Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History

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All the gravely ill patients were also tortured by mucosal symptoms. The tongue was more or less swollen and misshapen and hindered breathing through the mouth. The voice was hoarse and faltering. Swallowing was so painful that the patients refused all nourishment and, in spite of agonizing thirst, often also refused all fluids. We saw patients with deep invasion of the respiratory passages… Wails and groans filled the rooms. The patients were conscious to their last breath ( Fenner, 1988, p. 27). Typhoid and paratyphoid fever Person-to-person spread of poliovirus via the fecal-oral route is the most important route of transmission, although the oral-oral route is possible. Just to be clear, the changed definition of paralytic cases explained by Greenberg did eliminate a substantial number of cases of paralysis, as many as 30,000 during the first half of the 1950s; but a significant number of paralytic cases remained and in the following years, based on the revised definition, following the introduction of the vaccine, these numbers continued to decline until there were none, so, whatever some claim, the evidence for the effectiveness of the vaccine is substantial and undeniable. Diphtheria is fatal in between 5% and 10% of cases. In children under five years and adults over 40 years, the fatality rate may be as much as 20% ( Wikipedia. Diphtheria; see also: CDC. Diphtheria; CDC. Pink Book. Diphtheria; Tejpratap, 2018). Dr Suzanne Humphries is a board certified nephrologist and a very smart woman. When her kidney patients were thrown into renal failure after routine flu vaccinations administered upon entry to the hospital, her pleas to spare her patients were rebuffed. She had requested that her patients not be vaccinated until hospital discharge. This was the turning point, after which, her colleagues, doctors on staff at the hospital, and administrators regarded her with suspicion, as anti-vaccination. Apparently, that’s all it takes to be regarded as a pariah, scorned and outcast-ed. Perhaps this book is a form of revenge, an acute lesson for the mediocre pro-vaccine colleagues who opposed her.

In the case of measles, the death rate had declined by almost 100 percent. You would never know it today, but the dreaded measles was no longer a major issue in the Western world by the time vaccines were deployed (p.174)

Poliomyelitis: Epidemics, Incidence, Morbidity (paralysis), and Mortality

Some observers have said that the presence of the measles virus indicates a strong possibility that the measles vaccine, a possible source of the virus, could have caused the children’s autism. […] Walker says the new research does not support the connection, and he notes that the results have not even been published in a peer-reviewed journal. “Even if we showed association (between measles virus and bowel disease) and we published it in a peer-reviewed journal, the conclusion will be simply that there is measles virus in the gut of a large number of children who have regressive autism and bowel disease. End of story. It is well known that the live measles vaccine can lead to a mild rash and fever a few weeks after immunization, as the body reacts to the live attenuated (weakened) virus. This does not, however, mean that the measles vaccine “failed” — as Dr Humphries seems to imply above — but rather that the body is forming an appropriate and successful immune response to the attenuated virus.

Condom use reduces the likelihood of transmission during sex, but does not completely eliminate the risk. Congenital syphilis in the newborn can be prevented by screening mothers during early pregnancy and treating those who are infected. So, with further data, based on the criteria for paralysis that Greenberg used to adjust the earlier data, where he concluded the vaccine reduced the incidence of cases, with additional data, his original conclusion not only was right, but proved even more valid. How did Humphries miss this? That the drop in diphtheria morbidity and mortality is not wholly due to preventive immunization appears to be indicated by the fact that this decline set in actually in the nineteenth century before diphtheria antitoxin began to be used generally, and continue progressively even before preventive immunization became widespread. The death rate among children up to 10 years of age in New York City was 785 per 100,000 in 1894, declining to less than 300 in 1900; and in 1920, when active immunization of school children began, it fell below 100…Certainly, the downward course of diphtheria morbidity and mortality has at least been accelerated by preventive immunization (Rosen, 1993, pp. 312-314). Infection with poliovirus is overwhelmingly subclinical, with the estimated ratio of inapparent to severe (paralytic) infections ranging up to 850:1. There were thirty-nine polio epidemics in the U.S. between 1910- 1971 ( Trevelyan, 2005, pp. 35-36; see also: Smallman-Raynor, 2006).

A study from 1967 revealed that the vaccine could cause pneumonia as well as encephalopathy (p 347). As can be seen from the table, the number of deaths from polio was substantially higher from 1950-1956 than any of the other disease. Perhaps, as from 1953, Humphries doesn’t consider 3,145 deaths from polio, mainly children, of any importance? Note that I will discuss in Part 2 how these cases were confirmed to be polio. Note also from the table above that number 2 in number of deaths from 1950 on was measles, with a high of 683 in 1951, just a minor blip on the screen according to Humphries, to repeat what she wrote: “In the case of measles, the death rate had declined by almost 100 percent. You would never know it today, but the dreaded measles was no longer a major issue in the Western world by the time vaccines were deployed (p.174).” Polio morbidity/paralysis Immunization against measles provides effective protection against the disease. A more modest reduction in the risk of a measles diagnosis is associated with breast-feeding. In other words, what worked for typhoid, a bacteria, didn’t work for polio, a virus. Polio epidemics, incidence, morbidity (paralysis), and mortality Note that the Trevelyan article and especially the Smallman-Raynor book cover in detail the history and geography of polio epidemics in the United States] Swimming pools, chlorine, and polio

Malaria has several serious complications. Among these is the development of respiratory distress, which occurs in up to 25% of adults and 40% of children with severe P. falciparum malaria. Although rare in young children with severe malaria, acute respiratory distress syndrome occurs in 5–25% of adults and up to 29% of pregnant women. Poliovirus infection typically peaks in the summer months in temperate climates. There is no seasonal pattern in tropical climates.From Rosen, as with smallpox, diphtheria may well have mutated to a more benign form, though still lethal for many, and antitoxin and finally a vaccine ended its reign. Syphilis and sequaelae Next, after having argued extensively that antibodies are useless (claim # 6), harmful (claim # 7), and play a role in degenerative disease (claim # 9), Dr Humphries does a full 180 and posits that the antibodies received via breast milk offer superior protection against measles infection compared to the vaccine: The classic symptoms of pertussis are a paroxysmal cough, inspiratory whoop, and fainting, or vomiting after coughing. The cough from pertussis has been documented to cause subconjunctival hemorrhages, rib fractures, urinary incontinence, hernias, and vertebral artery dissection. Violent coughing can cause the pleura to rupture, leading to a pneumothorax [lung collapse]. In the year 1927, for the first time, no case of variola major was reported in the USA, and apart from an outbreak in 1929 no further cases were notified until 1946. In that year a soldier returning from Japan introduced smallpox into Seattle, Washington, which resulted in an outbreak of 51 cases, with 16 deaths (Palmquist, 1947). In 1947 a man with undiagnosed haemorrhagic smallpox died in a Manhattan, New York, hospital. Twelve other persons were infected.