Vaccinationists have always sought out those who are in a weak position to resist or reject their experiments. These examples include experiments on children and experiments on peoples subjected to colonialism and neocolonialism. However, this group also includes prisoners. This article is not about prisoners and the debates about how offenders are treated. Rather, this article is about vaccinationists, and what their use of prisoners says about them.

The Newgate Prison Experiment

Prison experiments go back to the initial days of inoculation in the United Kingdom. Inoculation (deliberately infecting someone with matter from a (usually) mild case of smallpox) was introduced into England by Lady Montagu around 1721.

As a result, experiments started to be done on the practise, particularly by Charles Maitland, Montagu’s physician. One of the experiments was done in Newgate prison. 6 prisoners were inoculated as an experiment. In this case, the prisoners did benefit with a reprieve. It is said in some sources that they were under threat of execution, some others have questioned this and said that they were under threat of transportation to Australia instead. 5 of the prisoners became infected with smallpox as a result and the other did not. He had concealed a previous smallpox infection. The prisoners survived the process and it was judged a success.

There were critics, one Dr. Wagstaffe stated the disease given from inoculation was nothing like smallpox.

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The Bilibid Prison Experiments 1906

A darker prison experiment took place in 1906 in the Philippines. This information is drawn from an article called Knots in the Fabric.

Robert Strong was leader of an organisation called Bureau of Labratories and in this capacity he did medical experiments.

A little bit of context: a scientist called Waldemar Haffkine had created a cholera vaccine. This vaccine had some acceptance among scientists, but it had bad side effects. Strong wanted to get acceptance for his own vaccine, which he claimed was as effective as Haffkine’s, but with lesser side effects.

As such he wanted to run experiments to write up an article demonstrating the superiority of his own vaccine. As part of this process, he lined up 24 prisoners without any form of informed consent and vaccinated them with a vaccine made using Haffkine’s approach. He did this in order to observe the side effects of the Haffkine vaccine to prove his own superior.

This is already unethical, but it gets worse. The vaccine was contaminated with plague and as a result 13 of the prisoners died. While there was an investigation into the contamination, there were no real consequences for Strong and he eventually became a Professor of Tropical Medicine at Harvard.

The Clinton Farms Polio Vaccine Experiments

Alongside Salk and Sabin, there was a third developer of polio vaccines in the 1950s, Hilary Koprowski. He did experiments in many different contexts, including at institutions for disabled children and in colonial Africa. However, he also did experiments at Clinton Farms women’s prison.

In the 1950s, around 60 infants were born a year in this prison. This was a prison with a more liberal regime, including day release.

Like Sabin, Koprowski believed only a live virus vaccine would be effective, and he created multiple different attenuated strains of the 3 different types of poliovirus. Koprowski tested a range of vaccine strains on the children born to the prisoners in the second half of the 1950s. Many of these examples were written up in the scientific literature.

Prisoners had an incentive to comply with Koprowski’s experiments, as vaccinated children were able to stay with their mothers for longer. It may also have been seen as a positive in parole applications. One child did fall ill after the vaccine and was sent to hospital in 1955, but this is not written up in Koprowski’s articles.

Conclusion

Vaccinationists will usually pick the easiest targets to test their vaccine products. This includes prisoners alongside other groups. This history is often ignored as it does not fit the narratives of heroic but ethical vaccination.

One of the lesser considered examples of vaccine damage inherent to autism is the connection between autism and sexual fetishism and paraphilias. This article will take a comparatively broad definition of the terms fetish and paraphilia, as sometimes these terms are defined as meaning the person with the fetish is only capable of experiencing sexuual arousal and orgasm via imagining or partaking in the fetish. This article will not be as strict by including cases where arousal etc are enhanced by the practise of the fetish.

A fetish, strictly speaking, is arousal from either a part of the body that is non-sexual (e.g. foot fetishes) or by an object (e.g. leather fetishes). Paraphilia is a broader term that includes arousal via other forms of sexual deviance, such as arousal via a class of persons (e.g. hybristophilia, attraction to criminals, usually notorious killers). This article will look at the evidence for a connection between autism and deviant sexuality.

Autism and Transgenderism

The connection between autism and transgenderism has been extensively discussed, and it is agreed by most analysts that there is a connection between these two factors.

However, one context that has been neglected is the connection between autism and transgenderism specifically as fetish. This section only considers those who adopt this transgender identity as a teenager or adult and does not include young children who were ‘transed’ by their parents at a young age due to motives such as Munchausens by Proxy or not wanting a gay son. Those children were led by parents and were too young to have a sexual motive.

Firstly, I will start with the evidence that transgender ‘identity’ is in fact a sexual paraphilia. Transgenderism as a concept began in the 1920s and 1930s with the case of Lili Elbe, but became developed as a concept in the 1950s and 1960s by sexologists such as John Money.

In the 1980s, Ray Blanchard coined the term autogynephilia, meaning men attracted to the idea of themselves as women. Blanchard defined four types of sexual arousal associated with autogynephilia: arousal from cross dressing, from ‘acting feminine’, from bodily functions (such as period fetishes), and having parts of a female body. Blanchard said that there were two types of men who identify as women, the homosexual transsexuals who are effeminate gay men and the autogynephiles.

Personally, I am not so convinced that there is no element of fetish with the homosexual male cohort as well. I think the paraphilic element for them is being so attractive and so feminine that they are able to attract ‘straight’ men, and they fetishise straight men as a group.

What about the women who identify as men? I think some observers have incorrectly dismissed sexual fetish among this group. I think the female impersonators are a bit more complex because there are some cases where it seems to be a trauma response similar to an eating disorder (some of the young females identifying as transgender today may well have reacted to trauma via eating disorders 20 years ago).

However, there is a large amount of fetish involved with the female transgender group. People in this group have often read a large amount of ‘slash’ or ‘yaoi’ fiction. This is fiction about gay men and gay male sex/relationships (usually) written by women. Many heterosexual women are interested in this type of fiction, and some take this interest to an extreme and start identifying with real gay men and seeking sexual encounters with gay men. They fetishise gay men. Also some of these women seem to have a sexual fixation on standing to urinate, which is associated with manhood.

From this evidence I would conclude that the majority of the time, transgenderism in men and women has a fetish motivation.

What about autism? Evidence that autism is linked to transgender identity is significant. The connection is even reported in outlets that promote autism and transgenderism. For example, this from the University of Cambridge:

Transgender and gender-diverse adults are three to six times more likely as cisgender adults (individuals whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth) to be diagnosed as autistic, according to a new study by scientists at the University of Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre. This research, conducted using data from over 600,000 adult individuals, confirms previous smaller scale studies from clinics.

The UK’s child ‘gender identity’ clinic showed even higher rates of autism.

An internal review discovered 372 of these patients – some 35 per cent – exhibited ‘moderate or severe autistic traits.’

It follows that sexual motivation is a likely motivation for pursuing transgenderism in autism.

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Autism and CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material)

Even darker and more deviant, there is a connection between autism and viewing and collecting child abuse imagery.

In this case, because it is a criminal offence, there is no real statistical analysis that can be done. Before someone strawmans this argument, I am not saying all or even most autistics look at CSAM. I am suggesting it is likely that the proportion of autistic males who view CSAM may be higher than the proportion of ordinary males who look at CSAM.

However, what can be said is the following: there have been multiple convictions for viewing this material among autistic males. There are also admissions in recorded literature when autistic males were asked about viewing this content. One study called “Sexuality in Autism, Hypersexuality and Paraphilic Behavior in Women and Men with High Functioning ASD” found admission to paraphilias including paedophilia fetishes was more common among autistic males.

Furthermore, there is an article in a law journal called “The Asperger’s Defence In Digital Child Pornography Investigations”. This discusses its use as a legal defence. In itself, the fact that this article exists shows that this is a live issue in law, as there is no point writing an article about an irrelevant legal defence.

Why the connection?

After exploring the evidence we could ask why this connection exists. Here are some plausible explanations:

Autism is inherently connected to obsessive behaviour, and fetish involves an obsessive fixation on the non sexual as sexual.

Autism is inherently connected to social incompetence. High social incompetence leads to inability to form relationships which means sexual outlets via conventional relationships are unavailable. As such, there may be an increased reliance on pornography. Pornography is filled with extreme sexual degeneracy and is a problem in general society but is likely to be even more prominent among autistics. Pornography encourages masturbation and orgasm over fetishes, which then increases the presence of these fetishes in the population.

Social incompetence may also promote perceiving people as objects, which leads to sexual fetishism and paraphilia.

The emotional impairment in autism leads to autistics having a lower emotional maturity than is normal. This can lead to wanting children with the same emotional age as them to demonstrate sexual activity. This effect of vaccination injury is beyond words in its continued victimisation of those subjected to child sexual abuse.

Conclusion

Autism is inherently linked to deviant and primarily unhealthy forms of sexual arousal and expression. This negative outcome of autism is rarely discussed in the media, by neurodiversity activists, etc. It is both a result of, and further impairs, the ability of autistics to form meaningful romantic and sexual relationships.

The article “The Contributory Role of Autism Symptomology in Child Pornography Offending” by C. Allely was also used in writing this article.

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism. It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1898; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1898-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. This section will look at a paper published in 1974 showing cases of injury from the DTP Vaccine (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis). It caused new demands for compensation for vaccine injuries.

Prior Concerns about the DTP Vaccine

There had been some prior concerns about possible vaccine risks, but they were not as mainstream. There had been some reports of encephalitis caused by the vaccine in the literature between 1948 and 1960.

The Paper

The paper was called ‘Neurological Complications of Pertussis Inoculation’ and it was published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. It can be found for free online via Research Gate for anyone who wants to read the full paper.

The paper looked at 36 children who had been seen at the Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, who had neurological injuries within 14 days of inoculation. The paper argued that there was a causal connection between the vaccine and the symptoms due to the timing of onset of symptoms as well as similarities between complications from the disease and the natural virus.

Symptoms included convulsions, long term neurological injury, and in one case death was reported as an outcome linked by the authors to the vaccine.

The authors suggested that more statistical work be carried out on the rate of vaccine injuries and injuries from natural infection, as well as withholding vaccination from those with certain contraindications.

The Effect on Vaccination Rates

The effects on vaccination rates were drastic. The DTP vaccination rate declined from 78.5% in 1971 to 37% in 1974. The vaccination rate did not recover until into the 1980s.

Demands for Compensation

There was a lot of concern about lack of compensation for injuries. No government program existed to compensate injuries. There was also evidence that the government compensation for the thalidomide scandal had been inadequate. As such new movements emerged to demand compensation.

An organisation was created to this effect – The Association of Vaccine Damaged Children. This organisation sought to prove the reality of vaccine injuries and to demand compensation. They argued that if children were demanded to take the risk of vaccination, then the family should be compensated should the vaccine go wrong. However they did not seek to demonstrate that vaccine injury was common, only that it was real.

The media also covered some cases of vaccine injury in a sympathetic way. There were also some doctors who supported the thesis put forth by Kulenkampff. Dr. Gordon Stewart reported 160 cases of encephalopathy that he believed were vaccine induced. He also provided quotes to the media.

The 1979 Act

As a result the government passed the Vaccine Damage Payments Act in 1979. This act provided a low level of compensation for vaccine injuries, £10,000, for those 80% disabled by vaccination, or the family of a vaccine death. The compensation applied for those who were both injured by a vaccine and for those who contracted a virus from a vaccinated individual. The legal standard applied was ‘balance of probability’ i.e. proving a 51% probability that the injury is vaccine induced.

The government believed they could keep payments low, because vaccine injuries were so rare.

Conclusion

Confidence in vaccination slowly recovered by the mid 1980s. Vaccination had been normalised in Britain by this time. The next scandal to affect vaccination in the UK was the Andrew Wakefield et al. 1998 paper on the MMR vaccine.

Two sources used for this article were the book Vaccinating Britain and the article the Pertussis Vaccine Controversy (these are obviously sources supportive of vaccination).

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism. It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1898; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1898-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. This section will look at the resistance from ordinary people to vaccination during the late 19th century.

The Roots of the NAVL

The National Antivaccination League (NAVL) was founded in 1896. Its roots are in earlier organisations, such as Gibbs’ Anti Compulsory Vaccination League, started in 1866 in London. Afterwards, it became the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination, and then finally the NAVL.

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Activities of the League – Publications

The League produced multiple publications over a period of years. They put out one regular publication called the Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review. This publication had started in 1879 by William Tebb and continued as the official publication of the NAVL.

The League also published a significant number of books questioning vaccination. These included books by many notable UK antivaccinationists, such as Maurice Beddow Bayly (who wrote on diphtheria and tuberculosis vaccines) J. T. Biggs (who wrote extensively on Leicester’s vaccination resistance) and Arnold Lupton (an MP opposed to vaccination).

Activities of the League – Advising Parents

The League gave advice to parents on how to avoid vaccination. One example in the Royal College of Surgeons archives, shows a leaflet produced by the League relating to the 1907 vaccination laws, which allowed conscientious objection. The leaflet showed specifically the steps to be taken to avoid vaccination.

Lily Loat – Tireless Antivaccination Activist

One of the key reasons for the successes of the NAVL was its secretary Lily Loat, who is one of the unsung heroes of historical antivaccinationism. She dedicated her life to opposing vaccination and was the secretary of the League for nearly 50 years.

Lily Loat joined the League in 1898, and became Secretary in 1909, and remained in that position until her death in 1958. She was a public voice of antivaccinationists, and also supported antivivisection causes. She also edited the Vaccination Inquirer.

She spoke at public meetings in both the UK and US. A couple of these addresses can be found via whale.to, where she discusses brain injuries caused by vaccination. Loat also wrote a book called The Truth about Vaccination and Immunisation, published in 1951. She worked for the League while sick with her final illness.

Lionel Dole, an antivaccinationist who wrote a book in the 1960s, mentioned Loat’s portrayal in the mainstream media:

The fact that she received no obituary notices whatever from our national newspapers was the highest compliment they could pay her. The only radio tribute to her great work was an oblique smear in a Granada TV serial. It showed two police officers looking with horror under a blanket at the corpse of an old woman recluse who had died of smallpox and who was said to have been a notoriously eccentric crank. Later in the episode, the junior officer remarks that at one time she had “actually started a league for the abolition of compulsory vaccination”; his Chief Inspector replies: “Oh, so it caught up with her!”

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has a short biography of Loat, it requires a UK library card to access, and I am not sure if it is accessible in the US or elsewhere.

The End of the League

The Vaccination Inquirer ceased publication in 1972. One of the reasons for this was that the League struggled to replace Loat as secretary. Loat’s dedication to the movement was unmatchable.

Conclusion

The NAVL was the most notable organisation opposing vaccination in the first half of the twentieth century. Its demise in 1972 did not end British vaccine scepticism, however. In 1974 a paper would be published by Kulenkampff et al, showing brain injury from DTP vaccines. This would cause the DTP vaccination rate to plummet and begin a new vaccine injury movement.

One factor often ignored by those analysing autism is the inherent humiliation that is associated with autism. Humiliation is a factor, that unlike other aspects of autism, is worse the intelligence and function of the autistic individual. Intelligence allows the person to perceive their failings, but not to remedy them, resulting in humiliation and shame.

This article will discuss some of the humiliations of autism and why autism essentially means either completely avoiding other people or embarrassing oneself in public on a regular basis.

Sexual Humiliation

In a previous article, I discussed incels and how the incel phenomenon is inherently linked to autism. Autism leads to consistent sexual rejection and frustration.

This aspect of autism involves the obvious, such as attempting sexual approach and inevitability being rejected (because the attempt is always going to show autistic failings, such as poor eye contact, inappropriate comments, etc).

There is also a deeper level to this humiliation. That is the humiliation of never being perceived as sexually desirable and a viable partner. It is beyond the humiliation of an individual rejection.

Nothing can be done about this. Obviously you cannot compel people to find you sexually desirable or want to date you. Thus the only option left is constant burning shame.

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Meltdowns

Imagine an adult having a full blown 2 year old style tantrum. That’s what meltdown looks like.

Now imagine having these in public in front of a bunch of people, screaming and crying, etc. Then imagine having to see the people you did this in front of again ever. I have been thrown out of two group therapy groups for doing this, by the way.

Not to mention you have to be aware of this happening at any time. I’ve never done this at work, for example, but it is always a possibility that you could and then get fired.

Which leads us on to…

Unemployment

As explained in previous articles, autistics have an extremely high unemployment rate. Even the intelligent ones. This causes high levels of humiliation as it is embarrassing to never be able to contribute to your family.

Social Incompetence

Not being able to relate to and understand other people also leads to humiliation. This happens when inevitably you say the incorrect thing and everyone else judges you for it. If you are intelligent you always realise after the fact you have said something stupid and then you burn up with humiliation.

Immature Obsessive Interests

Autistic ‘special interests’ are often in childish things, for example obsessing over video games or children’s toys. This again can be embarrassing.

Gait Disturbances

Autism can involve elements of ataxia and poor motor control. For example, I have issues where I still walk on tip toes particularly on my left leg and I have had problems trying to correct this. When I was at school one of my teachers even criticised me for it in drama class. Also there is a high risk of falling flat on your face and tripping over your own feet.

Conclusion

The daily humiliation associated with autism is a factor ignored by all of those in the neurodiversity movement and pro vaccinationists.

Vaccination – via the creation of autism – makes a significant minority of men incapable of sexual and romantic relationships. This is a direct cause of the ‘incel’ (involuntary celibacy) movement, which vilifies and blames women for not giving them sex and relationships. In this post, we will explore the incel movement. While mainstream commentaries talk about the incel movement as primarily a misogyny problem triggered by factors such as pornography (which is partially true) they ignore the vaccine element as a significant cause of incel ideology and behaviour.

What is the ‘incel’ movement?

The term incel is a truncation of the term ‘involuntary celibacy’. It refers to men who would like to have sex and relationships, but are unable to do so. This is because they are unable to attract women.

The incel framework puts forward a specific ideology, which argues that dating is primarily based on looks. The incel philosophy divides men and women into categories based upon their perceived attractiveness to the opposite sex. ‘Chads’, for instance, are defined as 6′ confident, jacked men who can get lots of women. ‘Staceys’ are defined as pretty women who can have an attractive boyfriend, your stereotypically ‘blonde bimbo’ type. In the incel worldview, these people get most of the sex, and they believe that even if women will marry an ordinary man for financial security they will always cheat with ‘Chad’ men if possible. Incels believe that the primary reason they cannot get sex or a relationship is that they are physically unattractive, rather than other factors (although they do mention some other factors sometimes, the emphasis is generally on looks).

Of course the reality is that many ordinary looking men have meaningful relationships. It would be stupid to deny that physical attractiveness is relevant in a relationship, but women are obviously capable of being attracted to ordinary men. The main reason many of these men cannot get dates is not their looks, but their social incompetence caused by vaccination injury.

The link between Autism and the Incel Movement

Surveys have demonstrated that the rate of autism among self-identified incels using these incel forums online is much higher than in the general population. One study done by Swansea University found that 30% of incels would meet the criteria for a medical referral for autism diagnosis. Another study found that 18% of incels reported that they had an autism diagnosis.

As we have now established that these two factors are connected let’s examine in more detail why they are connected.

How Autistic Incompetence Causes Sexual Frustration and Rejection

Social incompetence is an inherent part of autism. This incompetence is a reason for a lack of sexual relationships. Let’s look at some more specific reasons why autistic men are unattractive to women.

Autistic men often come across as creepy. This can be because of either overdoing or under doing eye contact which means one comes across as staring or shifty, respectively. They may also make inappropriate sexual comments because of having an uncalibrated social filter. Or they simply do not know when/how to approach a woman.

Autistic men often have obsessive interests. Male fixed interests are usually of things that are of no interest to women. For example, men who are obsessed with trains, Star Trek, video gaming, etc. Women frankly do not care about this stuff, or even if they like something like video games to a degree, they don’t want to date an adult man obsessed with them.

Even if autistic men did get a date, they lack the social competence to manage a relationship. For example, the give and take required in a relationship which requires putting up with minor irritations from the other person and compromises. Autistics are often control freaks due to sensory problems and a relationship interferes with this behaviour.

How Autism causes Incel Theory

It is obvious to a reasonably functional and intelligent person that incel theory is false, due to the significant number of average or below average looking men that have successful relationships. Autism can explain why this theory that only attractive men get sex persists despite the fact it is obviously false.

In autism, there is a phenomenon that could be called the gap between intellectual and emotional development. With high functioning intelligent autistics, the gap between intellectual and emotions / social competence is not immediately obvious when one is a child (what child could be called ‘socially competent’ after all?). But in the teenage years, other people develop normal social relationships, whereas the autistic is intellectually above average, but the emotional side remains childish. The autistic is intelligent enough to see that other people have what they want, but not emotionally developed enough to realise why. This is the cause of the theory that only attractive men can get dates.

How Autism Causes the Misogyny of the Incel Movement

It is noted by the mainstream that the incel movement is incredibly misogynist. This is true.

The use of pornography by autistic men. There is some evidence to suggest that autistic people are more likely to get sex information from the internet than normal people. As pornography is violent and misogynist, this makes these men even less likely to get a date and more likely to hate women.

The perception of ‘women’ as a conglomerate with the same thoughts and feelings, rather than as individuals, could possibly also derive from autistic logic. For example, incels with often point to the behaviours of those women who write ‘fan mail’ to serial killers or other criminals as some sort of representation of their theory (that women want attractive thugs rather than men who are gentlemen but less attractive like themselves). Of course, only a very small minority of women write this sort of fan mail, as women are not a hive mind. Incels fail to understand the individual thoughts and feelings that individual women have due to the social incompetence of autism.

Conclusion

The mainstream media have criticised the incel movement for its misogyny but it is impossible for them to recognise the root of this movement as vaccine injury, autism. Mainstream portrayal of the incel phenomenon controls the narrative and there is a refusal to acknowledge that vaccine injury, and thus deeply damaged individuals, are at the heart of this movement.

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism. It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1898; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1898-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. This section will look at the resistance from ordinary people to vaccination during the late 19th century.

Working Class Antivaccinationism

It had long been pointed out by antivaccinationists that the 1853 mandate was a piece of class legislation. Fines associated with non vaccination were easily payable by wealthy vaccine resistors, but ordinary resistors faced distraint (forced selling of their property) or prison.

Working class antivaccinationists saw vaccination as an attack and a threat to their bodies. They feared a threat to their employment (mandatory vaccination for employment), due to individual cases of employers attempting to force vaccination on their staff, particularly during an outbreak.

Working class people saw vaccination as an assault on their families. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, there was a belief among the elite that working class parenting, particularly working class mothering, was inadequate. Working class women were demonised for working (even though economic survival of the family depended on their income) and were seen as failing to contribute good children to a strong British race (see Anna Davin’s Imperialism and Motherhood). Working class people also perceived vaccination as a means of portraying their children as inherently diseased, and thus demonising them as the problem.

Vaccination was also linked to the New Poor Law, which compelled people into the workhouse if they were unable to find sufficient work to survive. The 1840 act which provided free vaccination was done via the Poor Law. Staff who were working in the vaccination program also worked in Poor Law administration. This associated vaccination with pauperism, a connection resented by working class people.

Resistance was associated with the East End of London, as well as certain working class towns, such as Leicester and Gloucester. It was also linked to other working class self improvement movements, such as the temperance movement. Examples of non compliance, other than the obvious refusing to vaccinate, included treating distraint sales as a protest venue, and physical assault against vaccination officers. (For more information about working class antivaccinationism, see the article ‘They Might as Well Brand Us’ by Nadja Durbach).

The largest display of resistance would occur in Leicester in 1885.

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The Leicester Protest

Leicester was a hub of vaccination resistance. Antivaccinationist J. T. Biggs gives a very long account of Leicester and how the quarantine methods they employed after the 1871 smallpox outbreak were more successful than vaccination. Most of the city lost faith in vaccination after 1871, and there was a large amount of non-compliance with the vaccination edicts.

In 1885, there was a large protest against the mandatory vaccination laws in Leicester. This protest advocated for individual liberty and rejected the state control of working class children. Mothers stated that they wanted to protect their children from vaccination. The procession down the streets of Leicester included a horse and cow as the representations of vaccine lymph, furniture (as a representation of the distraint sales mentioned above) and an effigy of Edward Jenner. Further meetings also took place after the protest, stating the continued intent to resist vaccination.

Conclusion

Today, antivaccinationism is often portrayed by vaccinationists as a ‘privileged’ position advocated for by primarily middle-class mothers. If we look at history we can see this is far from the case and that many ordinary people were committed antivacciantionists.

In this post, I am simply employing informed common sense to the idea that, for example, the Roman empire or Victorian London had a 1 in 30 autism rate.

It is surprising, when you look at their posts and accounts, how little plausible evidence they are able to dredge up of autism examples prior to the twentieth century. I don’t rule out a few cases of autism existing before vaccines because it is possible that substances such as aluminium, mercury, etc could have got into someone’s brain in another way. Usually, neurodiversity activists point to say, Isaac Newton, or some other example of a figure considered to be positive in history as an example (funnily enough, I have never seen them point to someone who is considered to have had a negative impact on society).

But to prove autism is normal, a few scattered examples are not enough. They have to prove 1 in 30, or they at least have to prove close enough that 1 in 30 is a plausible extrapolation. At this, they have failed miserably. In fact, I haven’t even seen an example where they make the attempt.

Another significant problem for the account that autism is natural is the unemployment rate and financial burdens of autism and its relation to human societies. We can use an employment rate as a reasonable proxy for the ability to function in a society. In the United Kingdom, the unemployment rate for autism is 78%. If we do a little simplification on the maths, we can use two-thirds unemployment as a rate generous to autism. Then, if we simplify our 1 in 30 rate to 1 in 33 or 3/100 to give us a rough approximation, it follows that if 3/100 people in the population are autistic and 2/3 of those cannot work due to autism, then 2/100 of the population is unemployed due to autism.

Think about this for a moment. Really think about it. Does it seem plausible that societies with fewer modern economic resources could sustain such a population? No.

We can start by going back within the past 50-125 years with modern welfare state systems. Are we supposed to believe that governments never noticed the huge amount of benefits being spent on autistic children and adults? Especially more conservative governments, who are always talking about the need to cut benefits? While estimates of the economic burden of autism are necessarily rough and somewhat problematic, it has been stated that to provide for an autistic without intellectual disability costs around a million pounds when taking into account all economic costs.

Going back further, in the Victorian era, there were systems such as Poor Law relief and as a last resort workhouses. Are we supposed to believe that no one noticed severely autistic children as a cause of this burden on families?

If we want to go back further, do we really believe that hunter-gatherer societies could have dealt with such an autism rate? Even high functioning autistic people would have been a heavy burden because of the necessity for communication and social cohesion in these societies.

As such, autism promoters need to provide some hard proof that this autism rate is normal and natural before I am even willing to consider that vaccines are not the primary cause.

The UK government led by Kier Starmer has recently announced that they intend to introduce a Digital ID scheme. This article will look at the roots of this scheme in a UK context, the arguments they will be using to support it, and the reasons why this is a planned step towards government tyranny.

Background

Kier Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party and this particular party has a history of wishing to bring in national ID cards.

Under the Tony Blair government (1997-2010), there was a plan to introduce ID cards. In 2006, the Labour government passed the Identity Cards Act. This act was designed to provide biometric cards backed by a government database. These were physical cards (as smartphones etc were not in mass use).

The government did introduce a pilot scheme in 2009 for these cards where people could apply for them, and around 15,000 cards were issued.

However, the scheme faced significant opposition. There were some protests against the plan, as well as opposition from other political parties. Part of the opposition was based on the fact that any such scheme would be extremely expensive, and part of it was based on surveillance/police state concerns.

The scheme was scrapped by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government after they took power in 2010.

The New Scheme

The new scheme suggested by Starmer has been outlined in the mainstream media as follows:

• It will include a name, date of birth, nationality or residency status, and a photo

• You won’t have to carry IDs around

• You’ll never be asked to produce it – other than when proving a right to work in the UK

• The ID will be on people’s phones – similar to contactless cards

• It will be compulsory for anyone looking to work in the UK

List taken from the BBC report on the ID card scheme.

Arguments

The main argument being used by Starmer to back his scheme is that digital ID will help to combat illegal immigration. Starmer is very unpopular in the UK at the moment and one reason is that people are dissatisfied with his response to small boat crossings of people illegally entering the UK, and ‘migrant hotels’ where migrants are kept while claims for asylum are looked at. As a result, poll results are showing a significant swing towards the anti immigration party Reform UK run by Nigel Farage. As such, he hopes to boost his popularity by announcing this scheme as well as normalise a plank of planned government authoritarianism.

The argument being made is that by having a Digital ID, it would make it more difficult for illegal migrants to work in the country, reducing the ‘pull factors’ that cause people to illegally enter the country. The government also argues that it will more quickly allow people to verify their identity when accessing government services such as welfare benefits to prevent fraud.

Problems

I don’t want to spend too much time outlining the issues of Digital ID as I think they are fairly obvious to my readers. One argument that has been made by some, that I would like to bring up, is the issue of whether it would work. Farage has criticised the scheme, partially on grounds that it would be ineffective. I personally think we shouldn’t focus on the effectiveness argument either way. We shouldn’t want Digital ID even if it was 100% effective against illegal migration.

The main thrust of any argument against Digital ID should be the state tyranny aspect. Once the infrastructure is established, there is nothing stopping creeping expansion of the scheme. Mahmood, the Home Secretary, has already agreed that this can/will happen. Digital ID can be linked to any aspect of life, for example, vaccination status, which the government could use to force people to behave in particular ways.

Conclusion

There has already been much concern from the public about the use of Digital ID. The scepticism towards the scheme must be mobilised as means to prevent further state tyranny. Hopefully the unpopularity of the Starmer government combined with resistance to the scheme can prevent it ever being introduced.

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism. It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1898; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1898-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. This section forms part 3.2 looking at three main antivaccinationists active in the late nineteenth century, William White, Charles Creighton, and Edgar Crookshank.

William White

White authored a book called Story of a Great Delusion in 1885, looking at the history of inoculation and vaccination from an antivaccinationist perspective. It covers the entire period from the introduction of inoculation up to what was then the present day.

The book is primarily a historical account and he goes into detail not just about Jenner but the research of other important vaccinationists, such as George Pearson, another notable doctor, and William Woodville, doctor at the Smallpox Hospital in London. It explores their tense relationships and goes into more detail about Jenner’s personality (he had a significant habit of falling out with those who mostly agreed with him).

He also goes into the history of the government role in vaccination, such as the provision of vaccine lymph by the National Vaccine Establishment, and how £3,000 was budgeted for lymph, as an attempt to spread vaccination among the poor. He argues that Jenner’s ability to argue with everyone was one factor why government intervention was necessary to ensure the continuation of vaccination, rather than a reliance on private institutions.

He covers the introduction of the vaccine mandate – essentially the increasing intertwining between vaccination and government – and the introduction of ideological vaccine resistance, such as the founding of The Anti Vaccinator pamphlet by John Pickering.

Throughout the book he does make some arguments explaining why vaccination is a flawed practice, such as that it simply exchanges one disease for another while not decreasing death rate and that vaccine compulsion is purely about medical industry profit, rather than effectiveness. White believed the ineffectiveness of vaccination had been well demonstrated by the mandate introduction in 1853.

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Charles Creighton

Dr. Creighton was a physician of note in the late nineteenth century, who completed a famous work on the history of epidemics in Britain. He was primarily interested in medical history rather than being a practicing doctor.

The story of how Dr. Creighton became an antivaccinationist is rather interesting. He was approached by the Encyclopedia Britannica to write an article on ‘Vaccination’ for their new edition. Feeling it was only justified to research the topic if he was going to write about it, he did – and became an ardent antivaccinationist. Perhaps surprisingly, the Encyclopedia agreed to publish whatever he wrote, so that edition ended up containing an antivaccinationist account.

He wrote two books condemning vaccination in 1887 and 1889.

His book Cowpox and Vaccinal Syphilis goes into great detail on the topic of vaccine lymph. This included the historical disputes between Jenner and Woodville, and whether the two sources were equivalent. Jenner had issues obtaining cowpox lymph for vaccination, and this whole issue tied into the debate about ‘spurious cowpox’, which was one of Jenner’s excuses for vaccination failure. The primary argument in the book in terms of the dangers of vaccination is that cowpox is completely unlike smallpox, and is actually closer to syphilis (which was historically known also as ‘great pox’). There had been an increasing number of deaths from infantile syphilis after the vaccine mandate was introduced. In Creighton’s view, cowpox was causing this syphilis increase.

Jenner and Vaccination is a more general work on vaccination as a whole. He argues that Jenner used sleight of hand to redefine cowpox as variolae vaccinae (which literally means, cow smallpox). This manipulation led people to accept similarities between the two diseases that did not exist. Jenner also defined cowpox as a mild disease despite significant issues of ulceration to gain support for vaccination. He also argues that because Jenner used a very mild form of inoculation (deliberate infection with smallpox) to ‘test’ whether or not the vaccinated had immunity, this led to false claims of immunity. The mild (known as Suttonian, after Daniel Sutton) method of inoculation caused only a small effect anyway, so it having little to no effect after a cowpox inoculation proved nothing. He also mentioned the redefinition of smallpox as chickenpox after vaccination to avoid accusations of vaccine failure.

Creighton became involved in the National Anti-Vaccination League, and ended up being excluded from the mainstream medical community.

Edgar Crookshank

Crookshank published two volumes addressing vaccination in 1889. The second volume is a compilation of essays about vaccination and varying vaccination experiments performed by its advocates. As such we will focus on the first volume as that contains Crookshank’s actual arguments.

History and Pathology of Vaccination makes several arguments. One of the most interesting is Crookshank’s analysis of Jenner’s two different versions of his original paper on vaccination. Jenner originally tried to publish a paper on vaccination in 1796 via the Royal Society, but they rejected the paper. Instead, Jenner published the paper himself in 1798. There are significant differences between the two. Jenner did add more experiments and cases in an attempt to bolster his argument (the original paper had only contained the vaccination of James Phipps, one case). He also sought to tone down the negative effects of cowpox in the new paper, and attribute issues with the disease as incidental effects not directly caused by cowpox/vaccination.

A second argument made by Crookshank is to discuss all the different sources that were used as vaccine lymph, explored further in this post.

Conclusion

This period was the height of Britain’s history of resistance to vaccines, and this included the number and intelligence of those resisting vaccination. There are many critics who I have not covered, also active during this time, such as William Tebb and Alfred Russel Wallace. But there was more than intellectual resistance – there was popular resistance from the working class, the topic of the next article in this series.

A few months ago, there was a UK Supreme Court ruling that stated for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act, sex is biological, and that woman and man in the legislation refer to sex and not gender identity. Despite this rare application of common sense in a UK Court, the media is still promoting transgenderism as a desirable ideology.

Context

In a world context, the UK has had the strongest and broadest base of resistance to transgender ideology. People of different political views from conservatives to radical feminists to moderate liberals have pushed back. Both religious people and atheists have pushed back. This has led to the UK becoming known as TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) Island, originally meant as an insult but reclaimed as a point of pride by UK opposition to transgender ideology.

While there has also been increasing pushback in the US under Trump, much of it is based on executive orders. Executive orders that prevent a child being prescribed dangerous drugs and surgeries have a great positive effect in general but are not the same thing as the broad based opposition we see in the UK. Also, they can be overturned with a new president. In other western countries, we are still seeing victories for the transgender movement such as Self ID in Germany.

However the UK media has (deliberately) not got the message that this ideology is increasingly unpopular here. I will describe some examples below of the media doing this. Of course because these are long term projects they were commissioned before the Supreme Court ruling but still provide valuable insights into the media and this ideology.

Case 1: Munroe Bergdorf

Munroe Bergdorf is a man pretending to be a woman, who is relatively high profile in the UK.

I won’t go into his history in massive detail, but I will note that he has previously been heavily criticised for demonising all white people as violent and evil. He once said:

Once white people begin to admit that their race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth… then we can talk.

In other words, ignoring the fact that psychopathic elites and pursuit of wealth and power regardless of race are the sources of imperialist violence and instead blaming white skin colour.

Anyway, he has a new documentary out, about what else – himself. The documentary is called Love and Rage, and no, I won’t be watching. If you want a review, you can see this link.

In a promotion for this documentary, he did an interview with the ‘Metro’ newspaper. This is a free newspaper given out primarily via public transport networks. I take a copy for the cryptic crossword and happen to see this interview in the paper. Quotes and comments are based upon the interview “60 Seconds with Munroe Bergdorf” in the Friday, 4 July issue of the paper.

Much of the interview is just fluff to promote his film. However I will comment on a few things he says in the interview. One of them is to complain about being attacked on social media. Of course, since one of the main outlets for promoting transgenderism is social media, this is mildly amusing. He then equates refusing to acknowledge he is a woman with refusing to acknowledge he is a human being. Of course, even the most ‘transphobic’ person on the planet acknowledges that Bergdorf is a human being – just that he happens to be male and cannot change sex.

He then promotes falsehoods by stating that the Supreme Court ruling “has basically defined us out of the Equalities Act”. He doesn’t acknowledge that one of the nine categories under the act is “Gender Reassignment” i.e. transgenderism. Of course he can’t even get the name of the legislation correct, as it is the Equality Act, which demonstrates his complete ignorance. Now from my point of view (without getting into broader questions of the state, state authority etc.) transgenderism should not be protected in law because it is a sexual fetish (autogynephilia) and/or a sexual strategy (gay men who ‘transition’ to try and get ‘straight’ men to sleep with them). No other sexual fetishes are protected in law.

He states he will continue to be a sexual pervert and use women’s toilets and complains that ‘if you look too much like a woman’ you can’t use the men’s. Ignoring the fact that in reality, 99.9% we can tell you’re a man. Women are generally quite good at spotting them as we have to be alert to the presence of men due to sexual violence. Or as I like to say Instagram filters do not exist in real life.

That’s not all the nonsense in the interview but serves as a sample of the sort of thing being promoted in the mainstream media.

Case 2: The “I Kissed a Boy” Dating Show

‘I Kissed a Boy’ is a supposedly homosexual dating show for gay men. Now I don’t watch this sort of stuff as I have no interest in it. But it came to my attention because this dating show supposedly for male homosexuals includes a woman among the cast, who calls herself Lars and pretends to be a man. Of course, these women are not homosexual males. A significant motive for this is sexual fetish, as women fetishise gay male relationships specifically, which is why they seek to be accepted as ‘gay men’. Some of these women even try and trick/pressure gay men into sex with them.

This follows the trend of seeking to redefine homosexuality as ‘same gender’ attraction rather than same sex attraction. (Of course, this also redefines heterosexuality as ‘opposite gender attraction’). Basically this dating show continues to push the ideology that people can change sex and the lie of gender identity.

From the review, it seems like the entire thing is about sex. Of course while sex and sexuality are important parts of becoming an adult it’s hardly the only thing of relevance.

Case 3: “What It Feels Like for a Girl” TV Show

A BBC TV show with this name, of course, is about a male. It is adapted from a book of the same name by a man called Paris Lees. I haven’t read the book or watched the TV series so I won’t be doing a review. Lees, like Bergdorf, is a homosexual male who pursued transgenderism. The book/TV show is meant to be a ‘coming of age’ style story where the protagonist discovers his sexuality/’gender identity’.

The Lies They Tell gave the book (which was released in 2021) the following review:

This book is simply terribly written. Writing in dialect would be a challenge for an experienced writer and it says a lot about Lees’ ego. However, even if you take the dialect away, all we are left with is the relentless gossipy sniping of a man with almost zero ability for self-reflection. It’s really hard to read. It has no narrative arc.

The program, of course, is getting rave reviews from the usual suspects, such as the Guardian, a liberal UK newspaper known for promoting transgender ideology.

On a final note, I always find these men calling themselves ‘girls’ entirely creepy.

Conclusion

Transgender ideology is still a prominent force in the UK media despite the recent high-profile defeat in the court system.

Tell me the truth.

Do you consent to utopia

A world without horror

At the price of a child?

Liberation from the burden of disease to control your own fear. To discipline it, to tame it by your profession.

It won’t be your tiny creature. The rigours of medicine will not cause them to convulse or to scream.

But an unknown child that will require confinement in four walls – as they thrash and cry until they die – unavenged.

You will hide it and gaslight the price of utopia – the architect cannot choose his conditions, you might say, cannot choose the world he bends to make right.

But he must know the foundation of his edifice is the tiny creature.

So tell me.

Tell me the truth.

This piece references the below quote from Fyodor Dovstoyevsky’s book The Brothers Karamazov, which encapsulates the ideology of vaccination:

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end……but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature…And to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth!

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism. It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1902; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1902-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. Because most active resistance to vaccination is clustered in this period between 1853 and 1902, Part 3 will have three sub-parts, discussing initial intellectual resistance in John Gibbs and Charles Pearce, the later intellectual resistance of William White, Charles Creighton, and Edgar Crookshank, and popular class resistance.

The Vaccine Mandate

In 1853, the United Kingdom introduced mandatory smallpox vaccination. There was a fine of 20 shillings introduced for non compliance. William White covers the introduction of this mandate in detail in his 1885 book, Story of a Great Delusion. According to White, the mandate was introduced because of the organised interests of the medical profession. There was a lack of discussion on the bill in Parliament, and White states it was an “act for application to the vulgar”, i.e. the working classes. In 1861 and 1867, the level of compulsion was increased, the 1867 amendments made non vaccination a continuous offense and gave the state the power to impose multiple fines.

Prior to the mandate, there was no organised antivaccinationism. There was personal distrust of vaccination among people, particularly the working class, and an apathy of not pursuing vaccination. The mandate triggered new wave of intellectual antivaccinationism, as well as popular vaccination resistance.

John Gibbs

John Gibbs was one of the first to write pamphlets against the vaccine mandate. In 1855 he wrote a letter opposing the mandate. He argued that the mandate was an attack on liberty, and that legislators freely admitted their ignorance on vaccination – relying only on the opinions of the medical profession to pass the bill. He argued that there were statistical issues with the case for vaccination, as there was evidence that smallpox was simply replaced by other causes of death and that there was no decline in the death rate due to vaccination. He also pointed to other diseases spread by vaccination, such as erysipelas (a form of skin rash and swelling), tuberculosis and syphilis.

He drew attention to the moral issues with government forcing a medical intervention on the people and that this opposed self responsibility. Vaccination was in his view “a state religion in physic”.

Charles Pearce

Charles Pearce was an editor of a medical journal, who received papers from Gibbs, and as a result became an antivaccinationist. In 1868, he authored the short book, Vaccination Its Tested Effects, arguing that “vaccination is a crime against nature”.

Pearce points to the theory behind vaccination, that is the idea that cowpox and smallpox are “governed by the same laws” as an error believed by Jenner. He argues that vaccination is not even practised according to Jenner’s theory, since Jenner believed in a chain from horse-cow-human. Vaccine lymph had been spread from human to human for many decades at this point, and had not been anywhere near passage via a cow. He also pointed to the introduction of revaccination as a contradiction to Jenner’s theory of life long protection from vaccination.

He argued that smallpox vaccination did not save lives, by arguing that smallpox increased longevity if you survived, by the fact that there was an increase in mortality from measles after compulsory vaccination was introduced, and that smallpox vaccination could spread syphilis. He points out that there were ups and downs in smallpox due to the laws of epidemics. He believed sanitation and hygiene were the best methods to combat smallpox mortality.

Conclusion

There was increased intellectual resistance to vaccination after the smallpox vaccine mandate was introduced. This would continue to develop further, and British antivaccinationism would reach its peak between 1880-1902 with the cases made by William White, Charles Creighton and Edgar Crookshank against the practise.

The Smallpox Myth is the foundational legend of vaccinology. As goes the story, Edward Jenner realised that cowpox, a disease of the cow’s teat, provided protection against smallpox infection. It came into mass use across the nineteenth century and was mandated in a large number of countries. However there are a number of questions that can be asked regarding this foundational myth, and evidence against the hypothesis that smallpox was eliminated by vaccination.

How Deadly Was Smallpox?

One of the fundamental claims of vaccinology is that smallpox was an extremely dangerous disease that ravaged the world before vaccination. In reality, while smallpox did kill a lot of people, there is more nuance to this discussion. There are two points to consider: was smallpox any more dangerous than any other kinds of zymotic disease (a term historically used to mean eruptive fevers, infectious diseases as a class) and to what degree, and did smallpox cause excess death in epidemic years?

Taking the first question, pro-vaccinationists take the death rate of smallpox to be very high. Jurin, a figure who could be considered an early statistician of sorts in the 18th century and pro-inoculator, argued that around 1 in 6 smallpox infections resulted in death. The accepted figure by the end of the 19th century became around 18%. This is a very high rate. Of course this assumes a smallpox infection occurs, when there were many people who died without ever being infected with smallpox – which means we need more evidence than case fatality rate.

Bills of mortality recorded in London offer some evidence on this score. They show varying death rates from smallpox, depending upon whether it was an epidemic year for smallpox.

However, London data is not extrapolatable to the rest of the country. This is because London was much less sanitary than rural areas and had much higher population density, both of which facilitated the spread of smallpox and a high death rate. This is one of the main problems with the pro-vaccinationist argument – they ignore the conditions in which smallpox existed. Death rates in areas where statistical recording was less fastidious are unknown.

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Death Rates from Diseases: Did Smallpox cause Excess Death?

Zymotic diseases were a rampant cause of death in the 17th and 18th centuries in cities due to the terrible sanitation and poor quality diet present in those environments. Was smallpox any worse than any of these other eruptive fevers spreading in unsanitary filth? The key question here is whether smallpox epidemics caused excess deaths, that is deaths above and beyond the average, or whether these deaths were largely interchangeable between different diseases. In order to examine this, we can look at smallpox epidemic years and see whether the overall deaths were any worse than non smallpox epidemic years.

Charles Pearce, in his book Vaccination Its Tested Effects, produced tables to show that vaccination did not lower overall death rates and that other epidemics killed as many or more due to common factors such as poor sanitation and overcrowding. William White argues that Dr. Robert Watt had demonstrated that there was in interchangeable nature to diseases as early as 1813 in Glasgow. This is important since even if vaccination was highly effective if those living in poor conditions would simply die of another disease, vaccination cannot be said to have saved lives.

The Nature of ‘Vaccine Lymph’

One of the main theoretical problems in asserting that vaccination abolished smallpox is the nature of vaccine lymph. Although the simple version of history (and the name itself) tells us that vaccine is cowpox lymph, in reality this is oversimplified.

Many different substances were used as vaccine lymph. One of the most common was to use horsepox instead of cowpox, and this lymph was used by high profile vaccinators and was in wide circulation. Another type of vaccine lymph was smallpox passed through the cow, because they believed that cowpox was smallpox somehow modified via passage through the cow. Other sources were sampled, such as sheep pox and goat pox. So long as the vaccine source raised a correct ‘Jennerian vesicle’ it was considered protective.

The use of various sources for vaccine lymph creates difficulties in believing in its effectiveness as it is difficult to argue that all the extracted sources are equivalent and thus equally protect against smallpox.

Extensive post on vaccine lymph can be found here.

Sanitation Acknowledged – But Ignored in the case of Smallpox

There was some decline in deaths from all forms of eruptive fevers throughout the nineteenth century. This was generally due to sanitary reform that ameliorated the terrible conditions created by city living and the Industrial Revolution. Most people would acknowledge that sanitation was the cause of this decline, but dissent when it comes to smallpox. This is inconsistent logic.

Did Smallpox Decline at the Beginning of the 19th Century Due to Vaccination?

Vaccinationists point to a decline at the beginning of the 19th century as a reason to believe that smallpox declined due to vaccination. However this is flawed logic for a few reasons.

Firstly, it is possible that smallpox declined indirectly due to vaccination. Previous to vaccination, inoculation had been used (that is, deliberately infecting people with smallpox). This practise caused the spread of smallpox in some cases and introduced it to areas where it was not present. The use of cowpox, horsepox, and whatever other substances used for vaccination, regardless of their problems, were not capable of spreading smallpox. This meant that replacing inoculation with vaccination reduced the spread of smallpox but this had nothing to do with the effectiveness of the practise.

The second issue with this logic is that vaccinationists generally argue that most of the population has to be vaccinated for it to work, they call this herd immunity. Yet, whether the majority of the population was vaccinated at that time is a highly dubious proposition. Vaccination spread quite rapidly among the elite in Britain, but the working classes were a different matter. While there were some attempts by Jenner’s followers to offer free vaccination to the poor, it is doubtful this reached the 90-95% of the population required by vaccinationist claims of herd immunity. White shows evidence that under the first few years under the National Vaccine Establishment, which provided vaccination free of charge to the poor, that births far outstripped children vaccinated. This shows many working class people were not even bothering with free vaccination.

The 1871 Smallpox Outbreak

There was a very large smallpox outbreak across Europe in 1870-71. Focusing in on the United Kingdom, mandatory vaccination had been in force since 1853, nearly 20 years. Due to this policy the majority of children were vaccinated, although there were some conscientious objectors. Working class families could generally not afford the fines associated with vaccination refusal, particularly after the mandate was made more stringent in 1867.

Vaccination did not prevent this outbreak. Pro-vaccinationists tend to argue that this outbreak started with the unvaccinated, but this is not relevant. If vaccination was protective, it would not matter if the outbreak started with the unvaccinated, as the vaccinated should be protected regardless if it was effective.

The Case of Leicester

Leicester – a city in the United Kingdom – turned against vaccination after the 1871 smallpox outbreak. Most children in the city were no longer vaccinated, and in 1885, there was a huge protest against the mandatory vaccination law introduced in 1885. Instead Leicester practised quarantine to reduce smallpox infections.

Vaccinationists would predict that Leicester would have severe smallpox outbreaks and a high number of deaths. However, this was not the case. J. T. Biggs, in his book Leicester: Sanitation versus Vaccination, explained how the statistical evidence showed Leicester outperforming other more vaccinated areas in death rates.

Vaccination Declines – So Does Smallpox

After the vaccination mandates were loosened in the early 20th century, vaccinationism would predict a resurgence in smallpox. However, this did not occur. In fact, smallpox continued to decline.

Conclusion

The case for vaccination eliminating smallpox – one of the central myths of vaccinationism – is much weaker than vaccinationists would like to suggest.

Polio vaccines are hailed as a heroic development in medicine and science. However, there is a dark side that is less acknowledged, at least in the media accounts of the polio vaccine. This is the abuse of disabled people – specifically disabled children in institutions – by vaccine testers.

How the Sausage was Made

Most polio vaccine development took place using monkeys. Jonas Salk, who created the inactivated polio vaccines, used rhesus monkeys imported from India extensively. In fact, this import of monkeys was a minor industry. This testing had involved infecting multiple monkeys with the virus, particularly when Salk had been involved in attempting to discover the amount of different strains of poliovirus. It also involved extraction of the monkey kidney tissue, in order to create a cell culture to grow the virus to create the vaccine. It was required to keep killing monkeys to gather this tissue because immortal cell lines, such as the HeLa line (an immoral exercise in lack of informed consent and medical racism in itself) had not yet been created when the polio vaccine was being developed. This cell line would only come to be used in a limited way during the testing phase.

However, Salk and other vaccine testers needed to move their vaccine testing from primates to humans, before the full scale testing that would take place among the general child population. For this exercise, they selected children in institutions as the first target for human vaccine testing. As quoted in the article Between Simians and Cell Lines:

The transition from experiments with imported non-human primates to trials with ‘normal’ American children was conceptually bridged via the testing of institutionalised disabled humans deemed non-normal.

Let’s take a closer look at the three main vaccine developers at this time, Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin, and Hilary Koprowski, and how they used disabled children in their vaccine experiments.

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Jonas Salk

Jonas Salk, while testing his inactivated polio vaccine, carried out two rounds of testing on disabled children. He carried out work at the D T Watson Home for Crippled Children and the Polk State School. This testing took place in 1952, prior to the main testing of the Salk vaccine in 1954:

At Polk, Salk first inoculated children who were already polio victims with a vaccine derived from the same virus type present in their blood to assess their immune response. Following this, he vaccinated other children who had not previously contracted polio and who lacked protective antibodies.

There is no even hypothetical benefit to these children if they had already had polio.

Albert Sabin

Albert Sabin, in contrast to Salk, developed a live attenuated virus polio vaccine. When he wanted to test his vaccine, he applied to carry out an experiment at the Willowbrook institution. Willowbrook was a home for disabled children notorious for abuse and other unethical experiments, primarily hepatitis experiments. It was exposed in the 1970s by investigative journalist Geraldo Rivera.

However Sabin’s application to test his vaccine there was refused, and he turned to prisoners to test his vaccine instead.

Hilary Koprowski

Hilary Koprowski is the least well-known of the three main polio vaccine developers in the 1950s. This is because his vaccine was not adopted. However, it was extensively used in some parts of Africa, particularly the then Belgian Congo around Leopoldville (modern Kinshasa).

Koprowski, like Sabin, believed only a live vaccine would be effective against polio. He thus worked on creating attenuated strains of the poliovirus.

In 1950, he gave the first live polio vaccine to a human being at Letchworth – a home for people with intellectual disabilities. In the articles published about the vaccine testing, the children given the vaccine were referred to as ‘volunteers’. One of these children had to be fed the vaccine via a stomach tube.

While working on further attenuated viral strains, he created his most notable polio vaccine strain, known as CHAT. He created this vaccine strain by attenuation the virus in various cell lines. However, he then used the disabled children at Sonoma institution to create the vaccine strain itself, by passing the attenuated vaccine strain via four children and extracting the virus from fecal matter. He called the vaccine CHAT, according to him, because it was a truncation of Charleton, who was the last child used in the creation of the strain.

He conducted further trials at Sonoma in 1955, including those to see whether his attenuated vaccine strains would spread to non- vaccinees. As stated on page 221 of Edward Hooper’s book, The River:

In the course of these he and Tom Norton, assisted by a phalanx of nurses, had conducted two contact experiments, in one of which a group of six children who had been fed SM [one of Koprowski’s strains] and who were excreting virus in their stools were kept “in very intimate contact” with another eight children who lacked Type 1 antibodies. In practice, this meant that for the next twenty days the children (all of whom were incontinent) were allowed to play together for three hours a day on a plastic mat, which, although it was washed down to prevent its becoming grossly soiled, was deliberately not disinfected. In the course of the experiment, three of the unvaccinated children became infected with Type 1 virus.

Conclusion

Disabled children in institutions were an easy and convenient source of ‘raw material’ for vaccine testers. All three polio vaccine ‘pioneers’ tried to test their vaccines at disabled institutions and two actually did so.