As a lifelong student of this subject I have become convinced that the
whole cult and practice of general public vaccination and particularly
all compulsory vaccination, like all great intrenched evils, has
originated in falsehood, has continued in falsehood, and now exists
on both falsehood and concealment, viz.: falsehood as to its absolute
efficiency and certainty in protecting the individual against smallpox;
falsehood as to the necessity of general vaccination to prevent
smallpox epidemics; and gross falsehood as to its perfect safety and
freedom from danger to human health and life.
Now, I do not think that I have ever seen a grosser illustration of
the truth of this charge than can be found in the special article on
Vaccination published in the _Monthly Bulletin_ or _Health News_ for
February, 1914, issued by the New York State Department of Health
at Albany, which contains what I believe to be shocking falsehoods,
fallacies, and exaggerations which even a tyro in the investigation
of this subject could easily refute, as I will now show. All these
fallacies have been issued with an air of gospel truth, to instruct the
public, and to try to justify the extreme efforts of our department
officers and medical doctors to force compulsory vaccination on
every child and adult in this State as not only absolutely necessary
for public health, but as the only known means to prevent smallpox
epidemics, and as being an operation which is wholly beneficial and
entirely safe and harmless to human health and life. I shall now give
examples of the chief and worst of these medical falsehoods and follow
with their refutation, as a duty clearly due to public truth and right.
FIRST FALSEHOOD: This official Bulletin at page 48 tells us concerning
the alleged efficiency and necessity of vaccination as follows:
“Nothing but vaccination can save from smallpox.... Cleanliness
and general sanitation exert absolutely no influence upon its
prevalence.”
This is about as shocking, absurd and false as it can be, and coming
from our highest State health officer is certainly not creditable to
our public health service, but is so obviously absurd and untenable
as to refute itself on its very face. This paragraph tells us, in
effect, that dense human overcrowding, with personal and public filth
spread everywhere, no sanitation or isolation anywhere, and every case
of smallpox left loose and at large to spread by direct contact to
every child and adult and thus infect every one right and left, as in
the old unsanitary times of big and frequent epidemics--all this, our
Health Commissioner coolly tells us, would not make a bit of difference
in the spread of the disease! And, per contra, the prevention of all
these vile unsanitary conditions of barbarous times, with or without
vaccination, would have no effect whatever to reduce the disease!
Now, of course, every person of any common sense or knowledge simply
knows that these propositions are absurdly false on their face, and
that we need pay no further attention to them, except to show by such
horrible examples how foolish and desperate the falsehoods are that
are resorted to by some doctors and health officers to try to force
this dangerous medical evil of compulsory disease on every child and
adult, and that on such falsehoods it is essentially based. Every
unbiased student of this subject knows that efficient sanitation and
hygiene have been the most effectual means for preventing and reducing
all diseases and promoting public health during the last half century
and that, as a matter of fact, no serious reduction of smallpox or
typhoid fever has been effected in modern times except through general
sanitation and hygiene, with or without vaccination.
SECOND FALSEHOOD: The next major fallacy in this State Department
Bulletin relates to the alleged perfect safety of vaccination, as
follows:
“There is not the slightest risk in the process of vaccination
when it is carried out with clean virus (now guaranteed by
Government inspection) and when the vaccination itself is kept
clean. ‘Sore arms’ come from dirt getting into the vaccination,
not from the vaccine itself.”
Now, if the man who wrote this falsehood knows anything extensive on
this subject, he must know that what he states here is not true. And he
knows also that the government does not really guarantee any virus, and
that no such thing as “clean” virus is now, or ever was, made or can be
made; that is, no virus without some, or many, dangerous suppurative
disease germs of one kind or another, known or unknown, which will
not be likely, some time or other, in some persons, to bring about
a dangerous infection of the system with possible serious or fatal
injury, and that, as a matter of fact, such infections are occurring
constantly in children and adults from the various existing brands of
“clean,” “inspected,” and “certified” virus now in use. Furthermore, as
to this evil being caused only by “dirt” getting into the wound, this
audacious writer must also know that this dangerous or fatal infection
can and does come into the wound both directly as a “primary” infection
from the virus itself, and as a “secondary” infection from “dirt” in
or about the wound, and he must know very well, if at all competent
to write on this subject for public instruction, that one kind of
infection is about as common and as fatal as the other, and that both
are almost equally chargeable to the operation of vaccination itself,
so that to contend otherwise is merely a cowardly evasion of the truth,
as has been fully proved by the shocking exhibits of vaccination
horrors shown herein.