Category: Vaccines

A Brief History of British Antivaccinationism Part 3.1 – Initial Opposition to the Smallpox Vaccine Mandate

Introduction

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism.  It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1902; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1902-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. Because most active resistance to vaccination is clustered in this period between 1853 and 1902, Part 3 will have three sub-parts, discussing initial intellectual resistance in John Gibbs and Charles Pearce, the later intellectual resistance of William White, Charles Creighton, and Edgar Crookshank, and popular class resistance.

The Vaccine Mandate

In 1853, the United Kingdom introduced mandatory smallpox vaccination.  There was a fine of 20 shillings introduced for non compliance. William White covers the introduction of this mandate in detail in his 1885 book, Story of a Great Delusion. According to White, the mandate was introduced because of the organised interests of the medical profession. There was a lack of discussion on the bill in Parliament, and White states it was an “act for application to the vulgar”, i.e. the working classes. In 1861 and 1867, the level of compulsion was increased, the 1867 amendments made non vaccination a continuous offense and gave the state the power to impose multiple fines.

Prior to the mandate, there was no organised antivaccinationism. There was personal distrust of vaccination among people, particularly the working class, and an apathy of not pursuing vaccination. The mandate triggered new wave of intellectual antivaccinationism, as well as popular vaccination resistance.

John Gibbs

John Gibbs was one of the first to write pamphlets against the vaccine mandate. In 1855 he wrote a letter opposing the mandate. He argued that the mandate was an attack on liberty, and that legislators freely admitted their ignorance on vaccination – relying only on the opinions of the medical profession to pass the bill. He argued that there were statistical issues with the case for vaccination, as there was evidence that smallpox was simply replaced by other causes of death and that there was no decline in the death rate due to vaccination. He also pointed to other diseases spread by vaccination,  such as erysipelas (a form of skin rash and swelling), tuberculosis and syphilis.

He drew attention to the moral issues with government forcing a medical intervention on the people and that this opposed self responsibility. Vaccination was in his view “a state religion in physic”.

Charles Pearce

Charles Pearce was an editor of a medical journal, who received papers from Gibbs, and as a result became an antivaccinationist. In 1868, he authored the short book, Vaccination Its Tested Effects, arguing that “vaccination is a crime against nature”.

Pearce points to the theory behind vaccination, that is the idea that cowpox and smallpox are “governed by the same laws” as an error believed by Jenner. He argues that vaccination is not even practised according to Jenner’s theory, since Jenner believed in a chain from horse-cow-human. Vaccine lymph had been spread from human to human for many decades at this point, and had not been anywhere near passage via a cow. He also pointed to the introduction of revaccination as a contradiction to Jenner’s theory of life long protection from vaccination.

He argued that smallpox vaccination did not save lives, by arguing that smallpox increased longevity if you survived, by the fact that there was an increase in mortality from measles after compulsory vaccination was introduced, and that smallpox vaccination could spread syphilis. He points out that there were ups and downs in smallpox due to the laws of epidemics. He believed sanitation and hygiene were the best methods to combat smallpox mortality.

Conclusion

There was increased intellectual resistance to vaccination after the smallpox vaccine mandate was introduced. This would continue to develop further, and British antivaccinationism would reach its peak between 1880-1902 with the cases made by William White, Charles Creighton and Edgar Crookshank against the practise.

The Smallpox Myth: The Case Against, In Summary

Introduction

The Smallpox Myth is the foundational legend of vaccinology. As goes the story, Edward Jenner realised that cowpox, a disease of the cow’s teat, provided protection against smallpox infection. It came into mass use across the nineteenth century and was mandated in a large number of countries. However there are a number of questions that can be asked regarding this foundational myth, and evidence against the hypothesis that smallpox was eliminated by vaccination.

How Deadly Was Smallpox?

One of the fundamental claims of vaccinology is that smallpox was an extremely dangerous disease that ravaged the world before vaccination. In reality, while smallpox did kill a lot of people, there is more nuance to this discussion. There are two points to consider: was smallpox any more dangerous than any other kinds of zymotic disease (a term historically used to mean eruptive fevers, infectious diseases as a class) and to what degree, and did smallpox cause excess death in epidemic years?

Taking the first question, pro-vaccinationists take the death rate of smallpox to be very high. Jurin, a figure who could be considered an early statistician of sorts in the 18th century and pro-inoculator, argued that around 1 in 6 smallpox infections resulted in death. The accepted figure by the end of the 19th century became around 18%. This is a very high rate. Of course this assumes a smallpox infection occurs, when there were many people who died without ever being infected with smallpox – which means we need more evidence than case fatality rate.

Bills of mortality recorded in London offer some evidence on this score. They show varying death rates from smallpox, depending upon whether it was an epidemic year for smallpox.

However, London data is not extrapolatable to the rest of the country. This is because London was much less sanitary than rural areas and had much higher population density, both of which facilitated the spread of smallpox and a high death rate. This is one of the main problems with the pro-vaccinationist argument – they ignore the conditions in which smallpox existed. Death rates in areas where statistical recording was less fastidious are unknown.

Death Rates from Diseases: Did Smallpox cause Excess Death?

Zymotic diseases were a rampant cause of death in the 17th and 18th centuries in cities due to the terrible sanitation and poor quality diet present in those environments. Was smallpox any worse than any of these other eruptive fevers spreading in unsanitary filth? The key question here is whether smallpox epidemics caused excess deaths, that is deaths above and beyond the average, or whether these deaths were largely interchangeable between different diseases. In order to examine this, we can look at smallpox epidemic years and see whether the overall deaths were any worse than non smallpox epidemic years.

Charles Pearce, in his book Vaccination Its Tested Effects, produced tables to show that vaccination did not lower overall death rates and that other epidemics killed as many or more due to common factors such as poor sanitation and overcrowding. William White argues that Dr. Robert Watt had demonstrated that there was in interchangeable nature to diseases as early as 1813 in Glasgow. This is important since even if vaccination was highly effective if those living in poor conditions would simply die of another disease, vaccination cannot be said to have saved lives.

The Nature of ‘Vaccine Lymph’

One of the main theoretical problems in asserting that vaccination abolished smallpox is the nature of vaccine lymph. Although the simple version of history (and the name itself) tells us that vaccine is cowpox lymph, in reality this is oversimplified.

Many different substances were used as vaccine lymph. One of the most common was to use horsepox instead of cowpox, and this lymph was used by high profile vaccinators and was in wide circulation. Another type of vaccine lymph was smallpox passed through the cow, because they believed that cowpox was smallpox somehow modified via passage through the cow. Other sources were sampled, such as sheep pox and goat pox. So long as the vaccine source raised a correct ‘Jennerian vesicle’ it was considered protective.

The use of various sources for vaccine lymph creates difficulties in believing in its effectiveness as it is difficult to argue that all the extracted sources are equivalent and thus equally protect against smallpox.

Extensive post on vaccine lymph can be found here.

Sanitation Acknowledged – But Ignored in the case of Smallpox

There was some decline in deaths from all forms of eruptive fevers throughout the nineteenth century. This was generally due to sanitary reform that ameliorated the terrible conditions created by city living and the Industrial Revolution. Most people would acknowledge that sanitation was the cause of this decline, but dissent when it comes to smallpox. This is inconsistent logic.

Did Smallpox Decline at the Beginning of the 19th Century Due to Vaccination?

Vaccinationists point to a decline at the beginning of the 19th century as a reason to believe that smallpox declined due to vaccination. However this is flawed logic for a few reasons.

Firstly, it is possible that smallpox declined indirectly due to vaccination. Previous to vaccination, inoculation had been used (that is, deliberately infecting people with smallpox). This practise caused the spread of smallpox in some cases and introduced it to areas where it was not present. The use of cowpox, horsepox, and whatever other substances used for vaccination, regardless of their problems, were not capable of spreading smallpox. This meant that replacing inoculation with vaccination reduced the spread of smallpox but this had nothing to do with the effectiveness of the practise.

The second issue with this logic is that vaccinationists generally argue that most of the population has to be vaccinated for it to work, they call this herd immunity. Yet, whether the majority of the population was vaccinated at that time is a highly dubious proposition. Vaccination spread quite rapidly among the elite in Britain, but the working classes were a different matter. While there were some attempts by Jenner’s followers to offer free vaccination to the poor, it is doubtful this reached the 90-95% of the population required by vaccinationist claims of herd immunity. White shows evidence that under the first few years under the National Vaccine Establishment, which provided vaccination free of charge to the poor, that births far outstripped children vaccinated. This shows many working class people were not even bothering with free vaccination.

The 1871 Smallpox Outbreak

There was a very large smallpox outbreak across Europe in 1870-71. Focusing in on the United Kingdom, mandatory vaccination had been in force since 1853, nearly 20 years. Due to this policy the majority of children were vaccinated, although there were some conscientious objectors. Working class families could generally not afford the fines associated with vaccination refusal, particularly after the mandate was made more stringent in 1867.

Vaccination did not prevent this outbreak. Pro-vaccinationists tend to argue that this outbreak started with the unvaccinated, but this is not relevant. If vaccination was protective, it would not matter if the outbreak started with the unvaccinated, as the vaccinated should be protected regardless if it was effective.

The Case of Leicester

Leicester – a city in the United Kingdom – turned against vaccination after the 1871 smallpox outbreak. Most children in the city were no longer vaccinated, and in 1885, there was a huge protest against the mandatory vaccination law introduced in 1885. Instead Leicester practised quarantine to reduce smallpox infections.

Vaccinationists would predict that Leicester would have severe smallpox outbreaks and a high number of deaths. However, this was not the case. J. T. Biggs, in his book Leicester: Sanitation versus Vaccination, explained how the statistical evidence showed Leicester outperforming other more vaccinated areas in death rates.

Vaccination Declines – So Does Smallpox

After the vaccination mandates were loosened in the early 20th century, vaccinationism would predict a resurgence in smallpox. However, this did not occur. In fact, smallpox continued to decline.

Conclusion

The case for vaccination eliminating smallpox – one of the central myths of vaccinationism – is much weaker than vaccinationists would like to suggest.

The Dark Side of Polio Vaccine Testing

Introduction

Polio vaccines are hailed as a heroic development in medicine and science. However, there is a dark side that is less acknowledged, at least in the media accounts of the polio vaccine. This is the abuse of disabled people – specifically disabled children in institutions – by vaccine testers.

How the Sausage was Made

Most polio vaccine development took place using monkeys. Jonas Salk, who created the inactivated polio vaccines, used rhesus monkeys imported from India extensively. In fact, this import of monkeys was a minor industry. This testing had involved infecting multiple monkeys with the virus, particularly when Salk had been involved in attempting to discover the amount of different strains of poliovirus. It also involved extraction of the monkey kidney tissue, in order to create a cell culture to grow the virus to create the vaccine. It was required to keep killing monkeys to gather this tissue because immortal cell lines, such as the HeLa line (an immoral exercise in lack of informed consent and medical racism in itself) had not yet been created when the polio vaccine was being developed. This cell line would only come to be used in a limited way during the testing phase.

However, Salk and other vaccine testers needed to move their vaccine testing from primates to humans, before the full scale testing that would take place among the general child population. For this exercise, they selected children in institutions as the first target for human vaccine testing. As quoted in the article Between Simians and Cell Lines:

The transition from experiments with imported non-human primates to trials with ‘normal’ American children was conceptually bridged via the testing of institutionalised disabled humans deemed non-normal.

Let’s take a closer look at the three main vaccine developers at this time, Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin, and Hilary Koprowski, and how they used disabled children in their vaccine experiments.

Jonas Salk

Jonas Salk, while testing his inactivated polio vaccine, carried out two rounds of testing on disabled children. He carried out work at the D T Watson Home for Crippled Children and the Polk State School. This testing took place in 1952, prior to the main testing of the Salk vaccine in 1954:

At Polk, Salk first inoculated children who were already polio victims with a vaccine derived from the same virus type present in their blood to assess their immune response. Following this, he vaccinated other children who had not previously contracted polio and who lacked protective antibodies.

There is no even hypothetical benefit to these children if they had already had polio. 

Albert Sabin

Albert Sabin, in contrast to Salk, developed a live attenuated virus polio vaccine. When he wanted to test his vaccine, he applied to carry out an experiment at the Willowbrook institution. Willowbrook was a home for disabled children notorious for abuse and other unethical experiments, primarily hepatitis experiments. It was exposed in the 1970s by investigative journalist Geraldo Rivera.

However Sabin’s application to test his vaccine there was refused, and he turned to prisoners to test his vaccine instead.

Hilary Koprowski

Hilary Koprowski is the least well-known of the three main polio vaccine developers in the 1950s. This is because his vaccine was not adopted. However, it was extensively used in some parts of Africa, particularly the then Belgian Congo around Leopoldville (modern Kinshasa).

Koprowski, like Sabin, believed only a live vaccine would be effective against polio. He thus worked on creating attenuated strains of the poliovirus.

In 1950, he gave the first live polio vaccine to a human being at Letchworth – a home for people with intellectual disabilities. In the articles published about the vaccine testing, the children given the vaccine were referred to as ‘volunteers’. One of these children had to be fed the vaccine via a stomach tube.

While working on further attenuated viral strains, he created his most notable polio vaccine strain, known as CHAT. He created this vaccine strain by attenuation the virus in various cell lines. However, he then used the disabled children at Sonoma institution to create the vaccine strain itself, by passing the attenuated vaccine strain via four children and extracting the virus from fecal matter. He called the vaccine CHAT, according to him, because it was a truncation of Charleton, who was the last child used in the creation of the strain.

He conducted further trials at Sonoma in 1955, including those to see whether his attenuated vaccine strains would spread to non- vaccinees. As stated on page 221 of Edward Hooper’s book, The River:

In the course of these he and Tom Norton, assisted by a phalanx of nurses, had conducted two contact experiments, in one of which a group of six children who had been fed SM [one of Koprowski’s strains] and who were excreting virus in their stools were kept “in very intimate contact” with another eight children who lacked Type 1 antibodies. In practice, this meant that for the next twenty days the children (all of whom were incontinent) were allowed to play together for three hours a day on a plastic mat, which, although it was washed down to prevent its becoming grossly soiled, was deliberately not disinfected. In the course of the experiment, three of the unvaccinated children became infected with Type 1 virus.

Conclusion

Disabled children in institutions were an easy and convenient source of ‘raw material’ for vaccine testers. All three polio vaccine ‘pioneers’ tried to test their vaccines at disabled institutions and two actually did so.

The ‘Neurodiversity’ Industry Is A Cover for Vaccine Injury – Part II, Two Narratives

Introduction

Since the 1990s, the idea of ‘neurodiversity’ has become a cottage industry. The basic tenet of neurodiversity is that autism is a perfectly normal variation of human development that should not be seen as a negative trait. It seeks to highlight the alleged ‘positive’ traits of autism and believes that the struggles of people with autism are largely caused by society not being accepting rather than the inherent downsides of the condition. This article will seek to discuss three parts of this phenomenon by comparing two theories of autism: the neurodiversity theory of autism and the iatrogenic theory of autism i.e. vaccine injury. The first part will discuss the evidence for each theory, concluding that vaccine injury has a large amount of evidence to support it. The second part of this article will look at the individuals and institutions that promote each theory and how the media portrays each group. The third part will draw it together by explaining how the neurodiversity theory is constructed as an alternative to deflect from the vaccine injury theory and to gaslight people suffering with autistic vaccine-injury and their parents about their experiences.

This is part II of the three part series.

Part II: Two Narratives

Having made the case that vaccine-injury is an extremely plausible theory of autism, I will now examine the contrast between how advocates of the neurodiversity narrative and advocates of the vaccine-injury narrative have been treated by the establishment. Although the neurodiversity narrative claims to be countercultural and in opposition to the ordinary view of autism, in reality it is promoted by mainstream sources. On the other hand, vaccine-injury theorists – including those who have backed their theories up by significant evidence – have faced consequences from being smeared to the loss of their career.

Is Neurodiversity Countercultural?

The neurodiversity narrative claims to be countercultural. As it is a fairly recent narrative, it portrays itself as the up and coming new narrative to ‘reframe’ autism in a positive light. In fact, the article I quoted from in Part I makes this argument, comparing it to different theories of autism:

The mainstream perspective – the perspective that autism is caused by a genetic defect and should be cured by targeting the autism gene(s).

The fringe theory – the theory that autism is caused by environmental factors like vaccines and pollution and should be cured through addressing these factors.

This narrative takes aspects of the ‘social justice’ style narrative, where those that are marginalised by society are reframing themselves as positive actors, reframing what is considered as ‘negative’ by society as a positive.

Of course, there is a long history of narratives claiming to be counterculture, when in fact, they are nothing of the sort. A good example, that has some similarities with the neurodiversity ideology, is transgenderism. Transgender ideology claims that opposite sex impersonators are a marginalized group, whereas in reality those who oppose them are censored, sacked, and smeared. Men playacting as women are promoted, celebrated and glorified in the media, with any criticism deemed as bigotry. Pharmaceutical companies support this narrative for profit, and many sinister actors use it is as a means of promoting transhumanism.

So is the neurodiversity narrative really countercultural?

In general, the best way to check if a narrative is against the establishment is to look at what the establishment actually says about it. If the establishment contains a large amount of institutions promoting a particular narrative, and is spending a lot of money on promoting a particular narrative, then there is a reason for that. So let us examine what the interconnected establishment/media/NGO complex actually states about autism and neurodiversity. This will look at several different groups: autism charities, the media, the fiction industry and other significant actors.

Autism Charities and Consultancy

Although some people would like to consider charities to be not ‘establishment’ institutions, in reality large charities are part of the establishment. Their role in society is to advance narratives that benefit establishment interests, but while seeming as if they are independent advocacy groups.

To give an example already alluded to in Part I, the Alzheimer’s Society expresses some scepticism that aluminium accumulation in the brain is the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. To acknowledge this would be bad for the establishment, since it is (elite) human action that unleashed aluminium on the environment and caused high levels of exposure. Questioning aluminium exposure in this case might lead one to come to the conclusion that the establishment does not have a concern for human health. Furthermore, obscuring the reality in this case allows Big Pharma to sell expensive patented drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, rather than reducing exposure or reducing aluminium in the human body. Foreign policy is another area where charities can be demonstrated to serve elite agendas. For example, human rights organisations will focus on violations of, say, freedom of speech by ‘enemy countries’ such as Russia, while ignoring the same or worse by Western countries or allies such as Saudi Arabia.

Of course, the issue is even more explosive when it comes to questioning vaccines, since vaccination is essentially the cult of the modern age:

Vaccinating everyone on earth (the goal of the Gates Foundation, W.H.O., Pharma, and presidents of both political parties) has nothing to do with health; its sole function is to give atheists in the developed world a feeling of heroism that supplies them with a sense of symbolic immortality.

TOBY ROGERS

So what do autism charities – allegedly set up to help people with autism – have to say about autism and neurodiversity?

The National Autistic Society is the main autism charity in the United Kingdom.

On its ’causes of autism’ page, the National Autistic Society says this:

There is no known ‘cure’ for autism. We also believe that autism does not need a ‘cure’ and should be seen as a difference, not a disadvantage. We also warn people about fake cures and potentially harmful interventions here. 

This does not mean that autistic people do not face challenges, but with the right support in place, they are more than capable of living fulfilling and happy lives. 

This is, of course, the neurodiversity narrative. On the other hand they say that vaccines don’t cause autism, because that idea must be opposed at all costs.

If we look at the National Autistic Society’s funding, they have a turnover of large amounts of money. If we look at their funding for 2023 in their annual accounts, they have a list of companies who they give special thanks. They have funding from some large companies such as Coca Cola and JP Morgan Chase.

It is also worth noting that there is an entire industry of autism ‘consultancy’, which is designed to promote neurodiversity, particularly relating to employment. There are a whole bunch of services available, for example, Aspire Autism Consultancy provides “bespoke neurodiversity training for therapists and healthcare practitioners.”

It is also worth noting that if you do want accommodations at work related to autism as a disability, you are basically obliged to put up with the neurodiversity framing.

The Media

The mainstream media is another crucial plank of the establishment, that serves their interests. The purpose of the media is not to present the news in an objective way, but to be propaganda for the powers that be. The structure of the mainstream media goes through multiple filters and each one excludes any opposition voices to ensure a conformity of thought.

There are plenty of articles in the media promoting the neurodiversity agenda. A survey of the media carried out by pro neurodiversity activists found the following result (abstract only available):

Results showed increased coverage of neurodiversity and neurodivergent individuals from 2016 to 2022. Key findings include an increase in calls for representation, advocacy, and the recognition of neurodiversity as a different neurotype rather than a condition to be cured.

Recently in the UK, there has been a programme hosted by Chris Packham, and autistic man and advocate for neurodiversity about autism and ADHD (ADHD is also considered to be an example of neurodiversity by advocates, and is also possibly vaccination injury although, unlike autism there is not as much evidence to prove this). I haven’t watched the programme because I don’t want to waste the energy getting angry about the obvious misrepresentation of autism that will exist within the program. It is worth noting that the  programme about autism was nominated for a television award, meaning that it must have been viewed as in line with what the media and establishment wish to promote. Articles in the media have also promoted this programme, and called it moving (even the more right leaning Telegraph, which is, say, more sceptical of similar ideologies like transgenderism).

The Fiction Industry

Fiction may seem as if it is separate from the establishment, but in reality the establishment has a significant influence here as well, particularly when it comes to television. For example, it is a well-known fact that a large number of American movies are produced with the help of the intelligence agencies.

If there are characters, action or dialogue that the DOD doesn’t approve of then the film-maker has to make changes to accommodate the military’s demands. If they refuse then the Pentagon packs up its toys and goes home. To obtain full cooperation the producers have to sign contracts, called Production Assistance Agreements, which lock them into using a military-approved version of the script. [emphasis in original text]

MINT PRESS NEWS

So how are autistic people portrayed in the media? There is but one model of the autistic film or TV character and that is the ‘autistic savant’. That is, someone who is socially inept but a genius at doing some weird obscure thing which wins the character the things that they want in life. In some portrayals a biting satirical wit might be added, particularly in comedy programs, with an edge of intellectual superiority played for laughs. Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory is the best example of this.

This is basically the neurodiversity model in action. Look at those special characters that think differently that have all these wonderful things like a PhD and an amazing job! No-one puts low functioning children who have to use a diaper and are non-verbal on the TV. No-one puts the 6′ 2″ 30-year-old man with a mental age of 5 who flies into incandescent, violent rages over sensory triggers on the TV. Why would they? So fiction gives an extremely misleading picture of autism to the public that bolsters the neurodiversity model.

Although neurodiversity advocates might also complain about the portrayal of autism in the media, the reality is that it is only their own ideology being reflected back at them. The special, unique one who ‘thinks differently’: that is their argument of what autism is, not mine, and that is their portrayal of what autism is, not mine.

Conclusion

As we can see from the above collection of evidence, the establishment has expressed a significant amount of support for neurodiversity.

The Vaccine Injury Approach to Autism and Its Critics

Vaccine-injury advocates have been treated rather differently by the establishment. This section will discuss a few different advocates of the autism-vaccination link: Dr. Andrew Wakefield, Dr. Christopher Exley, and Jenny McCarthy.

Dr. Wakefield Redux

The most obvious place to start on this topic is the demonisation of the British gastroenterologist, Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Dr. Wakefield is infamous among the vaccine pushers, and his name is invoked like that of the devil himself. Dr. Wakefield has been the subject of a thousand lies by the mainstream media and medical establishment. Eventually, he was struck off the medical register in 2010. His career was destroyed. So what was his ‘crime’? Simply to take parents seriously when they observed their children regressing into autistic behavior after the MMR vaccination.

So let’s look at how Dr. Wakefield got interested in the issue of the MMR vaccine and autism. After Dr. Wakefield performed studies on measles and gut issues, specifically Crohn’s disease, he was contacted by parents who saw their child regress into autistic vaccine-injury after their MMR vaccination. Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in the UK produced a case series of 12 of these children called, “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children” published in the Lancet in 1998. Contra claims made by the mainstream media, which is to this day constitutionally incapable of representing this paper accurately, it was not designed to ‘prove’ that the MMR vaccine causes autism. The people who made the initial link between the MMR and autism were the parents of those children, not Dr. Wakefield.

Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated, by the parents, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children, with measles infection in one child, and otitis media [ear infection] in another.

WAKEFIELD’S 1998 STUDY

This eventually led to him being relentlessly attacked by Brian Deer, a Telegraph ‘journalist’ who was obsessed with destroying his career. Deer made multiple false claims about Dr. Wakefield and his study. These false claims included the claim that Wakefield and his colleagues did not have ethical approval for the medical testing that they ran on the ‘Lancet 12’ children and that Dr. Wakefield misrepresented the case histories of those children to push a narrative blaming the MMR vaccine. Deer also claimed that Wakefield had unethical conflicts of interest. As a result of these claims, Dr. Wakefield was eventually struck off the medical register in 2010. There is much more detail to this story not able to be discussed here for space considerations, so I suggest reading this article by Iain Davis if you would like a refresher on the full picture.

The mainstream media continues to promote false narratives about Dr. Wakefield to this day. Wikipedia, a so called ‘neutral’ encyclopedia, but that actually serves to promote establishment narratives, refers to him as being ‘discredited’ and ‘disgraced’ which means that you know the target is somewhere in the vicinity.

I will conclude by quoting Davis:

[Wakefield] is the sacrificial lamb and a stark warning to any scientist, medical practitioner or researcher who dares to challenge the corporate dictatorship. The MSM’s annihilation of Dr. Wakefield served two purposes. Firstly to convince a misinformed public that any who suggest vaccines may not all be wonder drugs are ‘evil’ and also to put the fear of God into the scientific community.

IAIN DAVIS – ‘THE EVISCERATION OF DR. ANDREW WAKEFIELD’

Dr. Christopher Exley

Dr. Christopher Exley is former Professor of Bioinorganic Chemistry at Keele University in the UK. He did his Ph.D. on aluminium exposure among fish and the harm that this can cause and is an extremely credible expert on the interaction of the neurotoxin aluminium with human and animal life. As shown above, he has studied the link between aluminium and autism (and other diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis). He led the Aluminium Research Group and published around 200 papers on aluminium.

So what happened to Dr. Exley after he published his group’s paper on ‘Aluminium in Brain Tissue in Autism’?

The first thing to note is that the media has attacked Dr. Exley. The Guardian accused him of pushing ‘anti-vaccine misinformation’:

A British academic who has promoted anti-vaccine misinformation has raised more than £150,000 through a university donations portal to support his research during the coronavirus crisis, the Guardian can reveal.

They quote a vaccine promoter stating that Dr. Exley’s paper is ‘bad science’ but of course do not elucidate the audience about why it is bad science (the reader doesn’t need to know that, they just need to know which hate figure ‘anti-vaxxer’ of the week they need to condemn).

An even earlier hit piece from 2019 states:

Prof Chris Exley angered health experts for claiming that tiny amounts of aluminium in inactivated vaccines, such as the HPV and whooping cough inoculations, may cause “the more severe and disabling form of autism”.

They, of course, did this in order to try to make sure that the funding portals were shut down so the research could not continue (not that Keele needed any encouragement on this front – see below).

The case of Dr. Exley also reveals something else important about our media – the principle that experts are only experts until they question vaccination, then they become ‘misinformation’. Dr. Exley was an acceptable expert for the Guardian to cite when it came to the Camelford poisoning. This case involved aluminium was accidentally dunked into residents’ drinking water in Camelford in Cornwall. One woman, Carole Cross, died from a rare form of Alzheimer’s after this poisoning, with extremely high levels of aluminium in her brain. Dr. Exley is acting within his expertise by commenting on both cases, but only one is considered to be acceptable.

Keele University basically made Dr. Exley’s position at the university untenable for questioning the safety of aluminium adjuvants in vaccination.

Since that time [about 2015], the university has progressed from spiking Exley’s press releases and downplaying or ignoring major scientific contributions by Exley’s research group to — perhaps most concerningly — sabotaging the research donations that are the “lifeblood” of independent-minded scientists.

CHILDREN’S HEALTH DEFENSE.

The University messed with his donations portal which he was using to crowdfund his research.

On the 11th of April 2019, following receipt of a number of emails from potential donors unable to make a donation using the online link, I was told by someone called Lee Bestwick in Finance that he had been instructed to disable the donations portal set up by Finance on my behalf. He was not aware that there had been no prior discussion with me about this. 

In 2020, Keele University also rejected a cheque from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for $15,000 towards Dr. Exley’s research.

We appreciate your interest in the University and in our research staff who are undertaking such a wide range of interesting and pioneering work, but hope you understand the delicate balance we must maintain to ensure our public and private reputation.

Kennedy wrote in response:

I must consider that your decision to return my personal check is likely the product of the pharmaceutical industry’s open, aggressive, and rather sinister campaign to defund Professor Exley. Vaccine makers view Dr. Exley’s efforts to accurately characterize, for the first time, the health impacts of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines, as a threat to their profit-taking. Terminating Professor Exley’s research has been a central objective of the $50 billion vaccine industry. This cartel wants the world to believe that aluminum in vaccines is safe despite the lack of any safety studies to indicate that is possible, and plenty of peer-reviewed literature that suggests that it is not.

Another Children’s Health Defense article states:


[A] recent letter to Exley from Keele University’s dean of natural sciences explained that “the university will no longer provide facilities to solicit or enable restricted charitable donations” to support the Exley group’s research on “the bioinorganic chemistry of aluminium and its links to neurodegenerative disease.”

The dean clarified that this would include “donations from individuals, groups, charities and foundations” — amounting to the entirety of the group’s research income.

Eventually due to this disruption of funding the research group was shut down despite having around 200 peer reviewed publications.

Furthermore, Dr. Exley was suggesting methods by which to detox from aluminium and remove it from the body in order to reduce autistic symptoms. The method Dr. Exley suggested was drinking mineral waters with a high silicic acid content, as silicic acid binds to aluminium and then it is expelled from the body via urine. Again Dr. Exley demonstrated this through science, showing increased excretion of aluminium after consuming a litre of silica water. When done on a consistent basis (daily) this reduces the body burden of aluminium including in the brain and improvements in symptoms are observed (Dr. Exley witnessed this in Alzheimer’s disease). Not only was he showing what had harmed us, he was helping us with his protocol, and I can vouch that it works personally because I have tried it.

So now we can see that Dr. Wakefield is not the only person to lose his career for questioning the links between vaccines and autism.

Jenny McCarthy: Demonised Mothers

Jenny McCarthy is a media figure who spoke out about the safety of vaccination after her son, Evan, regressed into autism after receiving the MMR vaccine. McCarthy is different from the cases I have highlighted above in that she is the mother of a vaccine injured child. Her role as a mother affects her portrayal by the vaccine industry.

Generally speaking, mothers are considered less competent observers of their children than doctors, despite the fact that the doctor only sees the child for brief appointments and the mother is around the child 24/7. This is justified by the medical establishment, because they consider themselves to be the ‘experts’.

There is a significant amount of misogyny in the portrayal of McCarthy in the media. For example, news articles often introduce her as ‘former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy’ or other similar framing when talking about her scepticism of vaccination. The fact that McCarthy was involved in the pornography industry has no obvious relevant connection to her scepticism of vaccines. Except, in the mind of the vaccinationist, it is clearly related, since they always mention it.

The purpose of this framing is to invoke the Madonna-Whore complex, a misogynistic trope in which women are always the idealised, perfect mother, or the debased whore. Because McCarthy posed for Playboy, the implication is that she is inherently an unfit mother, unqualified to observe her son’s regression into autism. The other implication is that she is inherently stupid (women who have worked in pornography are perceived in society as ‘dumb bimbos’). Thus she is unable to correctly observe the behaviours of her own child in the mind of the vaccinationist.

Conclusion

Neurodiversity cannot be seen as an anti-establishment narrative. Like transgenderism, it is an ideology promoted by the establishment that pretends not to be promoted as such. In part III, we will discuss the target of the neurodiversity narrative – high functioning autistic people and parents of autistic children – and how this precludes vaccination criticism.

G. B. H.

You feel sure that you must scream

Must have screamed when confronted with that needle

Must have known what it meant

Deep in the bones

Deep in the soul

When they smile over your tomb

Praise you for doing well

When they buried you in

The type that

Can’t be scrubbed out from your pores

Can’t be scratched out through your blood

Can’t be pissed out on the floor

Can’t be emptied out

But must empty you out

Death as a Weapon: The Use of the Threat of Death by Allopathic Medical Practitioners

Introduction

The concept of death is often invoked in the discourse of allopathic medicine. This is for the obvious reason that medicine is concerned with issues of life and death on its face. However, death is also used as a discourse in cases where it has no particular relevance: the patient in question does not have a life threatening disease. In these cases, death is evoked as a means to get a parent or patient to comply with the doctor’s desires for treatment. This is seen in two specific cases: transgender ideology and vaccination.

Death in Transgender Ideology

Transgender ideology is based upon the idea of gender identity. The theory of gender identity claims that an individual’s ‘gender’ can be different from their sex. There is more than one theory about how this works among gender ideologues. One theory says there are only two ‘genders’, man and woman, but that either sex can identify as either gender. The other theory states that there are all kinds of different genders apart from man and woman. These gender identities impose costs and obligations on other people, as people are expected to use pronouns in line with the other person’s identity as well as believe that a man is actually a woman and vice versa.

The transgender phenomenon is a boon to the medical profession. The provision of opposite sex hormones and imitation surgeries provides a large source of profit for pharmaceutical companies. It creates whole specialties for doctors and surgeons to work in, and allows them a tremendous amount of power over human bodies. They get to play at attempting to create whole new sex organs and come up with their own bizarre combinations. As such they have an incentive to promote this ideology, particularly to those who will be vulnerable to accepting it.

As such, parents of underage children who identify as transgender are a significant target for this kind of manipulation. They are generally suffering from a large amount of confusion regarding their child’s declaration of their identity. They often do not know how to react. Sometimes parents have an innate suspicion of the extreme measures suggested by the gender ideologues, of puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries. This is due to the permanent nature of the intervention, as well as the fact that teenagers especially often have identity issues that resolve over time without any help. As there is a connection between the autism epidemic and transgender identity, parents also often consider that their vaccine injured children are being manipulated due to poor social skills.

Doctors advocate transgender hormones and surgery as the only option for these children and teenagers who declare a transgender identity. This is regardless of the possible cause of the declaration. In doctors’ minds, there can only be one cause, that the person is truly a ‘different gender’ and that is the cause of the declaration. However, in order to get wary parents to go along with the medical intervention required they need a stronger justification than this.

This is where the threat of death enters the picture. Suicide is considered to be an almost inevitable result of refusing to accept an individual’s self declaration of identity. The idea is often put to parents of ‘would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son’ to emphasise the inevitability of suicide without medical intervention.

Death in Vaccination Ideology

Vaccination ideology states that death from infection was rampant before vaccination, and only vaccination has been able to tame it. Vaccinationists dismiss all other context as irrelevant. For example, they ignore diet and access to food, sanitation or the lack thereof, economic factors, etc, in death rates from disease.

Doctors and scientists advocate vaccination in every and all circumstances, and they obviously gain large amounts from vaccination. This includes financial gain from both vaccination and treating vaccination injuries, whether this is direct via profits from vaccines or indirect via the higher demand for the service created by vaccination or injury. Doctors are also strongly ideologically committed to vaccination.

As such, they seek to get people to take vaccines, and parents are the main target in the promotion of vaccine ideology. However, some parents have concerns about vaccination. These concerns can range in scope and scale and can include belief that a specific child should not receive a vaccine due to individual sensitivity as well as criticism of vaccination in general. Concerns can involve: belief that a vaccine causes injury, particularly autism; belief that the amount of vaccines on the childhood schedule is excessive; or concerns about certain ingredients in vaccines such as thimerosal or aluminium (this list is not exhaustive).

Doctors deal with these concerns by invoking the threat of death. A parent is told that their child is at very high risk of death should the parent decline vaccination. Diseases where there is a vaccination are portrayed as equally deadly regardless of context. In some cases, the fact that the disease had a high death rate in times past, or has a high death rate in developing countries, is used as evidence for the current risk.

The media also covers stories where they allege that children died (or became disabled) due to lack of vaccination. Usually in this type of media story the parent is portrayed as being repentant and regretting not vaccinating.

Conclusion

Both transgender ideology and vaccination ideology seek to control people using the fear of death. In particular the fear a parent has over the death of their child. They grossly overexaggerate the risk to a child of not taking a particular medical intervention. In fact, there are plausible arguments that both of these medical interventions are more likely to directly or indirectly cause death than prevent death.

Both these ideologies also offer a form of illusory control over death, which is an attractive proposition to parents who fear the death of their child. Transgender ideology states that a child’s suicidal tendencies can be checked if only they are fully accepted. When this fails, perhaps due to the medical abuse inflicted on the child, it can simply be claimed that they were not accepted enough. Vaccination seeks to abolish disease via the needle. If disease is not abolished, it is the fault of antivaccinationists. The main difference between the two ideologies is that vaccinationists seek to blame a child’s unvaccinated body for death in other people, whereas in transgenderism the blame is only for self-inflicted death.

A Brief History of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism – Part 2, Jenner’s Critics

Introduction

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism.  It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1902; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1902-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. This section forms part 2 looking at Jenner and his critics.

The ‘Discovery’ of Edward Jenner

In 1796, Edward Jenner performed his first vaccination. This was on an 8 year old boy called James Phipps. In this experiment, Jenner inserted into the arm of the boy matter from the teat of a cow with cowpox using a lancet. Cowpox was a disease of the cow’s udder, which caused pustules to appear on that area. It was transmitted to humans via the action of milking a diseased udder.

Jenner’s justification for doing this was that cowpox allegedly prevented smallpox. There had long been a rumour among dairy maids that they could not contract smallpox, if they had contracted cowpox. In fact, the official story or mythology of Edward Jenner states that he overheard this idea from a dairy maid when he was a teenager and was taken with testing it (this is narrated by Jenner’s sycophantic biographer, John Baron).

Jenner became a country doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. He became a member of the Royal Society after writing a paper about cuckoos that was accepted. In 1796, when Jenner performed his first inoculation with vaccine virus (later known as vaccination)  he wrote a paper outlining his theory of the origins of cowpox (he believed that it originally came from the horse, and was transferred to the cow via those who dressed diseased horse heels). He then outlined the theory that the cowpox infection prevented the smallpox infection. He used some examples of those he met in his practice who had had a cowpox infection, on whom inoculation (deliberate infection with smallpox) would not ‘take’. The failure of inoculation to take was interpreted as immunity to smallpox. He also outlined his test on James Phipps, first inserting cowpox matter and several weeks later performing inoculation on the boy. As the inoculation did not take Jenner interpreted this as proof of immunity.

The Royal Society rejected Jenner’s paper. They believed it did not have enough evidence to support it and that it might tarnish Jenner’s reputation. Jenner was still determined to publish, so he added more evidence – increasing the number of cases of vaccination. (A detailed discussion of the differences between Jenner’s first and second versions of the paper can be found in Crookshank’s book). He published it in 1798.

Pearson and Woodville

Two important figures took up Jenner’s vaccination idea, George Pearson and William Woodville. Both these doctors were vital in spreading the practise of vaccination and backing it ideologically.

William Woodville was the lead doctor at the Smallpox Hospital in London, so it can be imagined that he had significant influence over the treatment and prevention of smallpox. He took to the idea of vaccination and ran a significant number of tests. Woodville’s tests had many flaws, in particular that he sometimes attempted cowpox and smallpox inoculation very close together. However his testing was more extensive and better documented than Jenner’s.

Pearson sought to set up an institute for vaccination. This annoyed Jenner, as he was not consulted in advance regarding the project. Pearson also distributed vaccine lymph early on in the process to allow other doctors to perform vaccination, which was important as Jenner did not have vaccine lymph to give out on many occasions.

Jenner had a significant number of supporters in the medical profession. When he was put forward for a government reward in 1802, a large number of doctors spoke in his favour. The profession adopted Jenner’s theory very quickly, and it spread widely. This included across Europe, the United States, as well as many colonised countries.

Jenner’s Critics

Jenner had three main critics of his theory when it was first published. These three men were Benjamin Moseley, John Birch, and William Rowley. None of these men were antivaccination in the sense that we would understand this term today, i.e. they were not opposed to all artificial inculcating of disease. They were supporters of the old method of inoculation and sceptical of Jenner’s attempt to replace it. At this time, there were no high profile critics of both inoculation and vaccination (this tendency would only develop post vaccination mandate, from 1853).

These three men opposed the award to Jenner by the British government during the hearing on this issue in 1802.

Benjamin Moseley

Moseley was a doctor who was well known for other writings prior to his involvement in the vaccination controversy,  in particular writings relating to the Caribbean.

He opposed Jenner’s method early on, and published more than one book relating to the issue. He considered that a ‘cowpox mania’ had taken over the medical profession. In his book, A Treatise on the Luis Bovilla, Or Cow Pox, he made several arguments. He stated there was no affinity between cowpox and smallpox, so there was no specific property of cowpox which meant it could prevent smallpox. He also argued that cowpox was not necessarily a mild disease. He pointed to the ulceration that often accompanied the practise.

John Birch

John Birch was a surgeon who was opposed to vaccination. In his text, Serious Reasons for objecting to the Practice of Vaccination he discusses the Royal Commitee on Vaccination. He argued that there was a large number of vaccine failures but that most of these were not admitted, and that the Committee tried to soften the language by stating that these cases only apparently had cowpox.

William Rowley

William Rowley was an active practitioner of inoculation. As such it could be said that he had a degree of vested interest in defending the practise against the new threat of vaccination. He considered inoculation to be a very safe practise that rarely led to death when performed competently. Vaccination, on the other hand, he considered both dangerous and ineffective.

Rowley authored a work called ‘Cow Pox No Security Against Smallpox Infection‘. This book has been considered a target of mockery by vaccinationists due to a couple of the images included in the book. These images claimed to show vaccination injuries, but as Rowley had titled one of them ‘The Ox Faced Boy’ he was mocked for making a linkage between vaccination and people becoming bovine.

Rowley actually collected a large number of cases, including with address details so at the time they could be checked, of vaccination injury, death, and cases of smallpox after vaccination.

He also provides an extensive list of excuses used by vaccinationists to defend their theory. These included the theory of ‘spurious cowpox’, which was outlined by Jenner in his second essay on cowpox. The idea of a ‘real’ and a ‘spurious’ cowpox allowed any cases of failure to be assigned to a spurious vaccination. He also accused vaccinationists of misdiagnosis of cases of smallpox in vaccinated people. He also states that vaccinationists formulated the excuse that even if cowpox failed to prevent the disease, it made it milder.

Conclusion

Vaccination had some significant opposition. However, it is fair to say that it had very little ideological opposition at this time. Its opponents thought it was unsafe and ineffective but advocated the earlier practise of inoculation instead rather than rejecting both. Well founded ideological opposition to vaccination would have to wait until after 1853 – the year of the UK’s smallpox vaccine mandate.

A Brief History of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism – Part 1, The Anti Inoculators.

Introduction

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism. It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1902; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1902-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. This section forms part 1, looking at the inoculators and their critics.

The History of Inoculation

Inoculation was the practise of deliberately infecting someone with smallpox. The theory behind the practise was that a person could only get smallpox once, and would then get what we would call natural immunity. Although this concept was not understood, it was observed that smallpox was only contracted once. As such, by selecting the time and place of infection, and by carrying out additional practices such as the following of certain diets, smallpox could be rendered a milder disease with a greater chance of survival.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu observed the practise of inoculation in Turkey and had one of her children inoculated while over there. She introduced the practise to her physician, Charles Maitland, who was taken with the idea and began to practise inoculation on willing members of the elite. There was a brief fad for this practise initially, but the first wave of enthusiasm died out quite quickly, and the number of inoculations performed was still very small. Some doctors tried to collect scientific data relaying to inoculation, such as Jurin, who attempted to figure out the death rate from inoculation versus the death rate from natural smallpox infection – he calculated it at about one in 50 for inoculation versus 1 in 6 for the natural disease. On this basis, he argued for the supremacy of inoculation but acknowledged that it had some risk.

Inoculation became more widely practised later on in the 18th century and particularly in the second half of that century, with the rise of the Suttonian method of inoculation, which was less harsh on the body. Daniel Sutton was able to widely promote his method among elites, and inoculation became more popular. The Suttonian method was that in practise before it was replaced by the cowpoxing method associated with Edward Jenner.

The Masseys – The Original Anti Vaccinationists

In response to the introduction of inoculation, two men, Isaac and Edward Massey, brought objections to the table against the new practise. They could be considered the original antivaccinationists. Each of the Masseys put forward a different approach to the issue.

Edmund Massey’s religious objections

Edmund Massey was a Christian clergyman at a church in London, and he objected to inoculation on religious grounds. He preached a notable sermon in 1722 against the new practise which was distributed in written format. The first argument he uses against inoculation is that it is forbidden for man to deliberately inflict disease. He states that while the Bible furnishes examples of men healing when given divine power, there are no examples of men directly inflicting disease. Instead, God inflicts disease to test people’s faith and to punish sin. He raised the book of Job as an example of this.

Isaac Massey’s scientific objections

Isaac Massey raised scientific objections to inoculation. He was an apocethary (which was quite vaguely defined but involved working in the medical profession). In his book, A Short and Plain Account of Inoculation, he raised several different scientific objections to the practise. For example, he claimed that those who were inoculated were not necessarily getting genuine smallpox. He pointed out that it was an uncertain procedure, despite the claims of the inoculators to the contrary that factors such as age and the time of year can be controlled.

He stated that inoculation was ‘a disease of their own making and procurement’. He argued that when true smallpox is spread by inoculation, it can also spread to other people, such as in the case of the inoculation of Mary Batt, which spread smallpox and led to the death of a servant. He argued for living a sober lifestyle as a means to reduce the risk from smallpox.

In his book addressing Jurin’s statistical claims, he argues that Jurin did not allow for factors such as age, disease and poverty when calculating comparative death rates. Most who would have been inoculated when Massey was writing would have been elites, who would have had a better rate of survival from natural smallpox due to more adequate nutrition and being less likely to live in complete squalor. He thus considered that Jurin was not comparing like with like. He also pointed out that inoculation may spread other diseases. He pointed out that the initial claims of the inoculators was that the procedure was harmlessly and that this had to be revised when deaths occurred.

Conclusion

The objections to inoculation did not prevent the practise from eventually becoming widespread in certain elite circles. Inoculation formed the ideological basis for Jenner’s much more well known vaccination practise.

Vaccination as Mass Public Event: The Parallels of the Salk Polio Vaccine and Covid-19

Introduction

One of the key aspects to vaccination is the aspect of ritual. The public practice and promotion of this ritual during the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’ shows some similarities with a previous public vaccination mass participation event: the Salk vaccine trials in the 1950s.

An Overhyped Disease

Without getting into the detail of what caused poliomyelitis (paralytic polio), whether it was the poliovirus, pesticides like DDT, both, or something else, the risks were generally overstated. If we go with the virus theory, the vast majority of people infected with the poliovirus had no symptoms even on the official version. For example, the NHS website states:

Most people who get polio do not have symptoms.

NHS

This was historically known as well. For example, an article published in 1916 states:

In a large aggregation of people, such as the population of a city with over 100,000 inhabitants, a county, or a State, epidemics seldom attack more than one in a thousand of the population, often not more than one in two to four thousand.

Objectively, many other diseases killed more people than polio did, even given that poliomyelitis could be fatal.

Covid-19 was also an overexaggerated threat. The government and media promoted the idea that Covid-19 was so dangerous that it justified lockdowns, forced masks and experimental ‘vaccine’ technologies. However, reality does not match that apocalyptic vision. In reality, excess deaths in the UK only increased after lockdowns were introduced, not before:

Graph showing excess deaths in the United Kingdom. a black line denotes lockdown, in March. The graph shows a massive spike in deaths shortly after lockdowns were introduced.

Unlike poliomyelitis, which mainly affected children, Covid-19 deaths were mainly among the elderly. It was rare for young and healthy people to die from Covid-19. The number of deaths from Covid-19 were exaggerated by media, by defining Covid-19 death as ‘death within 28 days of a positive test’ regardless of cause:

Image showing a screenshot from BBC News showing in large red text the number 46,555. Underneath the number it reads Total UK deaths, and then in smaller text 'Deaths for any reason within 28 days of a positive test'.

Science Saves the Day

In both of these cases, heroic vaccine scientists were portrayed as fighting the evil disease through their ingenuity. The key difference would be that in the case of polio, there was more focus on Jonas Salk, the creator of the first polio vaccine to be used on a mass scale, as an individual. Whereas, in the case of Covid-19, the inventors behind the vaccine were not mentioned, with the names invoked being that of pharmaceutical companies. This may indicate a changing of the times, in that science in general has come to rely much less on the individual ‘heroic inventor’ and more on mass bureaucracy.

Rushed Vaccine Approvals

Both vaccinations also had rushed approvals. After the success of the vaccine was announced at a press conference, the FDA approved the vaccine immediately. The Covid vaccines also had extremely short trial periods, but were pushed through under Emergency Use Authorisation under the guise of a ‘pandemic’ in the US and later formally approved.

Mass Participation

One of the key comparisons between these two vaccines was the opportunity for mass participation they provided. This was not just some sort of out there ‘science’ but a real opportunity to participate in the ritual aspects of vaccination practice. There are two key differences: in the Salk vaccine, the mass participation event was the clinical trial, whereas in the Covid case, the mass participation event was the roll out of the vaccine in December 2020. In the Salk case, the participants were children, whereas in the Covid case the participants during the initial furore were adults.

The Salk vaccine had a large number of participants:

Across the United States, 623 972 schoolchildren were injected with vaccine or placebo, and more than a million others participated as “observed” controls.

“A calculated risk”: the Salk polio vaccine field trials of 1954

Children were put forward to participate in the trials by their parents, and were called the ‘Polio Pioneers’. They were given badges and certificates as a reward for being injected with the vaccine:

Image shows a worn certificate with the text: "The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis Certifies that Stephen Gluckman has been enrolled as a Polio Pioneer and this certificate of membership is hereby presented for taking part in the first national tests of a trial polio vaccine conducted during 1954. Basil O'Connor, President. The image also displays a badge with the text Polio Pioneer 1954 The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

[Gluckman is a promoter of Covid 19 Vaccination]

Images of smiling children holding their arms after receipt of the vaccine were promoted in the mass media.

With Covid-19, the mass participation aspect, and the elements of ritualism, came after the clinical trials rather than before. Images were shown of people receiving vaccines, including seemingly gimmicky stories about a man named William Shakespeare receiving a Covid vaccine (complete with imagery).

Because Covid-19 vaccines allowed for adult participation, social media images were used as a means to demonstrate participation in the ritual of vaccination. Ordinary people were given options on platforms like Facebook to put a ‘I’ve had my Covid-19 Vaccine’ banner on their profile as a form of showing that they had taken part in the vaccine ritual.

Both of these strategies for vaccine promotion were dependent on mass technologies that reach the entire country. Mass newspapers, television, and social media were required to sustain this message. But they also required individuals (or their parents) to opt in to this ritual performance on the basis of this propaganda.

In both cases, we see this initial enthusiasm is not maintained. Many people gave up taking Covid vaccines after the first booster, and enthusiasm for the Salk vaccine also waned quickly. Problems such as the Cutter incident, in which the vaccine caused poliomyelitis, caused scepticism. In the US, it was replaced by the Sabin vaccine after this vaccine was field tested in countries like the USSR.

Conclusion

Vaccine campaigns in the 20th and 21st centuries have used mass media as a strategy to create emotional linkage to the idea of taking a vaccine. Encouragement to participate in such events are a means of manipulating the public into vaccination. The idea of ‘being part of’ such a mass project by opting in provides meaning and purpose, and allows the individual to believe that they are playing a part in the banishment of evil.

What Was ‘Vaccine Lymph’? The Nature of Vaccinia

Image of Smallpox Vaccine
Dried smallpox vaccine (vaccine) by Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

Introduction

Smallpox vaccination was said to prevent infection with smallpox. However, there is a significant practical difficulty with this argument, aside from statistical evidence and anecdotes of vaccine failure. This is the nature of ‘vaccine lymph’ itself. Although ‘vaccine lymph’ is often considered to be cowpox, the history is a lot more complicated than this, with multiple different lymph sources in circulation. This poses a theoretical problem for those who argue that vaccination prevented smallpox, since they then have to argue that all these sources are equivalent, but this is unlikely.

Horse Grease Cowpox or Spontaneous Cowpox?

Edward Jenner argued that there was more than one form of cowpox in his essay the Inquiry. His Inquiry starts with a description of a disease of the horse, the grease, which he claims is spread to the cow:

In this Dairy Country a great number of Cows are kept, and the office of milking is performed indiscriminately by Men and Maid Servants. One of the former having been appointed to apply dressings to the heels of a Horse affected with the Grease, and not paying due attention to cleanliness, incautiously bears his part in milking the Cows, with some particles of the infectious matter adhering to his fingers. When this is the case, it commonly happens that a disease is communicated to the Cows, and from the Cows to the Dairy-maids, which spreads through the farm until most of the cattle and domestics feel its unpleasant consequences.

Jenner, Inquiry

Jenner is clear in this text that the protection comes via the horse, through the cow, to man.

Jenner distinguishes this from spontaneous cowpox, which he considers not protective from smallpox:

It is necessary to observe, that pustulous sores frequently appear spontaneously on the nipples of Cows, and instances have occurred, though very rarely, of the hands of the servants employed in milking being affected with sores in consequence, and even of their feeling an indisposition from absorption. These pustules are of a much milder nature than those which arise from that contagion which constitutes the true Cow Pox. […] But this disease is not be considered as similar in any respect to that of which I am treating, as it is incapable of producing any specific effects on the human Constitution. However, it is of the greatest consequence to point it out here, lest the want of discrimination should occasion an idea of security from the infection of the Small Pox, which might prove delusive.

So here we have two forms of cowpox. One protects from smallpox, and one does not. Presumably, the lymph used by Jenner in his vaccinations outlined in the Inquiry was horse grease cowpox.

A chart showing various arm to arm vaccinations carried out by Edward Jenner. Chart reads Horse - Cow - William Summers - William Pead - Hannah Execell & several others - then 2 sets of vaccinations one by Jenner and another by Cline - then the final vaccinations with the lymph which was then lost

As we can see from this diagram (taken from Crookshank’s History and Pathology of Vaccination, Vol. 1) Jenner’s succession of arm to arm vaccinations had run out, and he had no lymph.

So where did his next set of lymph come from? Enter William Woodville.

William Woodville was the lead doctor of the Smallpox Hospital in London and interested in Jenner’s method. He was able to obtain lymph for vaccination from a cow in Grey’s Inn Lane, London. Woodville had been previously unable to directly inoculate horse grease on the cow’s teat.

Be it observed, however, that this London cowpox was not Jenner’s cowpox. It was not horsegrease cowpox, but the variety stigmatised by Jenner as spurious.

White 1885

However, because Jenner had no source of lymph, the Woodville lymph became the source that was spread across the world, regardless of the fact that it wasn’t horse grease cowpox. So if we take the Jennerian distinction as legitimate, there is a significant argument that the lymph used was not protective. Even if we reject the idea that there is such thing as a horse grease cowpox, there is still the problem of which forms of lesions on a cow’s teat are protective from smallpox, since it is agreed that there is more than one form of disease on the cow’s teat.

Cowpox or Smallpox – Was Woodville’s Lymph Contaminated?

As Woodville worked at the Smallpox Hospital in London, he performed his vaccinations there. This of course meant there was a risk of a patient who may become a vaccinifer contracting smallpox, leading to smallpox being spread along with the vaccine lymph. There were also other issues with how Woodville carried out his tests. Although he ran many more tests than Jenner and was more fastidious in recording his results, in some of his cases he performed the variolous test very early on, while the cowpox pustule was still present:

Ann Pink, a tall girl, of a brown sallow complexion, aged fifteen years. This girl was inoculated with variolous matter, on the fifth day, in the same manner as Collingridge, and both tumours proceeded to maturation, though more slowly than in that case.

Woodville, Cited in Crookshank, Vol 2

He then went on to use some of these cases as vaccinifers (e.g. James Crouch was vaccinated, then inoculated on the 5th day after vaccination, then used as the vaccinifer for case 21). This meant the cowpox matter may well be contaminated with smallpox matter.

As Woodville made differing observations from Jenner, regarding the eruptions on the skin, there were some cases where it seemed evident that Woodville’s patients had smallpox.

Horsepox or Cowpox: Equine Lymph Direct From the Horse

Jenner’s relationship to the horse grease theory of cowpox is not straightforward. Essentially, he advocated it initially, but then failed to mention it in his further essays, likely due to its unpopularity. For example, a notable early vaccine promoter, George Pearson, considered the horse grease part of Jenner’s ideas to be nonsense and openly said so. William White argues that Jenner did this for cynical reasons, i.e. financial gain. Later in his life, however, Jenner essentially returned to the horse and in fact used vaccination (equination?) direct rather than via the cow.

For example, he referred to using equine lymph in his correspondence:

[Mr. Melon] sent me some of his equine virus, which I have been using from arm to arm for these two months past without observing the smallest deviation in the progress and appearance of the pustules from those produced by the vaccine.

Jenner (1813), cited in Crookshank [Crookshank’s emphasis]

It was not just Jenner that use horsepox direct. An Italian vaccinator, Sacco, used horsepox to vaccinate.

Sacco obtained some matter from the ulcerous sores on a horse’s hocks (he gives a startling picture of huge, excavated horse sores in his Trattato of 1809), and therewith inoculated several children at the Foundling Hospital of Milan. He found that the effects were very like those of cowpox virus (as we know, in fact, that they always are) ; and, on trying the children with the variolous test, he found that they were protected just as if they had been cowpoxed.

Creighton, Jenner and Vaccination

De Carro in Vienna also used horse grease in his vaccinations.

This horse material likely ended up in wide circulation due to its usage by these prolific vaccinators.

Humanised Lymph: Did Serial Passage Affect the Disease?

As for most of the 19th century, vaccination was arm to arm, there is a possibility that passing through multiple human constitutions may have affected the disease. Essentially, this passing through multiple humans was a crude form of serial passage. In fact, people considered this in the nineteenth century as well, which is why some in the 1840s wanted to “return to the cow” and create a fresh stock of lymph (see below). They believed that the passage through multiple human constitutions had made the disease too mild to be effective against smallpox. As virologists subscribe to the idea of serial passage affecting the function of viruses, then they have to concede this is probable in the case of artificial cowpox infection. Thus the vaccine given over time is not a consistent virus but had different mutations, meaning that there is a distinct possibility of mutation away from being an effective preventative of smallpox even if Jenner’s original concoction worked (which of course, it did not).

Cowpox or Smallpox II: Smallpox Via the Cow

In the 1840s, the idea became prevalent that the lymph was no longer potent and that a stock should be raised from cows. The idea that smallpox and cowpox were the same disease became explicit (Jenner had said that horse grease was ‘the source’ of smallpox instead, although he did call cowpox variolae vaccinae i.e. cow smallpox). The reason that cowpox protected from smallpox on this view was that it was smallpox, except passed via the constitution of the cow which somehow made it milder. This idea wasn’t really explained, just asserted.

Cowpox was not a widespread disease, making it difficult to find new lymph sources. As such, there were those who attempted to deliberately infect cows with smallpox to generate these new lymph sources.

One of these men was Robert Ceely, who performed extensive experiments involving cows. He gave detailed descriptions of cowpox and also infected cows with smallpox and described the results.

Badcock was another 1840s writer, who wanted to obtain fresh lymph for vaccination:

The only satisfactory mode of obtaining, with certainty, the true vaccine that presented itself to my mind was, therefore, to inoculate a healthy cow with Small Pox matter, as the result of that operation, if any, must be cow Small Pox

Badcock

Badcock used this matter for vaccination and indeed states that he vaccinated ‘several thousand’ with this lymph.

Later in the 19th century, when arm to arm vaccination was abandoned, the method of ‘pure glycerinated calf lymph’ came into vogue and emerged as the main method of vaccination. Again, this involved the deliberate infection of cows with smallpox.

The living calf or heifer is first bound down on a movable tilting table, and its belly is shaved and on the clean, tender skin of a most tender part one or two hundred cuts or scratches are then made, and into these cuts or scratches is rubbed some “seed virus,” obtained directly or indirectly from human smallpox.

Chas Higgins

Goat Pox, Sheep Pox, and Other Follies

Vaccinators also tried different examples of less popular material for vaccination.

One example is sheep pox:

Accordingly, when Sacco, in 1804, obtained variolous lymph from infected sheep at Capua, he gave it to Dr. Legni in the remote Sicilian province of Cattolica to try as a substitute for vaccine in the prevention of smallpox.

Creighton, Jenner and Vaccination

There were also other examples of various lymph being used – goat pox was experimented with in Madrid in 1804. Crookshank also argued that cattle plague was used for vaccine lymph in India.

The Jennerian Vesicle: The Vaccination Standard

What connects all of this? The notion of the Jennerian vesicle. Basically, the standard for ‘successful vaccination’ was whether it produced a correct ‘Jennerian vesicle’ on the arm where the matter was inserted. In other words, so long as the vesicle looked ‘correct’ the vaccination was considered to be successful. It goes without saying that this is not a scientific criteria for judging immunity to a disease. But because all these sources could raise the Jennerian vesicle, they were defended as vaccine lymph and some were widely employed.

Conclusion

The fact that so many different diseases, from so many different sources, were considered and used as vaccine lymph, poses a theoretical issue for vaccinationists. All these sources were adjudged at some point, and by some individuals to be appropriate matter for vaccination and many sources existed in circulation. Yet it is difficult theoretically to argue that all these sources were equivalent and thus, for the vaccinationist, equally effective against smallpox.