A few Facts About the History of Opposition to Vaccines


A few Facts About the History of Opposition to Vaccines
- Jagannath Chatterjee

Protests against vaccines are not new and neither are they always led by the non medical personnel. The first voice was perhaps Dr Antoine Bechamp, an eminent physician of his time who argued that it was improving basic health and immunity, that would prevent disease and not the incursion of toxic elements into the body without knowing the dangers involved. He also pointed out the various severe side effects noticed. He was, as far as I remember, protesting Louis Pasteur, who was a laboratory technician and not a physician as widely claimed.

Then I read about the British Physician Dr Cromton Burnett that vaccines led to a state of the body which he termed vaccinosis. He said internal organs were being affected.

Another army physician was appalled by studying both the contents, the preparation methods and the consequent effects vaccines had on people. He actually wrote a petition against vaccines which assumed the proportion of a book, "The Horrors of Vaccination Exposed" by Dr Chas M Higgins. This was presented to the President of the USA and the army top bass as both a petition and evidence to stop the process of vaccinating army and navy personnel but was ignored. The book remains a classic till this day primarily because physicians continue to read and refer to it with unfailing regularity. 

The protests against Pasteurs polio vaccine and Jenner's cowpox derived small pox vaccine and the side effects prompted many qualified doctors of the time to protest. Many eminent physicians of the time became disenchanted by the unethical process of medical interventions and the way in which street people were being murdered in a process of organised crime to obtain bodies for surgical advances and joined Hahnemann who had a different approach to both causation and cure.

In fact the mass exodus worried the old school so much that the best of brains decided to study Hahnemanns science to prove it wrong. Each and one of those who attempted to do so became instead convinced about it converted to what Hahnemann termed homeopathy.It was as a reaction to this that homeopathy was first termed quackery and old school physicians warned not to have any truck with it. Later Hahnemann, a medical genius of his times, was hounded out of every city that he tried to settle in and continue his research. He lost his favourite girl child in the process and later died a broken man but with the famous last words, "I have not been born in vain" on his lips.

When and wherever the small pox vaccine was made mandatory it actually led to a huge spurt of cases in the vaccinated and again it was the doctors of the time who led the charge against it. Pasteur himself admitted that his vaccines caused polio. The list of physicians who opposed vaccines and their quotes on the subject actually reveal all and should have put an end to the debate had those quotes and the real history of opposition to vaccines was allowed to remain a part of mainstream medical literature. But, in what conspired to be a blatant violation of science, this was not done and all traces and references censored.

Even the quotes of eminent persons, politicians and philosophers no longer find a place in their literature. Gandhi was a great crusador against vaccines which he termed "a filthy process" and one of the pre conditions he set for admission to his Ashram was that the candidate should be non vaccinated. Gandhi was also both a homeopath and naturopath. The views of Dr Rajagopalachary, Sardar Patel and other eminent thinkers on vaccines are today only narrated by people who have had the chance to read their original books and correspondence and they are no longer available in writing.

As I have written already, the people on whom rested the job of India's health policy, voted for dominance of the Indian systems of medicine and homeopathy, but those scientifically oriented, I do not wish to cite names, vetoed their judgement. But there was sufficient pressure to ensure that these systems should not be ignored and thus the newly independent government recognised these systems of medicine and tried to propagate them. Exactly how advances in these sciences was torpedoed can be read in my wall post "Traditional Medicine - Where is it Headed".

The original theories of these systems were tampered with, the criticisms against the old schools in their literature was erased, and in the name of improving these methods the philosophy of the old school was heavily introduced to replace their original theories. These students started learning about germs and viruses and forgot that their systems in fact were centred around the core of bodily miasms (or states) which led to germs and viruses becoming virulent.

Vaccines again became controversial when around 1978 facing an increase in rates of autism and other such disorders in children, whistleblowers from within the industry revealed to the public that Thiomersal used in vaccines was in fact a mercury compound containing the most dangerous industrial toxin form of mercury, ethylmercury. Then slowly other whistleblowers from the vaccine manufacturers, mostly chemists, revealed more about the ingredients and also about how it was routine for people actively engaged in preparing vaccines to fall sick and die not only from the chemicals they handled but also the unknown zoonotic viruses they had to inadvertently deal with.

In the classic Jon Rappoport interview, a insider revealed much more and said he would rather relinquish his American citizenship and migrate elsewhere than allow his children to be vaccinated.

Much more followed and the private Simpsonwood conference attended by doctors, medical scientists, and health policy makers conducted by the CDC in the USA, whose transcripts when revealed through the Freedom of Information Act added fuel to the fire because not only the risks from vaccines was expressed and admitted but a decision taken to cover up and "never admit it". In fact there were doctors who said it was a relief that the public did not know about the other ingredients of vaccines like aluminum and wondered what would happen if a such a day ever dawned. A senior doctor expressed his concern about Thiomersal and said "there is no way I will vaccinate my grandchild until this Thiomersal thing is settled".

More on the debate about how the medical profession both discussed the various dangers about the various methods by which vaccines endanger peoples lives and how their concerns were not being addressed but rather they were advised to remain silent lest the public get the hint of it was revealed by investigative journalist Janine Roberts, who attended such conferences, often incognito. At the end of the day she declared that what she had unravelled was far beyond her initial expectations and was more than she could ever digest.

Mike Adams, the health choice campaigner revealed a tape about how zoonotic viruses contamination was discussed among very senior medical scientists involved in the process of vaccine research, development and manufacture and how the scientists had a good laugh about the entire episode utterly disrespectful of the fact they they were harming little children and introducing novel diseases into the society at large.

By that time the damage was done and following the infamous Wakefield episode doctors were left with no other option but to disassociate themselves from the ugly side of things even as autism and other disorders in children climbed to alarming heights worldwide wherever the procedures of mass vaccinations were allowed. The Bernard et al study, the efforts of Dr James Walker Smith, Dr Timothy Buie, Dr V K Singh et al further revealed the highly complex way in which children were being affected by vaccines. Another industry insider Dr Helen lately published a scientific article reviewing existing literature and also writing about the dangers involving use of human serum and cell lines in vaccine. 

The parents had no other recourse but to research and study and they made a marvellous job out of it as recent advances into the genetic causes of autism reveal their expositions to be correct.

Side by the side the studies the CDC and other heavyweights put their full force of their defense crumbled and fell as they were found to be fraudulent and while some of the authors quietly slipped into the vaccine industry another is on the run hiding from the US police having been indicted on various counts of embezzlement and money laundering for fraudulently misappropriating a large chunk of the resarch funds for the now famous Danish studies. But yet those studies are not retracted and the CDC still stands by them claiming that the authors "fiscal misdemeanour did not affect his scientific integrity"! Yet another CDC Director who was supposedly behind the H1N1 vaccine scam has in fact been arrested on charges of child sexual abuse and bestiality which she and her boyfriend, yet another employee of the CDC, indulged in. The CDC will not censor them either and prefers to remain mum about the episode.

What is funny was that the CDC always knew that funds were being siphoned off but kept quiet as the author Dr Poul Thorsen was deeply involved in manipulating data to prove that vaccines were safe. In fact the author facing extradition to the US to be tried in a criminal court was assigned the job of conducting the "ultimate study" that would put at rest all speculation that vaccines were in no way connected to autism.This in spite of the CDC being aware that he had fraudulently manipulated data and also stolen money meant for research provided by the CDC for the much famous and widely quoted Danish studies.

In the earlier study the author Dr Thomas Versraeten found so much positive correlation (7 to 11) that he requested his peers to help him "handle the data" which had to be done a number of times before it was finally published. The fig leaf has fallen, the Emperor stands naked but sadly there is not the child to point it out.

Today in India it is again a group of doctors, medical scientists, public health experts and medical activists who are collecting information, protesting faulty policies, petitioning against wrongs committed, pointing out conflicts of interest, and creating public awareness.

So the statement that those against vaccines are "nutters", conspiracy theorists and fools, is I believe a great misnomer. We are the theorists, it is they who in fact are the conspirators. We provide information, it is they who mislead. We try to protect the children and the public, they destroy health.