In a speech by the Hon. John Burns, Minister of Health for England and Wales, in the House of Commons on April 11, 1912, he gave the following clear statement showing that vaccination cannot be alone credited with the reduction of smallpox, but that, as a matter of fact, smallpox had declined as vaccination was reduced and as sanitation and other benign conditions of human life had increased. These most significant facts are fully expressed in the following extract from the official speech, which speaks clearly for itself and needs no further comment here.
“I am not at all alarmed by the comparison made with Germany.... I entertain the respect for figures tempered by fact, which every responsible man ought to have. Just in proportion as in recent years exemptions (from vaccination) have gone up from four per cent. to thirty per cent., so deaths from smallpox have declined.... The facts are these: I am right in giving these figures with regard to London. During the time that I have had the honor of being at the Local Government Board the following have been the deaths from smallpox in a city of 4,500,000 inhabitants: 1906, no deaths; 1907, no deaths; 1908, no deaths; 1909, two deaths; 1910, no deaths. So that in five years there have only been two deaths from smallpox in a city of 4,500,000 people. Not even Germany or Berlin can transcend those figures by the increasing cleanliness, increasing sobriety and greater attention paid both by the community and individuals to removing all causes of smallpox, and nearly every other disease.... I believe that all this fear and panic, all this talk about plague and smallpox, is due to misconception and misapprehension of social facts. These diseases are in a very different position from what they were in ten, twenty, thirty or forty years ago, and it is a creditable and a happy circumstance that I, as Minister of Health for England and Wales, am enabled to state that in regard to the administration of public health no other country is comparable to ours, and I am pleased to have heard such hearty recognition of our efforts from the different speakers this afternoon.”
I therefore think that this close study of vaccination facts thus far presented must convince every reasonable mind, lay or medical, that if these benign conditions of sanitation, isolation, etc., had been generally adopted and enforced for the past century, in place of the dangerous remedy of general or compulsory vaccination, smallpox would have become extinct before this time and as much of a medical curiosity as Plague, Cholera, Typhus and Scurvy now are, which at one time slaughtered their thousands every year!
I also believe that it is probably due to this evil practice of general vaccination, which is simply the propagation and infliction on the general population of actual smallpox in one of its various forms, that the pestilence of smallpox has been kept alive as a still dangerous menace to human health and life, ready to burst out into conflagration wherever vaccination is recklessly and extensively used, as in the recent case of Japan, or where sanitation is grossly neglected, instead of being now a medical curiosity, like the other great plagues of the past which we have successfully extinguished without any vaccination. And as smallpox is the only one of the ancient plagues that we have deliberately cultivated, propagated and constantly inflicted upon the human population, under a barbarous and false theory of thereby preventing disease, is it any wonder, in common sense and common logic, that we have so signally succeeded in keeping this ancient plague alive by this strange medical malpractice, while the other ancient plagues have become extinguished?
ONLY A LIMITED AND VOLUNTARY USE OF VACCINATION SUGGESTED AND APPROVED. FORCED VACCINATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN CONDEMNED
I firmly believe that vaccination should be used only, or chiefly, in smallpox hospitals, or elsewhere, by doctors and nurses whose professional duties require them to be exposed directly to smallpox infection and who necessarily have to take the professional chances of injury or infection from either the smallpox or the vaccination. If, therefore, vaccination confers any protection or immunity from smallpox, even for a short or limited time, it is, of course, proper for doctors, nurses and attendants to make use of this protection as far and as frequent as they may wish or consider necessary. It is, of course, also proper for any person, whether exposed or not exposed to smallpox, to voluntarily resort to vaccination whenever he may see fit to do so, or as his doctor may advise, as this is the unalienable right of Medical Freedom for which we contend and to which all citizens are entitled. But to force the whole population, and particularly little children, to submit to the dangerous operation of vaccination, when the merest fraction of this population, or not one in a thousand, would ever be exposed to any probable chance of actual contact with smallpox, and therefore not requiring any protection against it, would, obviously, be a very absurd, unwise and dangerous practice; because to thus vaccinate the mass of this healthy, unexposed and unendangered population would simply be widely extending disease and infection where it did not already exist, and would be inflicting a form of artificial smallpox on the whole population which, as I have already clearly proved, might be more dangerous in the long run than the ordinary chances from natural smallpox itself. This is particularly true when I have shown from high medical authorities that vaccination gives only an evanescent protection, or immunity for short periods of time, from a few months to a year, and requires to be continued at such short intervals and doubled or repeated at each interval, which frequent repetitions greatly increase the chances of incurring more injury from the many vaccinations than from smallpox!
Where, however, vaccination is used by the doctors, nurses or attendants at the smallpox hospitals, or by any other person actually exposed or likely to be exposed to the disease, the case is entirely different and the burden of the chances and dangers is safely shifted and greatly reduced, as, in this case, the artificial disease of vaccination is inflicted to protect the vaccinated person from the natural disease of smallpox only where this disease already exists and actually endangers the person exposed to it. This is entirely different from the practice of inflicting and spreading disease widely where it does not already exist, as in the evil system of the wholesale vaccination of school children and the general population who are not exposed to smallpox and may never be exposed to it in a lifetime. The absurdity and uselessness of vaccinating school children where no smallpox exists, and where there is no chance of being exposed to it, is proved by the short period of protection given by vaccination and now admitted by vaccinators; because the limited protection given by vaccination at such a time, when not needed, would probably have expired by the time it was needed by the appearance of any epidemic or sporadic case, thus making the previous vaccination needless and another vaccination necessary. As a fresh vaccination, therefore, is the only thing that gives any sure protection, and this for a few months only, there is surely no use in vaccinating any children, on the vaccinators’ own showing, until they are actually menaced by the presence of smallpox infection or epidemic.
ABSURDITY OF COMPULSORY VACCINATION OF CHILDREN OF SCHOOL AGE WHO HAVE HIGHEST IMMUNITY AND VITALITY AND LOWEST DEATH-RATE OF ANY PART OF THE POPULATION
To single out children of school age for this application of wholesale and compulsory vaccination, as is done under the present evil school vaccination law which has been originated and sustained by our medical societies, is particularly absurd, mischievous and unethical from a true medical, sanitary and hygienic standpoint; because it is a most extraordinary fact, which seems to be little known by the doctors or the laity, that children of school age have the greatest immunity from all disease and the lowest general death-rate of any part of the population, and to a most surprising degree, and are therefore in less need of the alleged protection of vaccination than any other part of the population! Whereas it is generally falsely assumed that they are in most need of such protection. This relative immunity and vitality is, however, so great that children of school age from 6 to 19 have only five per cent. of the total deaths from all causes, although they constitute about twenty-five per cent. of the whole population! The children of school age have therefore about twelve times the immunity and vitality of the infant age under six years and about six times the vitality and immunity of all the rest of the population over nineteen! See Report of the New York State Department of Health for 1912, page 125. See also my pamphlet, “The Crime Against the School Child,” 1915, pages 32-33. This extraordinary fact alone condemns all compulsory vaccination of school children as a most medically incongruous, barbarous and unnecessary practice. But this evil creation of our medical societies will never be given up by our infallibilistic vaccinators until the common sense of the laity is firmly asserted to make all vaccination in schools or elsewhere free and voluntary and to demand the repeal of the evil compulsory vaccination law wherever it exists, which has probably killed three times more children than smallpox in the last ten or fifteen years.