Is the decline in mortality due to infectious diseases due to vaccinations? improved medical care? better nutrition? Better hygiene? This book explores the historical evidence and questions the truths that we hold as self-evident based on nothing more than anecdote. Thought-provoking. ( )

DNF--another library patron had it on hold, so I could not renew it.

Puerperil Fever
"In the United States, Europe, New Zealand, Sweden, and wherever conventional midwifery was abandoned and taken over by the new male midwives known as obstetricians and medical students, puerperil fever followed....
Puerperil fever, also known as childbed fever, was a disease mediated by doctor arrogance. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes of the United States and doctor ignaz semmelweis of Austria were prominent, long-suffering advocates for women, who tried to get the medical profession to wash their hands and practice more like the traditional midwives did. Both were ignored and even professionally attacked for their views. After years of mental anguish, watching wom''en die needlessly, they left the field of medicine in disgust. Doctor Holmes became a writer. In 1865 Dr semmelweis was deceived into entering an insane asylum and when he tried to escape, he was severely beaten by guards. A gangrenous wound to his hands, probably caused by the beating, led to his untimely death two weeks later."

Smallpox
" 'they lye on their hard matt's, the poxe breaking and mattering, and running one into another, their skin cleaving to the matts they lye on; they turne them, a whole side will flea off at once.'
--William Bradford (1590-1656), 1634"

" 'fresh vesicles subsequently formed around the vaccination pocks coalescing with them and causing them to spread. They developed also on the face, head, body, and in the mouth, the latter prevented the child from suckling, and it died exhausted on the 45th day after vaccinations.
-- case of a healthy child after vaccination, March 13th, 1891"

"Try RevacciNation -- it never will hurt you,
for revaccination has this one great virtue:
should it injure or kill you whenever you receive it,
we all stand prepared to refuse to believe it.
– from a circular signed 'the doctors,' 1876"

"The most deadly feature of the New towns was the close proximity of human beings to each other. For example, the report of a health officer for Darlington in the 1850s found six children, aged between two and 17, suffering from smallpox in a one-room dwelling shared with their parents, an elder brother and an uncle. They all slept together on rags on the floor; with no bed. Millions of similar cases could be cited with conditions getting even worse as disease victims died and their corpses remained rotting among families in single room accommodations for days, as the family scraped together the pennies to bury them."

Contaminated Vaccines
"Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine how many other foot and mouth epidemics may have occurred in the world due to contaminated strains of vaccine. If butchers and animal handlers developed foot and mouth disease simply from touching or breathing the air in the midst of these animals, what kind of Fallout could have gone uncalculated after The injection of this contaminant along with smallpox vaccines? We know there were high numbers of people with vaccine sickness and vaccine related deaths. How many deaths were due to this particular adulteration?"

"... Occult infections (infections first recognized by secondary manifestations) are known to exist inside various vaccines in present times. The sv-40 virus was a known contaminant of polio vaccines grown on monkey kidney cells up through the 1980s.

As long as animals and animal cells are used for vaccine manufacture, the potential for infection will exist. There is no proposed end to the use of animals in vaccine production."

The "Disappearance" of Polio
"Sister Kenny was naive to the significance of these events. But today we know that chemicals can and do produce symptoms of anterior horn spinal motor neuron disease that were, at the time, clinically and pathologically indistinguishable from viral polio and indistinguishable from what we think of as polio.

Not only could congenital syphilis be mistaken for polio, but the treatment of adult syphilis more than likely contributed to the statistical rise in pre-vaccine polio when copious amounts of arsenic derived medications were prescribed by medical doctors.

In 1939 the AMA lent its Seal of Acceptance exclusively to drugs approved by chair Morris fishbein. One of the heavily endorsed products was the arsenical triparsamide, manufactured by Merck under license from the Rockefeller institute for medical research. This drug was used with the hope of countering the symptoms of advanced syphilis, often giving more than 100 injections to a single patient.

another patient who had previously received 34 injections of arsphenamine, 23 injections of bismuth and 76 Mercury rubs had a paretic type of serologic relapse after 104 injections of triparsamide."

"I [Michelle Carbone] wanted to have a press statement... And to be able to talk to the media if contacted by them. I also believe that the public and the media have the right to ask us any question they wish once our work has been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal and that scientists should not decide what the media should or should not know ... [Dr.leVine] told me that if I, or Harvey [Pass],, talked to the press, against his wishes, we would be 'punished.'... Pass was shocked at the uproar, particularly the threat. 'I didn't think you got punished for science.' "

"There are still rare truth-seekers, like attorney Stanley Kops, who continue to voice opposition to the claims that sv40 is no longer an issue with vaccines."

"monkeys are still used in polio vaccine production today. According to Stanley Kop's allegations, sV40 was and still is a potential risk in both the opv and the inactivated polio vaccine (ipv). The ipv used in the developed world is still treated with formaldehyde, but sv40 has been known since 1961 to survive formaldehyde beyond the usual 12-day minimum. Vaccine manufacturers today's cite a minimum of twelve days of formaldehyde treatment.

This is the reader speaking now. You get the idea: vaccines are not responsible for laying low diseases that killed large numbers of humans in the past. The betterment of Social conditions is a huge reason for the conquering of epidemics and pandemics. Good health is largely a reason that people don't fall ill with disease.

When my daughters were babies, I naively followed their doctor's advice, giving them every vaccine they were ordered to receive. I also made sure they had every vaccine they were required to have before they entered kindergarten in public school . Now, I wonder how much harm I did them. And how much harm was done to me when I was a child? I have fibromyalgia; who knows if that is a disease that's caused by vaccines and their mishandling.

I used to think that anti-vaxxers were a crazy lot; I'm no longer so sure. I got the covid-19 Pfizer vaccine because I had planned a trip to Colorado for a wedding. Moreover, I plan to go scatter the ashes of my brother, who died from covid last year, and I have to fly to New Mexico for that. I thought I would not be allowed to board a plane without having proof of vaccination. Now, I wonder what this vaccination is doing inside of me, as we all know this vaccination was rushed into production. Since I've had the first vaccine, the left breast has been getting intermittent pains; i got both Pfizer shots in the left arm. ( )

There has been a significant decline in the incidence and lethality of infectious diseases such as smallpox, polio, measles, whooping cough, etc. Was that because of vaccination campaigns? Antibiotics? Doctors and medicines? Or was it due to hygiene? Sanitation and sewers? Clean drinking water? Improved nutrition and living conditions? This book searches the historical record and comes to some clear conclusions:

On polio:
“Most everyone thinks that polio was eliminated by vaccination…it is impossible to eradicate it with a vaccine.” (page 223) Polio was “largely from toxins in the environment like DDT, lead, and arsenic….Where those chemicals are still used today, you will see reports of paralysis, which used to be called polio, but authorities now call it ‘acute flaccid paralysis.’” (247)

On smallpox:
“eliminated by an improved hygienic environment.” (331) “The death rate for smallpox declined after 1872, but there is no evidence that vaccination had anything at all to do with it.” (92)

On cholera:
“Cholera is a disease of poor sanitation and crowding.” (39)

On scarlet fever:
“The idea that antibiotics have eliminated the disease is a fallacy…the mortality declined long before antibiotics. In fact, antibiotics actually seem to increase the toxin release from the bacteria.” (47)

On whooping cough:
“Whooping cough reports are now increasing despite very high vaccination rates.” (332)
“By the time a vaccine arrived on the scene for whooping cough, the death rate had declined by more than 99 percent.” (193)

On measles:
“Because the number of deaths in the pre-vaccine era had already reached record low levels, the mortality rate for measles could not have been significantly affected by the vaccine program.” (369)

On typhus and typhoid fever:
“By the end of the 19th century, it was apparent that sanitation was making a significant impact against the bacterial diseases, typhus and typhoid fever, without any vaccine.”(190)

On diphtheria:
"The introduction of diphtheria antitoxin in 1895 preceded a large spike in diphtheria mortality." (202)

On tuberculosis:
“the decline in incidence and mortality was already rapidly occurring before the antibiotic.” (206)

This book is well sourced and documented. Lots of charts and graphs. More a history than a polemic. An important book about a very important topic. Must reading for parents of young children.

A big book, but readers with limited time or interest can get the gist of it by reading only the bold print. Or by reading the “Conclusions” at the ends of chapters. ( )