THE DELUGE OF VACCINES
IT IS OBVIOUSLY due to the commercial profits from cowpox, to the £30,000 paid to Jenner and to the official prestige bound up with this, that a continuous deluge of vaccines began to descend upon Mankind. Pasteur saw the enormous possibilities of extending the vaccine business to cover every known kind of infectious disease. To him, germs were the cause of all such diseases. Fight the germs and save Humanity.
We now know that the cell is not the unit of life, which it was believed to be at that time by Pasteur and most others, except Béchamp and a few more with greater scientific insight. Every kind of living cell, in fact, contains many elements which can multiply, perform fermentations, and even act as viruses, but the old fear of germs is still being commercially exploited to sell vaccines, serums, antibiotics and disinfectants.
The principal commercial vaccines which have been thrust upon the public, more or less in their historical order, are those for smallpox, rabies, typhoid, cholera, tetanus, diphtheria, whooping-cough, tuberculosis, plague, yellow fever, poliomyelitis and influenza.
Sometimes, as with diphtheria, for example, a serum is made first, but when it fails to reduce or even increases the mortality a vaccine is sure to follow.
However, serum can only be sold to people who are under treatment for some reason, whereas a dozen vaccines can be sold to everybody, even to those that are whole and “need not a physician”. If everybody is made chronically ill by them, so much the better for the chemists—and even the physicians. No wonder the Press and the Radio never let us forget the vaccine cult.
SMALLPOX VACCINES
Vaccination was introduced not as a “great discovery”, but as a makeshift substitute for the much more plausible and excusable smallpox inoculation, which had proved ineffective and too difficult to handle. What was wanted was something to save the faces and the pockets of the medical men, and anything that did not cause an infectious disease was good enough for that. Jenner’s notions about horse-grease were not good enough for London, so the “spurious” cowpox had to be elected.
We need not try to give the history of all the lymphs that were used in the arm-to-arm days of years gone by, because Prof Crookshank did all that for us. His History and Pathology of Vaccination deserves to be called a classic, because he had the luck to go to the Royal College of Surgeons’ Library just when Jenner’s original writings were rediscovered. They had lain there unheeded for years, without even being catalogued. When the present writer went to the British Museum to read Crookshank’s works, he had to cut some of the pages in order to do so; obviously, they had never been opened, although the book had been in the Reading Room for 34 years. It is evident that the usual expedient for avoiding the hard work of thinking is to leave it to others.
It is impossible to tell the public what vaccine is, because so many different strains are used, and none is likely to remain the same for long. If a strain becomes weak, it is made virulent, or dirty, again by “passing it through” a series of wretched animals. It is then tested on rabbits’ eyes for its destructive power, or possibly by some other vile method.
The subject has been covered fairly fully in the earlier pages of this booklet, but, as to the future, it seems likely that the theory of vaccination and the idea of producing antibodies will be quietly abandoned, while the business of inoculating will continue, mainly because it is very big and very profitable.
We shall deal with the voodoo or witchcraft aspect of vaccination more especially when we discuss rabies vaccines, because that is the right place for it, but it is obvious that some people benefit from the “placebo” effect of a vaccine. Most of us, however, are more sceptical than formerly about vaccines in general. There can be very few large families that have not had some experience of the blasting effects that can follow inoculations.
Encephalitis has been well publicised, even in the Press; although the worst examples of its results are seldom kept alive in the public mind, such as that of incurable and progressive insanity leading to violence, even murder, sometimes several murders—as in the case of the wretched man of whom one of the BBC brains-trusters said that he should have been hanged for strangling three little girls. We do not consider it fair to hang a man merely because his family believed in vaccination.
Smallpox vaccination is known to be by far the most common cause of this encephalitis, although other inoculations can also cause it—diphtheria toxoid, whooping-cough vaccines, etc. Two women died from it after having the Pasteur rabies vaccines. They had not even been bitten, but only frightened, by a savage dog—and by Pasteur, of course. These deaths, and very many others, show how far the inoculators will go in pushing their profitable trade— just to be on the safe side!
WHAT ABOUT TREATMENT?
Does one ever learn anything from the Press or Radio as to the proper way to treat a smallpox case? The textbooks evade the issue by saying that “there is no specific treatment”. Nature Cure advocates would agree that the proper treatment of fevers does not have to be specific, but it can be very effective indeed. In fact, the “orthodox” school would never dare to face fair competition with them. It would be practically impossible to arrange such a contest, but, then, fair play was never a laboratory product.
The N.A.V.L., of course, cannot sponsor treatments or preventives, for that is not their job; they are, however, interested in results. If, for instance, magnesium chloride prevents and cures diphtheria and also poliomyelitis, as Prof. Lépine, of the Pasteur Institute, now appears to admit, and if the new drug, N-methylisatin b-thiosemicarbazone (“compound 33T57”, or “Marboran”), is several times better than vaccination for the protection of smallpox contacts (vide The Lancet, 7th September 1963) we shall be glad to see them triumph over their dirty and dangerous rivals. We must admit, however, that we do not quite see how marboran can be several times more effective than recent vaccination if the latter gives 100 per cent certain protection, as we are told so often from our radio. We would rather trust The Lancet than the Radio, however.
Nature Cure does not approve the use of drugs, of course, but all those who travel abroad often would be glad to avoid repeated inoculations by carrying, instead of certificates, a box of pills or cachets without any obligation to swallow them, of course. It is up to them to worry their M.P.s to that end.
VACCINAL INJURIES
It is impossible to deal adequately with this subject in anything less than an enormous illustrated encyclopedia. We cannot go into hospitals and photograph the patients, but the horrors of badly treated smallpox can be photographed by the doctors for propaganda purposes, and this is done frequently. There is no denying, however, that vaccination can cause death and permanent injuries, blindness, insanity, maiming, etc. We do not wish to dwell upon the subject, but it must be pointed out that the long-term results of vaccination cannot be shown in the Registrar General’s returns. Vaccination may, for example, cause cancer to start up or flare up, and deaths from this cause will never be the subject of an inquest. As to blood diseases, there are many of unknown origin, such as leukemia. Who knows who has been poisoned by vaccine and who has not? Not long ago, a child was born covered all over with vaccinial eruptions. The mother had not, during the pregnancy, been vaccinated, but there was another child in the house who had been, and so the vaccinia must have spread from this source. This illustrates the general complexity of the whole subject. It is quite certain, however, that vaccines will always be given the benefit of any doubt, whereas the public will not.
RABIES VACCINES
We need not deal at length with Pasteur’s rabies vaccines, made from allegedly rabid rabbits’ spinal cords. The manner in which Pasteur made rabbits “rabid” by boring holes in their skulls and inserting filth into their brains was not science but simply brutal quackery. Pasteur cannot be proved to have saved a single life with his vaccines, but it is quite certain that many people died from his treatment of them, even when the dogs that had bitten them remained perfectly well—like the ones that Dr. Lutaud kept as pets in his house for years to prove that they were not rabid. The reader who wants a fuller account of all this should read Lutaud’s Pasteur and Rabies, and other contemporary reports.
The most important fact revealed by this history is that, once an ambitious mountebank has successfully fooled himself and a lot of important people, such as the Tsar of Russia, or any royal family, he is more or less immune from public criticism or ridicule. This fact has always been traded upon by the most successful quacks. Innocent royalties, popular film, TV or stage stars, presidents, etc., are always dragged into the game at the earliest possible moment. The financial backers are usually astute enough to get out at a profit before the crash comes, but the other brilliant people may not be so lucky.
The newspapers depend upon the advertising chemists for much of their profits, and only the most sensational vaccine disasters—those which are too big to be suppressed— are likely to be mentioned. Rabies disasters are naturally sporadic and they seldom involve many people, but, in Fortaleza, Brazil, in November 1960, some 22 deaths (later reduced to 16 by the familiar process called “reclassification”) resulted from rabies inoculations in about two days. This was reported by Reuters and the U.P.I., and so almost any paper in the world could have made a splash with the news, and yet only one British provincial paper published the story, and only two small items, both from Detroit, seem to have mentioned the matter in the American Press. Some French and Belgian papers, however, made a big thing out of it. It is true that the original story in the Brazilian Press was grossly sensationalized, but the deaths were real enough. In short, how do the vaccine-pluggers manage to run the entire English-speaking Press and Radio news to suit themselves? The public should be told how the trick is done. We know why.
When Stephen Leacock, the economist with a sense of proportion, called Pasteur the man who “brought rabies within the reach of all”, he said all that we really need to know about such a very rare disease—and about Pasteur.
The dramatic and sensational nature of rabies, and the folklore associated with it, made it eminently suitable to the furtherance of Pasteur’s ambitious. Rabies, in fact, built the Pasteur Institute, which was founded solely to make and sell rabies vaccines and thus (perhaps) save about 30 lives per annum in France. This can be seen from the Articles of the Institute, published in M. Marcel Lemaire’s recent book, Pour Ia Liberté.
We need not discuss the subject further here, but this is the right place for something to be said about the voodoo and witchcraft element in selling “protection” to all who can be scared into buying it—especially at public expense.
The reason why the subject is ignored in all the literature of vaccino-apologetics is that it cannot be dealt with by statistics, even when their compilation is entirely in the hands of the medicine men. The element of suggestion, and especially of conviction, is, however, so extremely important, both in resisting infection and in recovering from it, that not to consider them at all is entirely unscientific, in fact, absolutely insane.
We have all heard or read innumerable stories of death following the breaking of some taboo, or prayer of death or ritual curse. Most white folk like to think that only the primitive “natives” can be killed in this way, but that is not true. It seems that a real conviction that death will come is enough to cause it.
One typical case, reported by a missionary’s wife, was that of a healthy young man, just about to marry a girl working at the mission, who sent a message to say that it was no good going on with the wedding preparations as he would be dead in two days. He had been told by a local witch doctor that this would happen if he saw a white crocodile. A white doctor tried to convince the boy that what he had seen from his boat was only a dead crocodile turned over in the water and exposing its white underside. But the boy’s mind had been made up for him and he died.
A more impressive story was that of the fate of eleven African native soldiers who were guarding some land against poachers. They shot one young poacher and, in celebrating their victory, they got drunk and, reverting to their tribal custom, they also ate him, after which they got more drunk and openly boasted of their triumph. The victim’s father heard of this and he publicly cursed the men, declaring that they would all die within three week—and they did; the Army doctor who reported this incident performed autopsies on three of the men himself and could find no natural cause of death. It seems obvious that when the first of the men died, the weakest link in the chain, the others would be almost certain to follow suit.
The last case we wish to mention was that of a young Maori woman singer, whom the writer met years ago. When several years later, he met Maggie Papakura, the well known guide to the show places of New Zealand, he asked her what had become of that young woman and was told “Oh, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid she’s dead. . – No, she wasn’t old: she just sat down and died.” What did that mean? “Oh, we Maoris can do that, you know.”
It seems clear that this young singer, a Maori “princess” was able to do this because she knew that it was in keeping with an old and revered tribal tradition. It is plain that in this case there was no element of fear, nor of any curse nor of the breaking of any Maori tapu. The West has still a lot to learn. Even Sir Bernard Spilsbury had to put a warning notice on the door and turn on the gas when h felt that his usefulness was at an end.
We have devoted a page or two to this subject because we are sure that in rabies, tetanus, polio, pneumonia and any other condition where life may be in the balance, the mental state of the patient is of paramount importance to resistance or recovery.
Major Reginald Austin, R.I.A.M.C., said that he saw 20 men die of “rabies” at Kasauli, and he was sure that “they all died of pure fright and nothing else”, because the Pasteur vaccine salesmen got at them and told them that the dogs that bit them were “very mad”.
It is always held that if the symptoms of rabies start to develop, the fate of the patient is scaled, except in cases of “laboratory rabies” caused by the vaccines, in which paralysis may be confined to the injected limb. If, however, the vaccines can produce the smallest sign of tetanus or paralysis, they must therefore be extremely dangerous; if they cannot do even that much, then they are probably useless at best.
The value of rabies antibodies has already been dealt with (see page 58). We must stress the fact that the mortality in any outbreak or scare about rabies depends almost entirely upon the panic it arouses. When Pasteur, on 4th May 1886, was advertising his vaccines at the Academy of Medicine, he said that the mortality could be “even 100 per cent”. While this panic propaganda was going on, five workers coming into Paris were all bitten by one “mad dog”. They all died of “rabies”. There is your 100 per cent; but can anyone believe that they would all have died if they had not been reading the papers?
Perhaps the most significant “rabies” incident in modern times occurred during World War I, in Cairo, when a number of Anzacs were injured in a serious brawl. Those who were afterwards in hospital were told by somebody with more imagination than sense that they were in danger of getting rabies. This was probably due to a common misunderstanding of the expression, “street virus”. The dust of the Cairo streets was alleged to be systematically sprinkled with the saliva of a horde of rabid pariah dogs. The unfortunate victims of the dusty street brawl were also tactfully persuaded that they must on no account be silly enough to develop rabies, because there were no Pasteur vaccines on hand! It is certain that no one was infected with rabies, but this did not prevent several of the men from dying after going raving mad. Naturally, the details were medical secrets and were not officialy published, but one report numbered the deaths at twenty; even if they were fewer, however, the lesson is the same. The men should have been told that the term “street virus” is only used to distinguish it from the “fixed virus” which Pasteur made more and more virulent by inoculating it upon a series of wretched animals—the old laboratory trick. “Street virus” has nothing to do with street dust: it only means the ordinary virus coming from a rabid animal.
With no rabies and no Pasteur vaccines, this whole incident proves the extreme danger of witchcraft and panic-mongering. An official estimate for Australia is that well over 100 people there are killed by witchcraft every year, which makes it several hundred times more deadly than rabies or smallpox. In any emergency, panic-mongering is a much more serious crime than looting, and it should be dealt with as promptly.
The number of people killed by Press and Radio panic-propaganda, to sell vaccines and other poisons, must far exceed the total due to all the other professional murderers put together.
