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Vaccine Politics
Rick Fisk
Lew Rockwell.com
Thursday December 13, 2007
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.
(Article continues below)
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.
In the first place they are interested parties, both pecuniarily
and in a much greater degree on account of professional training
and prestige. Only three years after vaccination was first introduced,
on the recommendation of the heads of the profession, and their
expressed conviction that it would give lifelong protection
against a terrible disease, Parliament voted Jenner [the scientist
who created the smallpox vaccine derived from cowpox] £10,000
in 1802, and £20,000 more in 1807, besides endowing vaccination
with £3,000 a year in 1808. From that time doctors as
a body were committed to its support; it has been taught for
nearly a century as an almost infallible remedy in all our medical
schools; and has been for the most part accepted by the public
and the legislature as if it were a well-established scientific
principle, instead of being as the historian of epidemic diseases
– Dr. Creighton – well terms it, a grotesque superstition.
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.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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