Smallpox Myths And The Birth Of The Vaccine Awareness Movement

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According to the World Health Organiza­tion (WHO), smallpox was one of the most lethal diseases known to humankind. The WHO reports that it affected humanity for several millennia and indiscriminately claimed the lives of “hundreds of millions” across the globe. Citing possible evidence of smallpox in Egyptian mummies, WHO estimates that the disease could date as far back as 1350 BC.¹ Among the numerous epidemics attributed to smallpox,² one commonly cited example is the devastating outbreak that swept through Native American populations in the sixteenth century. History also tells us that famous individuals like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Abraham Lincoln suffered from smallpox.¹

The medical literature classifies smallpox (variola) as a viral illness within the Ortho­poxvirus genus. Symptoms, according to the literature, include fever and a distinctive rash that starts as small red spots on the face, hands and feet before spreading to the trunk and limbs. The spots become fluid-filled blisters that eventually scab over and sometimes leave permanent scars. During smallpox’s heyday, observers described different forms of the disease that varied in severity. The wide range of symptoms attributed to the less severe form included head and backache, abdominal pain, vomiting, exhaustion, malaise, chills, high fever and rash. For the more severe and potentially life-threatening form of smallpox, reported symptoms ranged from anorexia, blindness and encephalitis to infertility, disfigurement and death.

Both the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cite a historical smallpox case-fatality rate (the pro­portion of persons with a disease who die from that disease) of up to 30 percent.^1,3 However, U.S. data from the early 1900s for the most serious form of smallpox document an average case-fatality rate of around 18 percent—and as low as 6 percent in some years.⁴

THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE

We are taught that smallpox was an acute and highly contagious disease that was eliminated only after the WHO led a global vaccination effort involving mass immunization in endemic areas and isolation of affected individuals. The public health record states that the last “natural” U.S. smallpox outbreak occurred in 1949⁵ and that the last endemic case in the world—which was non-fatal—was in Somalia in 1977.⁶ In 1980, the WHO declared smallpox to be eradicated worldwide, pronouncing it the first successful human effort to wipe out an infectious disease. The WHO proudly describes this accomplishment as “among the most notable and profound public health successes in history.”⁷ Others dramatically liken its importance to the moon landing.⁸

The conventionally accepted description of smallpox as a serious and potentially deadly viral infection is similar to descriptions of the corona­virus said to be responsible for Covid-19. The fear associated with both conditions—based on the premise of contagion—led to isolation, social distancing and face masks, as well as the framing of mass vaccination campaigns as the ultimate answer for both. However, in a 2022 video titled “The Truth about Smallpox,” Russian naturopath, researcher and activist Katerina Sugak asks, “But what if smallpox was never really eradicated, and furthermore, what if our idea of smallpox is fundamentally wrong?”⁹ As you read further, I urge you to consider her questions with an open mind, setting aside any preconceived notions or biases. Reexamining the scientific and historical record, including the WHO’s declarations and evidence presented by Sugak and others, can provide a clearer view of the lessons we can learn from smallpox.

THE FIRST VACCINE

To start, let’s look at the earliest efforts to prevent smallpox. Written evidence from China in the mid-1500s describes the practice of “insuffla­tion” to protect healthy people against smallpox. This technique involved pulverizing and drying smallpox scabs and blowing them into the healthy person’s nostrils using a pipe.¹ Historical records point to similar disease prevention theories having taken hold in India, where they used a lancet or needle to transfer smallpox material from a sick person to a healthy child’s skin.

In the Western world, medical historians credit Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a prominent figure in eighteenth-century England, with first in­troducing the practice of “variolation” (inoculation with smallpox). Lady Montagu observed the practice of inoculation while stationed in the Ottoman Empire in 1717 (her husband was the English ambassador);¹⁰ the process involved transferring tissue from a person with active smallpox into scratches on a healthy person. Convinced of the procedure’s effectiveness, she had her son inoculated while in Constantinople and, upon her return to England, did the same for her daughter during a smallpox outbreak there, also promoting the practice among her social circle despite initial opposition from the medical establishment.¹⁰

As described by Dr. Suzanne Humphries— a modern champion of vaccine awareness—and her coauthor Roman Bystrianyk in their 2013 book Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History, people of the time suspected variolation of helping to spread the disease into surrounding communities (p. 60).¹¹ The two cite a 1764 article in The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, in which an anonymous author argued that “the practice of Inoculation manifestly tends to spread the contagion, for a contagious disease is produced by Inoculation where it would not otherwise have been produced” (p. 62).¹¹ The eighteenth-century writer also highlighted another unde­sirable outcome of variolation: an escalation in smallpox mortality. Over the thirty-eight years of “inoculation,” the writer noted, the death rate from smallpox relative to the number of people born had surged by 41 percent.

Nevertheless, Lady Montagu’s populariza­tion of smallpox inoculation paved the way for the development and trial run of the first vaccine by Dr. Edward Jenner in 1796. Jenner used the same principle of variolation but derived his source material from cowpox sores. As color­fully recounted by the WHO, Jenner obtained cowpox material from the hand of local milk­maid Sarah Nelmes; he then “inoculated” his gardener’s son, eight-year-old James Phipps.¹ (Informed consent, said a Forbes writer in 2019, “wasn’t really a big thing in the 18th century, especially if you were poor and your father worked for the scientist in question.”¹²) As per Jenner’s notes, Phipps then suffered “nine days of fever and aches” but eventually recovered.¹² About six weeks later, Jenner again tested out his ideas on Phipps, this time using material from human smallpox. Despite having no sci­entific methodology and basing his assertions on this single test subject, Jenner’s claims of success propagated the idea that exposure to cowpox could provide lifelong immunity to smallpox—and Phipps went down in history as the first person vaccinated by Jenner against smallpox.

Dissolving Illusions cites many critics of Jenner’s primitive experimental design. For example, Dr. Charles Creighton, who wrote a scathing critique about a century after Jenner’s experiment, postulated that Jenner had cherry-picked his findings in order to, in Humphries’ words, “arrive at whatever conclusion fit his predetermined outcome” (p. 64).¹¹

CONTROVERSIAL FROM THE START

Despite Jenner’s dubious science, the practice of smallpox vaccination—and related coercion—took off in both Britain and the United States. In 1809, the state of Massachu­setts became the first government in the world to mandate a vaccine,¹³ and, in 1813, the fed­eral government passed an “Act to Encourage Vaccination”—“the first federal endorsement of a medical practice in American history”— though in 1822 the government succumbed to pressure to repeal it.¹⁴ England’s government, meanwhile, put strict compulsory vaccination laws into place in 1840, in 1853 (when it required every child to be vaccinated within three months of birth) and again in 1867. The 1853 Act made rejecting vaccination a crime, punishable by a fine; later laws also threatened imprisonment (p. 114).¹¹

Little different from today, economic and political interests influenced nineteenth-century governments’ heavy-handed promotion of vaccination. As documented in 2018 in the American Journal of Public Health, the medi­cal establishment and its allies in government recognized that vaccination offered a lucrative income stream and a chance to enhance the establishment’s dominance in a then highly competitive market.¹⁴ Doctors who ran early “vaccine institutes” that housed vaccine mate­rial forged strong relationships with local and state governments, which granted the physicians “some measure of authority through political endorsement.”¹⁴ Newspapers, too, played their part—again with uncanny modern echoes— “affirm[ing] elite physicians as experts, sin­gularly qualified to. . . practice [vaccination] safely.”

Nevertheless, as Humphries ably docu­ments, the controversial practice met with objec­tions right from the start. Some religious groups viewed the intervention as an affront to God’s will and resisted or obstructed vaccination cam­paigns. Doubts about the vaccine’s potential to live up to its promise also steadily surfaced, with medical journals reporting that smallpox “fell upon great numbers” of those who had received the ostensibly protective vaccine (p. 73).¹¹ Some critics noted that the vaccinated appeared more susceptible to smallpox, often fatally, than the unvaccinated (p. 77).¹¹ As quoted by Humphries, an 1850 letter to the editor pointed out, “There were more admissions to the London Small- Pox Hospital in 1844 than in the celebrated smallpox epidemic of 1781 before vaccination was introduced” (p. 75).¹¹ And across the pond in Boston, Humphries observes (p. 82) that smallpox-related deaths in the twenty years following Massachusetts’ implementation of compulsory vaccination surpassed the smallpox death toll of the previous two decades.¹¹

Newspapers also frequently reported fatal vaccine injuries, noting cases of vaccinated  individuals who subsequently developed ery­sipelas, a bacterial skin condition that caused sufferers to die a “prolonged and painful” death. Members of the public noticed that many chil­dren suffered serious health problems or death following vaccination.

Government willingness to make smallpox vaccination compulsory—coupled with grow­ing public mistrust and concerns about safety, efficacy and state intrusion on individual free­doms—helped spur vaccine awareness “move­ments” in both England and the United States (p. 124).¹¹ These movements gained momentum as people sensed the incoherence and disconnect between the information being disseminated and their personal experience. Inconsistent mes­saging from healthcare authorities left the public with many unanswered questions and doubts.

Even in the face of mandates and legal penalties, many courageous individuals refused to be vaccinated or refused to vaccinate their children. In a chapter titled “The Great Dem­onstration,” Humphries recounts how an entire town—Leicester—spurred a movement against the British government’s smallpox vaccination policies (pp. 113-123).¹¹ In March 1885, protest­ers converged on Leicester from all over Eng­land, taking to the streets in large numbers and brandishing banners with messages like “Lib­erty is our birthright, and liberty we demand.” The demonstration drew an estimated crowd of eighty to one hundred thousand people, forming a “two-mile-long procession.” Representatives from over sixty towns stood on the platform as the public called for self-determination and instigated a historic rebellion against medical authoritarianism.

The widespread public objections led to steep declines in vaccination, with vaccine cov­erage in England and Wales falling from close to 90 percent in 1872 to just 40 percent by 1909 (p. 92).¹¹ Concurrently, smallpox deaths sharply decreased, “all but vanish[ing] from England” by the early 1900s, a trend especially noticeable in children. As many observers could not help but notice, “Decades of strict vaccination laws did absolutely nothing to improve the overall life expectancy of children in all age groups,” and it was only after vaccination declined that child mortality improved (p. 134).¹¹

A FLAWED CONCEPT

In her “Truth about Smallpox” video, Katerina Sugak argues that the conventional understanding of smallpox as a single disease with specific and distinct symptoms is flawed.⁹ Sugak traces the historically loose—and over­lapping—use of the terms “leprosy,” “plague” and “smallpox,” showing that none had a clearly defined symptomatology. Initially, “smallpox” might refer to anything from a respiratory ill­ness to a cancerous tumor; only later was it narrowed down to skin conditions. Because of the three terms’ broad applications, Sugak notes, art historians have often found it difficult to decide whether a particular artwork depicts leprosy, plague or smallpox!

In former centuries, the lack of clarity and diagnostic precision proved useful to the church. Control mechanisms such as quarantine and other oppressive measures could be justified by claiming that those affected with “leprosy,” “plague” or “smallpox” were “unclean” sinners suffering God’s wrath and deserving of social exile. The church also could generate fear for gain and political ends. Eventually, when the role of the church and the religious doctrine equating disease with sin both receded, the phi­losophy pinning disease causation on a “toxin of disease” took center stage. The Latin word for “toxin of disease” is virus.

An accompanying belief was that individu­als recovered because their bodies produced an “antidote” to the “toxin of disease,” with the for­mer subsequently morphing into the nebulous concepts of “antibodies” and “immunity,” and the latter into modern conceptions of viruses and bacteria. These beliefs contributed to the rise of variolation and then to contemporary vaccination. None of this logic holds up to close scrutiny, however; for example, in an exhaus­tive 2001 report on smallpox vaccination, the CDC reported that the effectiveness of smallpox vaccination comes from its induction of “neu­tralizing antibodies,” but in the same breath, it admitted that “the level of antibody that protects against smallpox infection is unknown.”¹⁵

MANIPULATING EPIDEMICS

Sugak devotes considerable effort to ex­plaining how, with the advent of smallpox vac cination, was born a manipulative tactic that the medical and public health establishments continue to use to great effect in declaring epidemics and then making vaccines the heroes of the day. To manufacture an epidemic, authorities need only pull together an array of distinct conditions and repackage them under an “umbrella label,” as they did most recently with Covid-19 and, in the 1980s, with AIDS.¹⁶ Conversely, to proclaim that a given vaccine has brought an epidemic to a close, they need only “play with terminology” again, pulling out the various components of the umbrella term into separate diagnostic labels and criteria, masking the same symptoms under new names. The spinning out of multiple di­agnostic labels, moreover, encourages a new and highly profitable cycle of drug and vaccine development.

For example, after the seeming vaccine-wrought eradication of small­pox in 1980, doctors began diagnosing rashes that would previously have been called “smallpox” as a range of other skin conditions: “chickenpox, monkeypox, tanapox, scarlet fever, measles, rubella, herpes zoster, ery­thema multiforme, molluscum contagiosum, impetigo, dermatitis and so on.”⁹ Sugak explains:

“The only thing that has happened is that the symptoms previously associated with ‘smallpox’ have simply been relabeled and reclassi­fied under new labels. The creation of many new labels is the only method of manipulation—used to this day—with the help of which the medical establishment demonstrates to us its success in eliminat­ing the so-called epidemics.”

In 1955, U.S. officials used the same tactic to artificially lower the number of reported polio cases and make the introduction of polio vac­cination appear more successful. As I noted in my article titled “Polio Vaccines: Medical Triumph or Medical Mishap?”:

“In 1955, officials redefined ‘paralytic poliomyeltis’ and made the diagnosis much more stringent. Prior to the vaccine’s introduction, a patient only had to exhibit paralytic symptoms for twenty-four hours, and a diagnosis required no laboratory confirmation or tests to determine residual paralysis. Post-vaccine, the revised definition expanded the time period for symptoms of paralysis to a minimum of sixty days and required confirmation of residual paralysis at least twice during the course of the disease.”¹⁷

As a result, Sugak comments, the number of reported polio cases in the U.S. dropped significantly from approximately sixty thousand to just a few hundred cases per year.⁹

Most recently, we witnessed the same playbook deployed and wea­ponized for “coronavirus,” with a disparate group of symptoms lumped under the singular label “Covid-19.” When the public then was poisoned with deadly medications like remdesivir and toxic injections called “vac­cines,” the resulting deaths further fanned the public’s pandemic fears. Similar to the prior historical periods of leprosy, plague and smallpox, many individuals were unjustly labeled as sick and dangerously contagious.

REAL CAUSES OF SKIN RASHES

As Sugak emphasizes, “Skin rashes are never the result of exposure to a mythical virus” but are “the consequence of a detoxification mechanism that involves the skin.”⁹ When the build-up of wastes and toxins overloads other excretory systems (urination, defecation, sweat­ing and breathing), the body turns to the skin and produces rashes. Wastes and toxins may result from a wide variety of factors, including “poverty, chronic malnutrition, exhaustion, psychological stress, water and food contamina­tion, toxic drugs” and various forms of medi­cal experimentation. “The nature of the rash,” Sugak explains, “depends on what the body is trying to get out.”

We can explain the prevalence of skin rash­es in eighteenth-century Europe by noting the many natural and man-made disasters during that time, including wars, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that deprived populations of sunlight, created psychological stress and led to deficiencies in nutrients vital to the skin such as vitamin D, iron and potassium.

Sugak also notes various physiological reasons why children have a stronger tendency to experience skin rashes, especially if they accumulate waste products and toxins from an improper diet, unhealthy lifestyle, psycho­logical stress or other poisons in their environ­ment. Getting rid of rashes, therefore, requires recognizing and eliminating the toxicological and psychosomatic factors that are giving rise to them. Encouragingly, when children have a healthy family life, spend a lot of time outdoors, eat a Wise Traditions diet, get proper sleep and minimize or entirely avoid pharmaceutical products, their excretory system is able to cope with waste removal uneventfully.

THE SANITATION REVOLUTION

Hollywood and popular culture tend to romanticize the nineteenth century, but while there were certainly moments of beauty and wonder, many people faced daily challenges and hardships that resulted in high morbidity and mortality rates. Unsanitary living and work­ing conditions were prevalent and negatively affected health and well-being. Humphries’ chapter describing this period is titled, “The Not So Good Ol’ Days.” By the mid-1800s, for example (p. 167),¹¹ New York City alone housed over one hundred thousand slum dwellers in twenty thousand tenement buildings. Describing the crowded and insect-infested slums, reporter and photographer Jacob Riis, in his 1902 book The Battle with the Slum (p. 37), noted housing commissioners’ reference to tenement houses as “infant slaughter houses” because one in every five babies born there died.¹⁸

The day-to-day challenges affecting health and well-being went far beyond substandard housing. Problems included pollution emitted by factories and coal-burning stoves, contributing to poor air quality and lung diseases; factories and mills that exposed workers to other danger­ous chemicals and materials; inadequate sewage systems that often led to waste being dumped in streets or rivers, fostering waterborne bacterial diseases like cholera and typhoid fever; animals roaming narrow, crowded streets; reliance on contaminated sources of water for drinking and cooking; contaminated or poor-quality food, including adulterated milk produced in filthy inner-city confinement dairies; and subsistence diets lacking in essential vitamins and minerals.

As for children, Tom Cowan and Sally Fal­lon Morell note in their book The Contagion Myth (p. 30), “The death rate among children born in these conditions was 50 percent.”¹⁹ Humphries describes the harsh and dangerous nineteenth- and early twentieth-century condi­tions in which many poor children worked. Long hours in unventilated and cramped factories and mines exposed child laborers as young as four years of age to hazardous substances such as coal dust and lead, causing respiratory issues, neurological damage and even death.

What Humphries dubs the nineteenth-century “Sanitation Revolution” marked a public health turning point, enabling gradual but significant improvements in living and working conditions (pp. 167-173).¹¹ Govern­ments began to set standards for cleanliness, initiating large-scale urban projects such as sewer systems, indoor plumbing and regulations for waste disposal. Additionally, public health campaigns educated people about sanitation and hygiene practices. As a result of these efforts, disease rates plummeted and overall health im­proved—all well before it was even possible to claim, falsely, that vaccines were responsible.²⁰

In fact, in a 1970 speech while he was president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Dr. Edward H. Kass (1917–1990) took his colleagues to task for giving too much credit to medical care for the dramatic declines in U.S. mortality from diseases like tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles—and for not giving enough credit to socioeconomic and environmental improve­ments.²¹ Unbiased medical historians agree that the true champions of twentieth-century public health were not doctors but rather the engineers responsible for sewage treatment, clean water and refrigeration.²²

DISPROVING CONTAGION

Sharing the opinion of many others who have looked into fraudulent claims of “virus isolation,” Sugak argues that no one has ever provided scientifically validated evidence— including a photograph of the isolated virus and its biological characterization—of the existence of either the smallpox virus or the poxvirus called “vaccinia” cited as the source of “second-generation” smallpox vaccines (see next section). Unfortunately, as Tom Cowan noted in his article titled “What Does—and Doesn’t—Make Us Sick” in the Spring 2023 issue of Wise Traditions, when we neglect the true scientific method “we can end up in a world of illusions, delusions and make-believe.”²³

In Contagion Myth, Cowan and Morell describe (p. 31) the work of Dr. Charles A.R. Campbell of San Antonio, Texas, who in the early twentieth century publicly rejected of­ficialdom’s notion that smallpox was a conta­gious virus infecting people via contact with “droplets,” a sick person’s bodily fluids or con­taminated household items.¹⁹ Instead, invariably finding bedbugs in the homes of everyone with smallpox, Campbell hypothesized that bedbug bites were the transmitting agent. Cowan and Morell note that this common-sense theory would explain how smallpox spread among Na­tive Americans after the latter came in contact with British and American colonists—with weaponized, bedbug-infested blankets doing the job attributed to viral contagion.

To disprove contagion, Campbell conducted personal experiments in a “pest house” he ran for smallpox patients, intentionally and repeat­edly exposing himself to all the supposed vectors of smallpox transmis­sion, including patients covered in sores as well as their clothing and items like area rugs. Neither Campbell nor any of his family or friends ever got sick.

To treat and prevent smallpox, Campbell eschewed toxic vaccinations and instead recommended eating foods rich in vitamin C and eliminat­ing bedbugs—practical solutions that other practitioners and medical historians have largely ignored because, in Cowan’s and Morell’s words (p. 32), “Where’s the glamour of a solution that involves clean beds and fresh fruit compared with the heroics of vaccination”?¹⁹

“SECOND-GENERATION” VACCINES

Even though the smallpox virus theory remains unproven to this day—with the accompanying implication being that testing for and vaccinating against “smallpox virus” are meaningless and potentially dangerous actions—the practice of smallpox vaccination persists. The U.S. discontinued regular smallpox vaccination in the early 1970s,²⁴ but in 2015, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) continued to recommend routine smallpox vaccination of “specific populations at high risk of occupational exposure to orthopoxviruses”— vaccines provided by the CDC itself.²⁵ The U.S. maintains three smallpox vaccines in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS)²⁶ as part of the “federal medical response infrastructure,” only two of which are licensed:

1. In 2007, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) licensed the “live” vaccinia virus vaccine ACAM2000, initially developed by Sanofi Pasteur and acquired in 2017 by Emergent BioSolutions, for persons of any age “determined to be at risk for smallpox infection.”²⁷
2. In 2019, FDA licensed the two-pronged “live, non-replicating” vac­cine Jynneos for both smallpox and monkeypox; the Danish biotech company Bavarian Nordic A/S makes Jynneos.²⁸ Although the Jynneos licensure applies only to adults age eighteen and up, FDA then issued emergency use authorization (EUA) in August 2022 for administration of Jynneos injections to persons of all ages (that is, including children) if “determined to be at high risk for monkeypox infection.”²⁹ In May 2023, the CDC issued a new health alert about monkeypox (now restyled as “mpox”), drumming up warnings about new “clusters or outbreaks” and recommending two doses of vaccine as a “prevention” measure.³⁰
3. A third stockpiled smallpox vaccine, the “replication-competent vac­cinia virus” Aventis Pasteur Smallpox Vaccine (APSV), is unlicensed but could be used “in a smallpox emergency under the appropriate regulatory mecha­nism,” including the EUA mechanism or as part of an investigational new drug (IND) application.³¹

As reported in the package insert, many serious adverse events are associated with ACAM2000, including various forms of brain inflammation and other conditions affecting brain function or structure.³² The insert also warns of a variety of severe skin complica­tions,³³ including generalized vaccinia (the systemic spread of vaccinia from the vaccina­tion site), progressive vaccinia (“secondary metastatic vaccinia lesions” that cause the death of bodily tissues), eczema vaccinatum and Stevens-Johnson syndrome. Other serious complications include heart problems, blindness and fetal death in pregnant women. The insert notes that all of these complications have the potential to cause “severe disability, permanent neurological sequelea and death,” including death in “unvaccinated contacts.”

Serious adverse events reported during clinical trials for the Jynneos vaccine include Crohn’s disease, sarcoidosis (an inflammatory disease affecting various organs), extraocular muscle paresis (weakening of eye muscles) and throat tightness, as well as “cardiac adverse events of special interest” considered causally related to the vaccine but dismissed as not seri­ous.³⁴

As of March 31, 2023, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) jointly ad­ministered by the CDC and FDA had received reports of almost seventy-six hundred adverse events related to smallpox vaccines, with almost a thousand (13 percent) classified as serious and twenty-two reported as fatal.³⁵ A significant ma­jority of these adverse events, almost 82 percent, were in younger adults aged seventeen through forty-four years, including half of the deaths.

VACCINE AWARENESS MOVEMENTS

Although compulsory smallpox vaccination came to an end in England in 1948 (p. 159),¹¹ vaccine coercion and vaccine mandates have not gone by the wayside. Across the globe, citizens face increasing discrimination and persecution for making vaccine choices that do not align with official policies. In America, this policy requires doctors to administer seventy-two doses of seventeen vaccines to children start­ing from birth—with several prenatal vaccines also urged on pregnant women.³⁶ Adults are at risk of having a growing number of vaccines be federally recommended or mandated, similar to what we experienced with the rollout of the fast-tracked, experimental Covid shots.

In Dissolving Illusions, Humphries urges citizens to learn from history, noting that state laws and workplace policies have been steadily eroding our freedom to make decisions about what enters our bodies. She observes that the forceful efforts of vaccine proponents have suc­cessfully deleted religious vaccine exemptions that once seemed solidly in place (p. 160).¹¹ On a positive note, a federal judge ruled in April 2023 that parents in Mississippi—a state that has been without a religious exemption since 1979³⁷—“can opt out of vaccinating their chil­dren for school on account of religious beliefs.”³⁸

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the Na­tional Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), has long argued in defense of the ethical principles of informed consent and the “first, do no harm” practice of medicine. As Fisher writes, “The individual’s right to autonomy and exercise of voluntary, informed consent to medical risk-taking has been defined internationally as a human right since 1947,” when the Nuremberg Code was issued to safeguard human subjects in scientific experiments.³⁹ Fisher notes the harm done when authorities disregard citizens’ rights to dissent, petition the government for redress and hold beliefs that differ from the majority—rights enshrined by our nation’s founders to protect minorities from oppression.

Fisher played a pivotal role in igniting the modern vaccine aware­ness movement after her infant son suffered tragic injuries from the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) vaccine. Together with other parents of vaccine-injured children, Fisher co-founded NVIC in 1982. For forty years, Fisher has worked to mobilize a nationwide grassroots move­ment and public awareness aimed, among other goals, at strengthening informed consent protections in the public health sector.⁴⁰ (For more information about Fisher and the DPT vaccine, see my article, “Pertussis Vaccines: A Historical and Present-Day Perspective” in Wise Traditions, Winter 2020.⁴¹)

Over the decades, a growing number of parent advocates have joined the vaccine awareness movement, with many noticing a correlation be­tween the increased number of vaccines given to children beginning in the late 1980s and the subsequent development of autism in their children. These parents have humanized the issue of vaccine injury, revealing that vaccine-related injuries and deaths are far from uncommon occurrences. This grassroots parent movement has achieved some notable successes, for example pushing the U.S. government to remove mercury from most childhood vaccinations (although it remains in some flu shots and is still present in “trace amounts” in other vaccines due to its use in the manu­facturing process). Parent-driven advocacy groups like Age of Autism (which publishes the online Age of Autism newsletter) have helped show that autism is a preventable disorder caused by human activity; Age of Autism also works to expose “the special interests, bureaucratic inertia, and medical malfeasance that perpetuate denial and suffering.”⁴² With rates surging from an estimated one in one hundred fifty children in 2000⁴³ to an estimated one in thirty-six children as of 2020,⁴⁴ experts expect autism to cost the U.S. $1.36 trillion annually by 2040.⁴⁵ (For more information, see my article, “Vaccines and Autism: A Very Real Connection” in Wise Traditions, Winter 2018.⁴⁶)

TRUTH AND JUSTICE

Today, there are vaccine awareness advocacy groups around the world with millions of followers serving as warriors for truth and justice. These groups reflect the global waning of trust in vaccination programs, a trend that worried the world’s top vaccine experts when they gathered at the WHO in December 2019 on the eve of the pandemic.⁴⁷ In the U.S., public health agencies’ willingness to authorize and recommend experimental Covid injections for children as young as six months old has prompted a growing number of parents to question the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule in its entirety.⁴⁸ Other factors contributing to the decline in public confidence include mounting awareness of the vaccine industry’s significant, liability-free profits; inadequate scientific transparency and integrity; the politicization of vaccine rec­ommendations; and false claims of safety that downplay risks while exaggerating benefits.

In its eBook titled Conflicts of Interest Undermine Children’s Health,⁴⁹ Children’s Health Defense (CHD) outlines needed actions to address the shocking—and personally and societally costly⁵⁰—phenomenon of vaccine injury. One of the most important steps, CHD and many others agree, is to repeal the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which provides vaccine manufacturers with complete liability protection for injuries caused by child­hood vaccines. CHD has also long argued for the elimination of all vaccine mandates.⁵¹

For my part, I propose a suspension of all vaccinations until and unless their safety and effectiveness can be definitively proven. I also believe that individuals have the right to make their own medical decisions, although it is dif­ficult for most people to make truly informed choices due to the propaganda and misdirection deployed in the public sphere. Given the vast amount of literature and studies on vaccinations, it can be challenging for individuals to decipher the truth, especially because the funding for many of the studies pronouncing vaccines to be “safe” comes from the vaccine manufacturers themselves.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a prime example of the confusion that can arise from the dis­torted information put forth by the media and officialdom. Even as the reported incidence and deaths attributable to “Covid-19” increas­ingly have been called into question,⁵² the mainstream media have devoted no attention to other possible causes of the disease,⁵³ such as electromagnetic poisoning from 5G and other wireless technologies.¹⁹ Canadian physics professor Denis Rancourt frankly argues for an “interpretation of the ‘COVID peak’ as being a signature of mass homicide by government re­sponse.”⁵² Meanwhile, the media have remained silent about the estimated 14.5 percent excess mortality seen globally in the Covid-injected as compared with the uninjected.⁵⁴

Until we address nutrient deficiencies and focus on the various forms of poisoning that are the true causes of illness, we will not make progress in restoring health. Disregarding the possibility of toxic causes and attributing di­sastrous epidemics solely to an elusive pathogen is a false path—leading to unscientific and totalitarian measures such as China’s mass imprisonment (“zero Covid”) policy. The past several years also have shown us how easy it is to manipulate epidemiological data and use unverifiable figures and fraudulent tests to create a false sense of impending catastrophe. Moreover, the concept of disease transmission is a new one and is nowhere to be found in much older traditions such as Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine. As Covid reminded us, our greatest epidemic is that of fear.

The White House recently announced the launch of a five-billion-dollar program called “Project NextGen” to be led by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); replacing “Operation Warp Speed,” Project NextGen’s mission will be to “accelerate and streamline the rapid development of the next generation of vaccines and treatments.”⁵⁵ However, putting our faith in vaccines to offer salvation is a mis­take. I pledge to continue my efforts to oppose vaccine mandates and other authoritarian mea­sures, such as mandatory mask-wearing, that infringe upon our personal freedoms. Through unity, our movement can achieve success, as seen in recent wins like the landmark victory of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) in federal court, which, as already mentioned, secured the right to a religious exemption from all vaccines for all Mississippi schoolchildren. Hopefully, that decision will set a crucial legal precedent paving the way for a nationwide reli­gious opt-out from vaccination requirements for school attendance.⁵⁶ The vaccine industry may be worth trillions of dollars, but it’s important to remember that their success is based on magic fairy dust. If we bond together, we have the power to persevere, blow that dust to the wind and emerge victoriously.

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SIDEBARS

A DIRE SITUATION

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the founder and president-on-leave of Children’s Health Defense, eloquently captured the dismal state of healthcare in America in his recent presidential campaign announcement.⁵⁷ Kennedy highlighted the fact that despite being the highest spender on healthcare worldwide, the U.S. also has the highest rate of chronic diseases. In the mid-twentieth century, an estimated 6 percent of American children had chronic illnesses, but by the 1980s, that figure had doubled to 12 percent, and today, at least 54 percent of American children suffer from chronic diseases, mak­ing this generation the sickest in the nation’s history. Kennedy emphasized that the situation is dire, as America has the unenviable distinction of having some of the sickest children on the planet.⁵⁸

FREEDOM FROM LIABILITY MEANS FREEDOM TO INJURE AND KILL

Under the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, U.S. vaccine manufacturers are protected from liability when a vaccine or drug created in response to a health emergency and given emergency use authorization (EUA) causes death or permanent injury to individuals who receive it during pre-licensure clinical trials or after its release for public use. The PREP Act applies to the Covid injections, meaning that injured individuals cannot sue for damages.

In such cases, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) provides a possible but highly unlikely means of compensation. As of April 2023, only three individuals had been compensated through the CICP, with the highest dollar amount paid being around two thousand dollars to an individual who suffered severe allergic shock.⁵⁹ However, a recent independent analysis suggests that Covid shots administered in the U.S. in calendar year 2022 injured 2.6 million Americans, disabled another 1.36 million and were responsible for over three hundred thousand excess deaths, with these events estimated to have an economic cost of $147.8 billion.⁶⁰

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This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2023

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