growing battery of vaccinations, starting with infants at birth. The CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule(pdf) is staggering compared to what it was just 20 years ago. If you strictly followed the CDC’s recommendations, your child would have twenty-five vaccine injections by the time they reached four years of age. What justifies such a number? To be fair, the growing list of vaccinations is suggestive rather than mandatory. That being said, there are government officials who use these suggestions to augment the list of "mandatory" vaccinations that children must have before attending public school. Think about that for a second. How are state school boards qualified to mandate vaccination schedules? Doubts over the efficacy of vaccines appear to be increasing as information has been made available. Until the internet, many of the contrary studies were not available to the general public. We are only recently discovering that what we’re told by our own government agencies and the drug companies they appear to represent, are not exactly representative of the facts. The list of additives and basic ingredients found in many vaccines would be otherwise advised against by ethical medical professionals, but we are told repeatedly by our own FDA that there is no evidence to suggest that injecting mercury (thimerosal) and other additives directly into the bloodstream is harmful. Meanwhile, the EPA will send in armed police to shut down somebody’s private business as an immanent threat to the population if some bureaucrat happened to detect mercury on or about the premises. Why the disparity? Quite frankly, it is because the corporations who create the vaccines have gained control over our regulatory agencies and legislative bodies. The FDA’s regulations have been continuously augmented internally and by Congress to protect pharmaceutical companies from litigations. The Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System has been put in place to protect the public, but is really a way to protect the drug companies from lawsuits. Apathy and lack of confidence in ourselves has led to an irrational reliance upon government experts employed by the, FDA, CDC and WHO to inform us about the causes of disease and to control how our government responds to health crises. That is a lot of power concentrated in one place. What has resulted from this unholy marriage of corporate interests and the government is not public health but political medicine. Both figuratively and literally, political medicine is poison that seeks to destroy common sense, customer choice and too often, lives. When it isn’t denying medication that has been proven useful to cancer patients, it is attempting to mandate medicine and ban food supplements. If one didn’t know any better, one might conclude that the FDA and related health agencies of the federal government, want you to get sick. December 13, 2007 Rick Fisk [send him mail] is a 45-year-old software developer and entrepreneur. He is married, has 3 children and resides in Austin, TX. Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com |
