CHAPTER II
MUCH OF THE EVIDENCE ADDUCED FOR VACCINATION IS WORTHLESS
We will now proceed to discuss the alleged value of vaccination by means of the best and widest statistical evidence at our command; and in doing so we shall be able to show that the medical experts, who have been trusted by the Government and by the general public, are no less deficient in their power of drawing accurate conclusions from the official statistics of vaccination and small-pox mortality than they have been shown to be in their capacity for recording facts and quoting figures with precision and correctness.
In the elaborate paper by Sir John Simon, on the History and Practice of Vaccination, presented to Parliament in 1857 and reprinted in the First Report of the Royal Commission, he tells us that the earlier evidence of the value of vaccination was founded on individual cases, but that now “from individual cases the appeal is to masses of national experience.” And the marginal reference is, “Evidence on the protectiveness of vaccination must now be statistical.” If this was true in 1857, how much more must it be so now, when we have forty years more of “national experience” to go upon. Dr. Guy, M.D., F.R.S., enforces this view in his paper published by the Royal Statistical Society in 1882. He says: “Is vaccination a preventive of small-pox? To this question there is, there can be, no answer except such as is couched in the language of figures.” But the language of figures, otherwise the science of statistics, is not one which he who runs may read. It is full of pitfalls for the unwary, and requires either special aptitude or special training to avoid these pitfalls and deduce from the mass of figures at our command what they really teach.
A commission or committee of enquiry into this momentous question should have consisted wholly, or almost wholly, of statisticians, who would hear medical as well as official and independent evidence, would have all existing official statistics at their command, and would be able to tell us, with some show of authority, exactly what the figures proved, and what they only rendered probable on one side and on the other. But instead of such a body of experts, the Royal Commission, which for more than six years was occupied in hearing evidence and cross-examining witnesses, consisted wholly of medical men, lawyers, politicians, and country gentlemen, none of whom were trained statisticians, while the majority came to the enquiry more or less prejudiced in favour of vaccination. The report of such a body can have but little value, and I hope to satisfy my readers that it (the Majority Report) is not in accordance with the facts; that the reporters have lost themselves in the mazes of unimportant details; and that they have fallen into some of the pitfalls which encumber the path of those who, without adequate knowledge or training, attempt to deal with great masses of figures.
But before proceeding to discuss the statistical evidence set forth in the reports of the Commission, I have again the disagreeable task of showing that a very large portion of it, on which the Commissioners mainly rely to justify their conclusions, is altogether untrustworthy, and must therefore be rejected whenever it is opposed to the results of the great body of more accurate statistical evidence. I allude of course to the question of the comparative small-pox mortality of the Vaccinated and the Unvaccinated. The first point to be noticed is, that existing official evidence of the greatest value has never been made use of for the purposes of registration, and is not now available. For the last sixteen years the Registrar-General gives the deaths from small-pox under three headings. Thus, in the year 1881 he gives for London (Annual Summary, p. xxiv.):
| Small-pox. | Vaccinated | 524 | deaths. |
| ” | Not vaccinated | 962 | ” |
| ” | No statement | 885 | ” |
And in the year 1893, for England and Wales, the figures are (Annual Report, p. xi.):
| Small-pox. | Vaccinated | 150 | deaths. |
| ” | Unvaccinated | 253 | ” |
| ” | No statement | 1054 | ” |
Now such figures as these, even if those under the first two headings were correct, are a perfect farce, and are totally useless for any statistical purpose. Yet every vaccination is officially recorded—since 1873 private as well as public vaccinations—and it would not have been difficult to trace almost every small-pox patient to his place of birth and get the official record of his vaccination if it exists. As the medical advisers of the Government have not done this, and give us instead partial and local statistics, usually under no official sanction and often demonstrably incorrect, every rule of evidence and every dictate of common sense entitle us to reject the fragmentary and unverified statements which they put before us. Of the frequent untrustworthiness of such statements it is necessary to give a few examples.