The Facts against Compulsory Vaccination by H. B. Anderson, 1929.
How the Milwaukee Health Board Caused City to become panic-Stricken in
Order to Promote a dangerous and Questionable Vaccine.
Health Official Tells How He Used Fright and Pressure to Have People Vaccinated.
"Since people cannot be vaccinated against their
will. the biggest job of a health department has always been, and always will
be, to persuade the unprotected people to get vaccinated.
This we attempted to do in three ways: first by education; second, by
fright; and third, by pressure.
We dislike very much to mention fright and pressure, yet they
accomplish more than education, because they work faster than education, which
is normally a slow process.
During the months of March
and April we tried education, and vaccinated only 62,000. During May we made use
of fright and pressure, and vaccinated 223,000 people.
Our educational program consisted
of warnings in the daily papers, small-pox posters on the streets, in stores and
factories, special small-pox bulletins for all large places of employment, and
special letters to all large employers from the health department and the
association of commerce, calling their attention to a threatening small-pox
epidemic. The radio was also made use of in this work.
As the conditions grew worse, we
felt justified in using stronger measures. We had some good pictures taken of
patients suffering from the confluent type of small-pox, and had posters,
showing these pictures, distributed all over the city. The moving picture
theatres cooperated at this time by issuing warnings on the screen.
The newspapers published daily
the names and addresses of people dying from small-pox. A second letter was
sent to all factories, stores, and other places of business, informing them of a
rapidly approaching small-pox epidemic, and advising them to have their
employees vaccinated immediately, and thereby prevent a serious financial loss
to the city, which might occur if a real epidemic developed.
At this time the department was vaccinating thousands of people daily,
but there were still too many who could neither be educated nor frightened into
vaccination. Cases and deaths each amounted to a considerable number, and we
now felt justified in using all of the power a health officer has, and if that
was not enough, to get more.
We sent out a third letter to all employers requesting them to have all
of their employees vaccinated and at the same time informing them that if a
small-pox case developed in their place of employment in the future we would
consider their place of business a menace to the health of the community and
very likely place the entire establishment under quarantine until it could be
cleaned up and made safe for the public. Putting this responsibility on the
employer drove in thousands of anti-vaccinationist