“VACCINES IN TOXIC CONDITIONS”
Commercialized Propaganda in the Guise of Science
Under the title “Vaccines in Toxic Conditions,” what purports to be a scientific contribution appears in the original department of the official organ of a state medical society.[311] The apparent purpose of the article is to overcome any hesitancy on the part of practitioners to use vaccines in toxic infectious conditions for fear that they might thereby cause harm. Such a thesis is interesting and might be important—if true. Two outstanding facts, however, give pause. First, the theory promulgated is contrary to the experience of those who have studied the subject; second, the man who writes the article is in the business of making and selling vaccines! The former fact is a matter of fairly general knowledge among the better informed members of the medical profession; the latter fact is nowhere made evident in the article, which the reader might infer came from a disinterested investigator in the realms of immunology.
The article purports to prove that the special investigations carried on by its author show that there is no basis for the well-grounded fear that vaccines might be harmful to a patient suffering from toxic infectious conditions. Thus:
From a closer study of these infective processes we find that this toxic condition is due to the rapid multiplication of the infecting organisms with the incidental production of ferments which the germs secrete to digest the food on which they live. These toxic ferments have a distinct destructive tendency on tissue cells, without any marked influence in stimulating tissue cells for antibody production. The crying need, however, in these extensive acute infections is rapid antibody formation to neutralize these germ-produced poisons and to eliminate the germs.
Now vaccines, we are informed, are not toxic and so stimulate the production of antibodies. In other words, the same organism that in the body is toxic and without marked antigenic properties becomes nontoxic and actively antigenic when converted into a vaccine. The details of the experiments of the “closer study” made by the author of this paper (and the manufacturer of vaccines) which give such definite and convincing results are not published. Possibly the article is a preliminary contribution, and future issues of the same publication will carry further articles on the same subject. The follow-up system is well recognized in the advertising world. At all events, this “closer study” has convinced the author of the article that:
... even in extreme toxic conditions, in acute infections, bacterial vaccines may be employed without the least fear of doing any harm. In fact, we find that in extreme acute infections, bacterial vaccines not only give the best clinical results, but they may also be given in larger doses at shorter intervals with less reactions than in minor or chronic infections and the earlier they are given the better the results.
Here again no details are given; there are no comparative results of the careful study of a series of cases. The sum and substance of this remarkable contribution to a scientific publication is to the effect (1) that the organism that in the body is toxic becomes nontoxic when introduced in vaccine form; (2) that the organism that in the body is but little antigenic becomes when introduced in vaccine form actively antigenic, and (3) that “in extreme acute infections” when the body is affected profoundly by the infectious agent and its product, the oftener and the more one injects of these very materials, the better the results!
And this astounding plea for the use of vaccines in conditions in which vaccines are generally held to be contraindicated, or even injurious, is made by one whose business is the manufacture of vaccines and selling them to the medical profession!—(Editorial from The Journal A. M. A., Oct. 23, 1920.)