The Dangers of
Smallpox Vaccination

Compiled by Gary Krasner

The public is now getting lots of medical propaganda about the eradication of smallpox through vaccination.  But in fact, the consensus among leading medical historians that have studied the question have maintained that the eradication of the zymotic, or "filth" diseases, like cholera, dysentery, typhus, plague, in the past that are popularly attributed to mass vaccination campaigns, had actually been due to improvements in diet, hygiene, sanitary measures, non-medical public health laws, and to a host of new non-medical technologies, like refrigeration, faster transportation, removing horse manure from cities, and the like (McKinlay, 1977;  McKeown, 1979;  Moberg & Cohen, 1991;  Oppenheimer, 1992;  Dubos, 1959).

The CDC reported (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, July 30, 1999, 48:621-628) that improvements in sanitation, water quality, and hygiene had been the most important factors in control of infectious diseases in the past century.  Although vaccines were mentioned, they were not included among the major factors.

One of the conclusions in Thomas McKeown's seminal work, The Modern Rise of Populations (1976, also endorsed by a Lancet editorial, 2/1/75), was that the decline in mortality in the 18th and 19th centuries was essentially due to the reduction in deaths from infectious diseases, and that it was not the result of immunizations.  Similar studies by scholars John and Sonia McKinlay (1977) shows that almost all the increase in human lifespan since the year 1900 is due to reductions in infectious disease, with medical intervention (of all kinds) accounting for only about 3 percent of that reduction.  According to World Health Statistics Annual, 1973-76, Vol.2, "there has been a steady decline of infectious diseases in most developing countries regardless of the percentage of immunizations administered in these countries."

Before health agencies and schools of public health were completely taken over by allopathic medicine, in the service of their pharmaceutical cartel owners, the great legacy of the sanitary reformers -- Max von Penttenkofer, James T. Briggs, Dr. John Snow, Edwin Chadwick, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Southwood Smith, et al. was that they were able to eradicate cholera, yellow fever, tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, scarlet fever, diptheria, whooping cough, measles, and the bubonic plague long before vaccinations were developed or routinely used.

Not only had poor sanitation and nutrition lain the foundation for disease, it was also compulsory smallpox vaccination campaigns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that played a major role in decimating the populations of Japan (48,000 deaths), England and Wales (44,840 deaths, after 97 percent of the population had been vaccinated), Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, India (3 million -- all vaccinated), Australia, Germany (124,000 deaths), Prussia (69,000 deaths -- all re-vaccinated), and the Philippines.  The epidemics ended in cities where smallpox vaccinations were either discontinued or never begun, and also after sanitary reforms were instituted (most notably in Munich -- 1880, Leicester -- 1878, Barcelona -- 1804, Alicante -- 1827, India -- 1906, etc).

In many nations, mortalities from smallpox hadn't begun to decline until the citizenry revolted against compulsory smallpox vaccination laws.  For example, the town of Leicester from 1878 to 1898 stood in stark contrast to the rest of England, where thousands were dying from the aggressive half-century-old government mandatory immunization campaigns.

By 1907, the Vaccination Acts of England were repealed, with the help of some of the world's preeminent scientists who had turned staunchly against vaccination:  Alfred Russell Wallace (one of the founders of modern evolutionary biology and zoogeography, and co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the Theory of Natural Selection), Charles Creighton (Britain's most learned epidemiologist and medical historian), William Farr (epidemiologist and medical statistician, first to describe how seasonal epidemics rise and fall -- known today as Farr's Law"), and the renowned Dr. Edgar M. Crookshank, Professor of Bacteriology and Comparative Pathology in King's College, London, and author of the scathing scientific critique of vaccination, The History and Pathology of Vaccination (1889).  But before the law was amended in 1898 to include a conscientious exemption clause, an average of 2,000 parents per year were jailed and prosecuted -- some repeatedly -- for resisting vaccination.  Large numbers went to prison in default of paying fines.  Hundreds had their homes and possessions seized.

By 1919, England and Wales had become one of the least vaccinated countries, and had only 28 deaths from smallpox, out of a population of 37.8 million people.  By contrast, during that same year, out of a population of 10 million -- all triply vaccinated over the prior 6 years -- the Philippine Islands registered 47,368 deaths from smallpox.  The epidemic came after the culmination of a ruthless 15-year compulsory vaccination campaign by the U.S., in which the native population -- young and old -- were forcibly vaccinated (several times), literally against their will.  In a speech condemning the smallpox vaccine reprinted in the Congressional Record of 12/21/37, William Howard Hay, M.D. said, "... the Philippines suffered the worst attack of smallpox, the worst epidemic three times over, that had ever occurred in the history of the islands, and it was almost three times as fatal.  The death rate ran as high as 60 percent in certain areas, where formerly it had been 10 and 15 percent."  In the province of Rizal, for example, smallpox mortalities increased from an average 3 percent (before vaccination) to 67 percent during 1918 and 1919.  All told, after 10 years (1911-1920) of a compulsory U.S. program which administered 25 million vaccinations to the Philippine population of 10 million, there had been 170,000 cases, and more than 75,000 deaths from smallpox.

Inducing the public to clamor for smallpox vaccines for every American will lead to a repeat of the aforementioned tragic events.  In many additional cases the sickness, injuries and deaths commonly attributed to the microbe were actually due, wholly or in part, to the poisoning effects of vaccination campaigns:  from the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1918-19 that killed 20 million following the administration of anti-typhoid inoculations, to the 1976 Swine flu "epidemic" (among hogs!) that permanently crippled a "meager" few thousand Americans with Guillain-Barré syndrome following an ill-advised national vaccination program.  Paralytic diseases have been recorded hundreds of years ago.  But epidemic numbers had not appeared until the latter part of the 19th century, right after compulsory smallpox vaccination was instituted.

NaturoDoc comment: 
Key points in both of these articles are as follows:

• Vaccination has not been a useful technique of protection from all disease.

• Improved sanitation and nutrition protects from disease and lengthens life.

• Smallpox has been worsened by vaccination repeatedly in history.

• Many medical professionals oppose compulsory vaccinations for good reason.

• Compulsory vaccinations have other goals than the protection of public health.

Please inform yourself and your loved ones about the commercial realities driving modern medicine, and public health policies today.  Then teach a few others.

The True History Of Smallpox

By Ian Sinclair

In England, compulsory vaccination against smallpox was first introduced in 1852, yet in the period 1857 to 1859, a smallpox epidemic killed 14,244 people.  In 1863 to 1865, a second epidemic claimed 20,059 lives.  In 1867, a more stringent compulsory vaccination law was passed and those who evaded vaccination were prosecuted.  After an intensive four-year effort to vaccinate the entire population between the ages of 2 and 50, the Chief Medical Officer of England announced in May 1871 that 97.5 percent had been vaccinated.  In the following year, 1872, England experienced its worst-ever smallpox epidemic, which claimed 44,840 lives.  Between 1871 and 1880, during the period of compulsory vaccination, the death rate from smallpox leapt from 28 to 46 per 100,000 population.

Writing in the British Medical Journal (Jan. 21, 1928 p.116), Dr. L. Parry questioned the vaccination statistics, which revealed a higher death rate amongst the vaccinated than the unvaccinated, and asked the questions:

"How is it that smallpox is five times as likely to be fatal in the vaccinated as in the unvaccinated?  "How is it that in some of our most highly vaccinated towns -- for example, Bombay and Calcutta -- smallpox is rife, whilst in some of our most poorly vaccinated towns, such as Leicester, it is almost unknown?  How is it that something like 80 percent of the cases admitted into the Metropolitan Asylums Board smallpox hospitals have been vaccinated, whilst only 20 percent have not been vaccinated?"

"How is it that in Germany -- the best-vaccinated country in the world -- there are more deaths in proportion to the population than in England?  For example, in 1919, there were 28 deaths in England, 707 In Germany;  in 1920, 30 deaths in England, 354 In Germany.  In Germany in 1919, there were 5,012 cases of smallpox with 707 deaths;  in England in 1925, there were 5,363 cases of smallpox, with 6 deaths.  What is the explanation?"

In Scotland, between 1855-1875, over 9,000 children under 5 died of smallpox despite Scotland being, at that time, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.  In 1907 to 1919, with only a third of the children vaccinated, only 7 smallpox deaths were recorded for children under 5 years of age.

In Germany, in the years 1870-1871, over 1,000,000 people had smallpox, of which 120,000 died.  96 percent of these had been vaccinated.  An address sent to the governments of the various German states from Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany, contained the following comment: "the hopes placed in the efficacy of the cowpox virus as preventative of smallpox have proved entirely deceptive."

In the Philippines, prior to U.S. takeover in 1905, case mortality from smallpox was about 10%.  In 1905, following the commencement of systematic vaccination enforced by the U.S. government, an epidemic occurred where the case mortality ranged from 25% to 50% in different parts of the islands.  In 1918-1919 with over 95 percent of the population vaccinated, the worst epidemic in the Philippines’ history occurred resulting in a case mortality of 65 percent.  The highest percentage occurred in the capital, Manila, the most thoroughly vaccinated place.  The lowest percentage occurred in Mindanao, the least vaccinated place, owing to religious prejudices.  Dr. V. de Jesus, Director of Health, stated that the 1918-1919 smallpox epidemic resulted in 60,855 deaths.  The 1920 Report of the Philippines Health Service contains the following indictment of the vaccination campaign:

"From the time in which smallpox was practically eradicated in the city of Manila, to the year 1918 (about 9 years) in which the epidemic appears -- certainly in one of its severest forms -- hundreds after hundreds of thousands of people were yearly vaccinated, with the most unfortunate result that the 1918 epidemic looks, prima facie, as a flagrant failure of the classic immunization towards future epidemics."

In Japan in 1885, 13 years after compulsory vaccination commenced there in 1872, a law was passed requiring re-vaccination every seven years.  From 1886 to 1892, 25,474,370 revaccinations were recorded in Japan.  Yet during this same period, Japan had 156,175 cases of smallpox with 38,979 deaths, representing a case mortality of nearly 25 percent.  In 1896, the Japanese Parliament passed another act requiring every Japanese resident to be vaccinated and re-vaccinated every 5 years.  Between 1889 and 1908, there were 171,611 smallpox cases with 47,919 deaths -- a case mortality of 30 percent.  This case mortality exceeds the smallpox death rate of the pre-vaccination period when nobody was vaccinated.  It is noteworthy that Australia at this time -- one of the least-vaccinated countries in the world for smallpox -- had only three smallpox cases in 15 years, in comparison with Japan's record of 165,775 cases and 28,979 deaths, in merely a 6-year period of compulsory vaccination and re-vaccination.

In an article, "Vaccination In Italy", which appeared in the New York Medical Journal, July 1899, Charles Rauta, Professor of Hygiene and Material Medical in the University of Perguia, Italy, wrote:

"Italy is one of the best-vaccinated countries in the world, if not the best of all.  For twenty years before 1885, our nation was vaccinated in the proportion of 98.5 percent.  Notwithstanding, the epidemics of smallpox that we have had have been something so frightful that nothing before the invention of vaccination could equal them.  During 1887, we had 16,249 deaths from smallpox; in 1888, we had 18,110, and in 1889, 131,413."

"Vaccination is a monstrosity;  a misbegotten offspring of error and ignorance.  It should have no place in either hygiene or medicine.  Believe not in vaccination;  it is a world-wide delusion, an unscientific practice, a fatal superstition with consequences measured today by tears and sorrow without end."

From his book, The Vaccination Superstition, J.W. Hodge, M.D., 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."

In the USA, June 25th, 1937, Dr. William Howard Hay addressed the Medical Freedom Society regarding the Lemke Bill to abolish compulsory vaccination.  He stated:

"I have thought many times of all the insane things we have advocated in medicine, that one of the most insane was to insist on the vaccination of children, or anybody else, for the prevention of smallpox when, as a matter of fact, we are never able to prove that vaccination saved one man from smallpox.

"I know of one epidemic of smallpox comprising nine hundred and some cases, in which 95 percent of the infected had been vaccinated, and most of them recently.

"It is now thirty years since I have been confining myself to the treatment of chronic disease.  I have run across so many histories of children who had never seen a sick day until they were vaccinated, and who have never seen a well day since.

"In England, where statistics are kept a little more frankly and accurately and above-board than in this country (USA), the actual official records show three times as many deaths directly from vaccinations, as there were from smallpox for the past twenty-one years.  I will guarantee that there are three times as many deaths that were not recorded, that are directly traceable to vaccinations.  That doesn't take into account the many many cases of encephalitis or sleeping sickness, and of this or that form of degeneration, that occurs as the result of vaccination.

"It is nonsense to think that you can inject pus -- and it is usually from the pustule end of the dead smallpox victim -- it is unthinkable that you can inject that into a little child and in any way improve its health.  What is true of vaccination is exactly as true of all forms of serum immunization, so called, if we could by any means build up a natural resistance to disease through these artificial means, I would applaud it to the echo, but we can't do it.

"The body has its own methods of defense.  These depend on the vitality of the body at the time.  If it is vital enough, it will resist all infections;  if it isn't vital enough, it won't.  And you can't change the vitality of the body for the better by introducing poison of any kind into it."

According to the official figures of the Register General of England, only 109 children (under 5) in England and Wales died of smallpox in the twenty-three years ending December 1933.  But 270 died of vaccinations in the same period in these two countries.  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 ultimately forced the government to repeal the Vaccination Act for smallpox.

The situation was just as bad in the USA.  An article in the July 1969 issue of Prevention Magazine stated that 300 children in the USA died from the complications of smallpox vaccine since 1948.  Yet during that same period there was not one reported case of smallpox in the country.  In October 1971, Dr. Samuel Katz, Duke University Medical Centre, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that an average of six to nine individuals die each year from smallpox vaccinations.  Authorities eventually abandoned the vaccine, as Dr. Archie Kalokerinos of Australia points out:

"About 10 to 15 years ago, some of my colleagues in the United States gave me some very interesting information.  They said that smallpox vaccination had been stopped, not because smallpox had been wiped out, but because they were having trouble with the vaccine.  They would vaccinate an individual and that individual would give active smallpox to a contact.  The whole thing was out of control and they weren't game to use it."

This is probably why Professor Ari Zuckerman, a member of the World Health Organization's advisory panel on viruses has stated, "Immunization against smallpox is more hazardous than the disease itself."  

Even the British Medical Journal (1/5/1976) stated:  "It is now accepted that the risks of routine smallpox vaccination outweigh those of natural infection in Britain."

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship ... To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others, will constitute the Bastille of medical science."

-- Benjamin Rush, M.D.
Signatory to the Declaration of Independence
Physician to George Washington

"If humanity is to pass safely through its present crisis on earth, it will be because a majority of individuals are now doing their own thinking."

-- Buckminster Fuller

Reproduced with permission from Vaccination:  The "Hidden" Facts by Ian Sinclair, 5 Ivy St, Ryde NSW 2112, Australia.  Ph (015) 294 817.