Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

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Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

The Second Section in CTM's Series on Vaccination

by Steven Ransom

 

The simple statements we read today, such as " In the

19th and early 20th century, over 10,000 people a year

died from such and such a disease, before the advent

of mass-inoculation, " are very misleading. The rote

repetition by today's journalists of these death rates

leads the reader to conclude that vaccines were

instrumental in halting the epidemics. This is simply

not the case. Never are the death rates contextualised

in their reports. The decline in the overall death

rate in the populations across the UK at that time was

the direct result of much-needed improvements to city

and urban sanitation conditions.

 

DON'T DRINK THE WATER!

By far the biggest human killer, especially in

inner-city areas, were the unsanitary conditions in

which so many thousands of people lived. In London for

instance, between 1800 and 1850, the population rose

from 1,100,000 to 2,200,000 without any great

investment in the sanitary infrastructure required to

support such a growth. " As the teeming rookeries

became further overcrowded, cholera, typhoid, the

white plague (TB) and typhus cast a necrophagous

shadow over the capital. " A Dr Hector Gavin visited

Bethnal Green, London, in the 1840s. He noticed that a

new terrace of houses had been constructed within ten

feet of an enormous stagnant lake, " …of thickened,

putrefying matter, containing dead dogs and cats in

every stage of decomposition, from which bubbles of

pestilential exhalation were being given off. " During

the Industrial Revolution, poorer families often lived

in squalid, dark, airless rooms, perhaps 30 families

sharing a basic communal lavatory which connected to

an open cesspool, overflowing into the street. Some

households simply emptied chamber pots out the window

into the street below. The 18th century London artist

Hogarth has a famous print depicting this very act.

 

FOLLY DITCH

Charles Dickens had a long association with the London

area of Southwark, both personal and literary, and

particularly with the area known as The Borough. He

first came to Southwark at the age of 12, when his

parents and all the Dickens children, except for

Charles and his sister Fanny, were imprisoned at

Marshalsea Debtors Prison in Borough High Street. In

his writings, Dickens described many places in

Southwark he had known as a child. A particularly

'colourful' account of London living is found in

Dickens' famous work, Oliver Twist:

 

" Near to that part of the Thames on which the church

at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks

are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest

with the dust of colliers and the smoke of

close-built, low-roofed houses, there exists the

filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of

the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly

unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its

inhabitants.… Rooms so small, so filthy, so confined,

that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt

and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers

thrusting themselves out above the mud, and

threatening to fall into it - as some have done;

dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every

repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome

indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these

ornament the banks of Folly Ditch. "

 

People would simply draw household water straight from

the Thames, or from whatever decaying river flowed

through the particular town or city. But London was by

no means the dirtiest place. When it came to

sanitation and cleanliness, all densely inhabited

areas in the UK were nothing less than vile in the

poorer quarters. The urgent need in 1830s Bristol, for

instance, to provide the city with clean water, had

become a pressing public question, according to John

Latimer, author of The Annals of Bristol in the 19th

Century:

 

" The state of the poor in many districts was

lamentable in the extreme and the high rate of

mortality, which generally prevailed, was held to be

largely attributable to the consumption of impure

water and to the dirt and squalor that prevailed

amongst the labouring classes. "

 

Dirt and squalor are the most frequently recurring

words in descriptions of the living conditions of

poorer classes of the period and with all the usual

references to the failure of the authorities to do

anything to remove them. These were the conditions

surrounding Edward Jenner, when he introduced his

particular cowpox 'salve'. And what benefit would be

gained by injecting an already compromised immune

system with a vaccine containing poisonous cow pus?

 

NEW YORK

American cities were no different. In the mid-19th

century, New York City had a higher mortality rate

than most cities in the United States and western

Europe. Members of the New York Sanitary Association

were convinced that the diseases contributing to this

high rate were primarily due to the absence of proper

sanitary practices and could be prevented. Sanitarians

wanted to improve public health law and educate the

public about proper hygiene.

 

In 1864, New York physician Stephen Smith organised

and directed a sanitary survey of New York City, a

landmark event in the history of American public

health. Many students of public health still consider

this survey to be among the most comprehensive ever

made. It contains vivid descriptions of living

conditions unimaginable to contemporary Americans. The

inspectors wrote about overflowing privies,

slime-covered streets filled with horse manure, and

slaughterhouses and fat-boiling establishments

dispersed among overcrowded tenements. One inspector

reported that blood and liquid animal remains flowed

for two blocks down 39th Street from a slaughterhouse

to the river. It was common knowledge that youngsters

" could earn nickels by standing along Broadway and

sweeping a path through the muck for those who wanted

to cross the wretched boulevard. "

 

The New York survey was responsible for immediate

sanitation improvements. Smith testified before the

New York Senate and Assembly and, just over a year

later, New York passed the first comprehensive health

legislation in the nation. The newly established

Metropolitan Board of Health was the first government

agency dedicated to truly professional sanitary reform

in the United States, and New York's sanitary

legislation served as a model for other local and

state bills. Smith's work in New York City also led to

the formation of the American Public Health

Association, on whose board he served.

 

CHICAGO

In the 1850s, Chicago endured a succession of cholera

and dysentery epidemics, incited primarily by the

city's random waste disposal methods. In response, the

Illinois legislature appointed Boston city engineer

Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough to be chief engineer of the

Chicago Board of Sewage Commissioners. Chesbrough

immediately submitted a plan for a sewage system

designed to solve Chicago's waste disposal problems.

At that time, not one U.S. city had a comprehensive

sewage system, although most had sewers. In devising a

system that would best serve Chicago, Chesbrough

visited several major European cities and studied

their sewage systems. Chesbrough's innovations

decreased illness and death and greatly improved

public health.

 

EDWIN CHADWICK

In the UK, surrounded by the same general decay and

stench, social reformer Edwin Chadwick, along with

Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Shaftsbury and a Dr

Southwood-Smith, created the Health of Towns

Association. Visiting 50 towns, the HTA agreed that

something needed to be done and urgently. Over the

next thirty years, and with much opposition facing

them, (all to do with expenditure) improvements were

gradually made to town water supplies across the UK.

The London cholera outbreaks of 1847 and 1854 killed

58,000 people. The common belief that the cholera was

caused by a poisonous vapour was totally disproved in

1854 by Dr John Snow, who traced the source of the

outbreak to the stagnant, filthy waters of The Broad

Street Pump in Soho. With the introduction of The

Metropolis Water Act of 1852, filtration systems were

enforced on all water supply companies. Water supplies

were monitored regularly by chemical and microscopic

analysis. By 1859, several provincial cities enjoyed

the luxury of a constant and drinkable water supply.

SE Finer, the biographer of Edwin Chadwick, wrote:

 

" The suddenness with which the people of England

appeared for the first time to acquire a sense of

sight and smell, and realise that they were living on

top of a dung heap, was due to the impact of

industrial change. By the 1840s, the slow procession

of piecemeal alteration in modes of production had

produced a qualitative change, visible to all. England

was rich. England lived in towns… Engineering skills

and new riches made a sanitary science possible and

necessary. "

 

AS SIMPLE AS ABC!

Needless to say, the impact upon the health of the

cities was considerable. In October 1970, Dr. Edward

H. Kass, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical

School, delivered the presidential address to the

Infectious Disease Society of America. In commenting

on a number of other diseases, all supposedly

'infectious', he stated:

 

" It was not medical research that had stamped out

tuberculosis, diphtheria, pneumonia and puerperal

sepsis. The main credit went to public health

programmes, sanitation and general improvements in the

standard of living brought about by industrialisation.

All the data showed that mortality rates from

infectious disease had been in steady decline since

the middle of the 19th century, that is, before

medicine had become scientific and interventionist. "

 

And it is against this backdrop that all stories

pertaining to the worth of vaccination must be

weighed. The myriad glowing 'history of vaccination'

essays out there make little mention of these matters.

Commenting on the need for intellectual rigour when

seeking to establish cause and effect, Geoff Watts,

presenter of Medicine Now, says:

 

" Another trap for the unwary lies in the failure to

distinguish between association and causation. The

fact that two things repeatedly happen at the same

time doesn't mean that one is necessarily the

consequence of the other. Both may be the result of

some third event of which the observer is unaware. "

 

In all the pro-vaccination papers, the authors fail to

distinguish between association and causation. They

would have us presume that A (improved health) is

believed to be the result of B, (vaccination) while

taking no account of C, (all-round improvement in

social conditions). The enforcement of long-overdue

and much-needed sanitation laws coherently explains

the downward trend in illness and death rates in the

mid to late 19th century. Yes, people appeared to be

getting better at the same time as people were being

injected with cow pus. But in no way was this

intervention the trigger for better health!

Vaccination was merely a coincidental act, against a

much larger backdrop of eminently sensible sanitation

measures.

 

DUTIFUL RECITALS

But you wouldn't think so, reading the Student BMJ

History of Medicine page. Described as, " A fascinating

exploration of the history of medicine, showing just

how far medicine has come from ancient times to the

present day, " the following text gives us the

conventional history of vaccination:

 

" Jenner was a country doctor who observed that

milkmaids who had contact with cowpox did not catch

smallpox. Suspecting that it may be possible to induce

this immunity medically, Jenner inoculated James

Phipps with pus from a dairymaid in May 1796. Six

weeks later he unsuccessfully inoculated the same boy

with smallpox, proving his theory. He published his

work in 1798 and attracted immediate attention. By

1799 thousands of people had been vaccinated across

the world and by 1979 the World Health Organization

had successfully completed a programme eradicating

smallpox from the world. Enthusiasm for the

eradication of smallpox stems from the fact that it

was one of the greatest killers in history,

responsible for thousands of deaths in the old world

and significantly also responsible for wiping out 90%

of native Americans in the 1600s, facilitating, in

part, the colonisation of the New World. "

 

How much has been left out of this fascinating

exploration is painfully obvious. It is not an

exploration. It is merely the rote repetition of

historical, medical myths by naïve underlings,

dutifully reciting their way up the conventional

medical ladder. The enormous part which the

environment plays in human and animal health has been

entirely avoided in the BMJ essay, but is a theme

which will repeat itself more and more, the deeper we

examine the nature of health and disease in this book.

The vaccine industry of course promotes no discussion

on such matters.

 

LEICESTER GETS SICK

Leicester, with nearly 200,000 inhabitants at the

time, affords good evidence for the uselessness of

Jenner's smallpox vaccination programme. At the

commencement of the 1870s, Leicester was one of the

most completely vaccinated towns in the UK. In 1871,

at the very height of its 95% vaccination record,

public records revealed that Leicester's smallpox

deaths were higher than that of the less-vaccinated

London. Says Pat Rattigan:

 

" After this potion was injected into the blood of the

nation's children, the largest epidemic of smallpox

ever known began, with a peak of 42,000 deaths in

1871-72 alone. "

 

Faced with this simple mathematical equation,

Leicester inhabitants realised that vaccination was

only adding to the death toll. As a result, there grew

a steady refusal to vaccinate. Coupled with the

already-mentioned sanitary reforms, this refusal to

vaccinate meant that Leicester began to witness less

death. Pat Rattigan again:

 

" After this fiasco, the towns of Leicester and

Dewsbury rejected vaccination. In 1892-3 Leicester had

19.3 cases of smallpox per 10,000 population.

Warrington, with 99.2% vaccinated had 123.3 cases of

smallpox per 10,000 population. Leicester and Dewsbury

had the lowest death-rates in the country. "

 

TRYING TO CREATE PANIC

The injection of pus and other detritus into the

collective bloodstream of the Leicester inhabitants

ceased. The news soon spread that Leicester was

refusing vaccination and had subsequently witnessed a

drop in the death rate. As a result, vaccine refusal

spread right across the UK, despite the predictable

dire warnings from the conventional establishment

doctors who prophesied that death and destruction

would reign as vaccination ceased and smallpox

returned. The following quotation, dating back 120

years to 1882, demonstrates quite clearly the

pharmaceutical forces at work then as are at work

today:

 

" The persistent attempts that are now being made to

create panic over the increase of smallpox in London

have so far met with little success. What evidently is

wanted is to drive the people in flocks to the doctors

for re-vaccination. The 'roaring trade' that was done

during the epidemic of 1871 is remembered with

fervour, and such another 'good time' is earnestly

prayed for. It is lucrative work vaccinating troops of

terrified middle and upper class Londoners. They hear

of 'carefully selected vaccine' with touching

simplicity; drop their guineas with grateful alacrity;

and retire, persuaded that they are fortified for at

least seven years from possibility of infection. Here

we see old sorcery and witchcraft under new forms

without essential difference. "

 

There are also examples of Jenner's medical

contemporaries who, formerly accepting vaccination as

a matter of course, were led, after careful

investigation of the matter, to reject it entirely. A

Dr W. J. Collins, a public vaccinator in London, who,

in twenty-five years, had vaccinated many thousands of

persons, eventually realised that vaccination had

never diminished smallpox, but on the contrary, had

often produced it. He expressed the conviction that

" cowpox inoculation, whether performed with matter

originating in the greasy heels of the consumptive

horse or in the running sores of human smallpox, is a

practice dangerous to the community at large. " and he

was so convinced of this that he abandoned vaccination

altogether, thereby giving up an income of at least

£2,500 a year. And similarly, across the pond in the

USA, a Dr J.W. Hodge, ex-Public Vaccinator of

Lockport, New York, wrote:

 

" After a careful consideration of the history of

vaccination gleaned from an impartial and

comprehensive study of vital statistics, and pertinent

data from every reliable source, and after an

experience derived from having vaccinated 31,000

subjects, I am firmly convinced that vaccination

cannot be shown to have any logical relation to the

diminution of cases of smallpox. Vaccination does not

protect; it actually renders its subjects more

susceptible by depressing vital power and diminishing

natural resistance, and millions of people have died

of smallpox which they contracted after being

vaccinated. "

 

Moving on a few decades, and we read this from Dr. J.

C. Ward:

 

" I believed that vaccination prevented smallpox. I

believed that if it did not absolutely prevent it in

every case, it modified the disease in some cases, and

I believed that re-vaccination, if only frequent

enough, gave absolute immunity. Experience has driven

all that out of my head; I have seen vaccinated

persons get smallpox, and persons who had been

re-vaccinated get smallpox, and I have seen those who

had had smallpox get it a second time and die of it. "

 

According to the official figures of the Register

General of England for 1933, only 109 children under 5

in England and Wales died of smallpox in the

twenty-three years previously, but 270 children had

died of vaccinations in the same period. Between 1934

and 1961, not one smallpox death was recorded, and yet

during this same period, 115 children under 5 years of

age died as a result of the smallpox vaccination. This

grisly toll ultimately forced the government to repeal

the Vaccination Act for smallpox. And from that day to

this, the unvaccinated (and, as our health officials

would stalwartly proclaim, unprotected) UK has had a

negligible smallpox mortality rate. Well, of course

that would be the case. The UK enjoys all the public

amenities that prevent such an illness. Not good news

for today's £multi-million vaccine industry that

desires us to believe the hype and 'get vaccinated'

for all diseases.

 

The last recorded death, supposedly from smallpox in

the UK, was in 1978. Janet Parker, a medical

photographer from the Medical School of the University

of Birmingham, was apparently contaminated with

smallpox while working at the laboratories of

Professor Henry S. Bedson, head of the Department of

Medical Microbiology. As a result of her unusual and

much-publicised death, Bedson committed suicide,

slitting his throat with a pair of scissors.

 

PROMOTIONAL DISASTER

One early attempt at vaccine promotion went

disastrously wrong over at the print office of

Encyclopaedia Britannica. This publication had called

upon the services of a Dr Charles Creighton to write

an article for its 1888 edition on the benefits of

vaccination. Creighton had written for EB previously

and was presumed a sound candidate for the project,

having authored a book entitled 'History of Epidemics'

- a book described as by some as '... the greatest

medical work ever written by one man.' He was

considered a safe pair of hands. However, no-one had

envisaged him critically researching the subject

before writing the piece. His article began:

 

" It is right to say that the views expressed in the

present article diverge in many points from the

opinions generally received among medical men, and

must be regarded not as the exposition of established

and undisputed doctrine, but as the outcome of an

independent and laborious research. "

 

As a result of his research, Creighton was unable to

list any actual benefits of vaccination. As a

'promotion' for vaccination, Creighton's piece was a

disaster. The Vaccine Awareness Network Takes up the

story:

 

" Even though Creighton tried to favour vaccination and

please the medical profession in his article, he found

he could not, with any honesty and accuracy, state

that vaccination had ever had any influence in

reducing any disease. It was all too obvious that the

practice had caused thousands of deaths plus an

unbelievably large number of cases of disease and

disability. Having publicly requested the article from

the eminent physician, the hapless publishers had to

use it.…

 

The physicians and vaccine laboratories were shocked

but he had the proof of what he said and they knew it

was correct…. However, in the next edition, his

article was left out, and was replaced as soon as

possible by what was little more than an advertisement

for glycerinated calf lymph written by one of its

promoters. Creighton, perhaps the greatest medical

mind of the last century, was virtually turned out of

his profession. The ninth edition became a collector's

item. "

 

AND ALL THANKS TO A NEW NEEDLE? HMMM…

So much for Encyclopaedia Britannica as a vanguard of

truth. The Virtual Museum of Bacteria shows the same

simple disregard for truth. Not once in its history of

vaccination pages does it mention sanitation or

hygiene. Here is a snippet from its glowing

vaccination references:

 

" Jenner had first proposed the idea of worldwide

eradication of smallpox by vaccination in 1801. In

1950, the World Health Organization proposed a

programme to eradicate smallpox from the Americas.

This was achieved in 8 years. In 1958, the W.H.O.

proposed a worldwide eradication campaign, but this

did not really get under way until 1965. Between 200

and 300 million doses of a standardized vaccine were

produced and administered annually. Smallpox

vaccination was greatly helped by the development of

the bifurcated needle in 1968, making administration

of the vaccine simpler and more effective. Even in the

best-organised campaigns, it was not possible to

vaccinate 100% of the population, so a new strategy

was adopted in addition to blanket vaccination

campaigns - early detection and vigorous containment

of outbreaks. This proved to be highly effective. "

 

Highly effective nonsense.

 

© Copyright Steven Ransom 2003

Excerpted from Wake up to Health in the 21st Century

 

Further Resources

Need to know about the vaccine controversy?

Wake up to Health in the 21st Century by Steven Ransom

Health Wars by Phillip Day