THE   BRAINS  OF  THE   INOCULATED

Speech by LILY LOAT

Secretary of the The National Anti-Vaccination League At the Annual Meeting of the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society on 17th December 1957

In the valuable memorandum which forms part of the notice of this meeting there is a reference to the already large number of varied vaccinations and inoculations of children and adults, compulsory or freely chosen, with germs, toxins, their attenuations and concoctions, and it is maintained that

The brains of the inoculated will naturally be affected, judgment of right and wrong in matters of health will be lowered by the influence of the cult of disease prevailing in the animal experimentation laboratories.

There are, I think, two ways in which the cult of disease in the laboratories affects the brain. There is the direct effect on the brain of the injection and there is the effect on the mind and conscience of millions of people which results from scaring the public about diseases and giving them totally unwarranted assurances that vaccination and inoculation will save them from these diseases.

Many of you may know that the disease of encephalitis may result in children and adolescents, after an acute attack, becoming social problems. They play stupid or cruel tricks, they set every one they can by the ears, they may steal, and they may develop other more serious signs of brain injury.

One of the effects of vaccination against smallpox is what is called post-vaccinal encephalitis. Cases of this disease which came to light some thirty-five years ago caused the Ministry of Health secretly to appoint an investigating committee in 1923 and another (publicly) in 1926; the Andrewes and Rolleston Committees. The Reports of the two Committees were published in 1928 and a further report in 1930.

Although standard books on medicine say that in this form of encephalitis recovery is complete, the reports of these committees show that this is not always the case. Of the first ten non-fatal cases whose subsequent history was sought, one had become epileptic, an 11-year-old had permanent hemiparesis, another 11-year-old was said to be dull, and a 13-year-old had a somewhat expressionless face.

Of twelve others, one had a repetition of the symptoms a year after his recovery, one had been subject to fits since his recovery, and three others showed mental changes discernible by their parents.

There have been others whose brains appear to have been affected by vaccination. Long before the Andrewes and Rolleston Committees made their investigations, there were reports of healthy normal children changing completely after vaccination and becoming disagreeable and violent.

More recently, in regard to two murderers, it was pleaded that their brains had been affected by the vaccinations and inoculations they had undergone. One of these was Charles William Koopman, aged 23, Aircraftsman, of Hanwell, who in October 1943 was tried at the Old Bailey for murdering a woman and her little daughter. For the defence it was pleaded that he was insane at the time. Dr. Isaac Frost, in the defence, said that he had come to the conclusion that Koopman, by reason in part of alcohol, his epileptic temperament, and the effect of vaccination recently performed, was suffering from a disease of the brain and did not fully appreciate what he was doing. Eight days before the crime was committed Koopman had been vaccinated against smallpox and inoculated against typhoid, cholera and tetanus.

Koopman's appeal was heard on 20th November 1943, and again Dr. Frost testified that the man's brain had been affected by the vaccination he had undergone.

Our dear friend, the late Miss Margaret Bradish, tried hard to save Koopman from hanging. Amongst the large number of people she got to write to the Home Secretary about the case was a young woman doctor who, while not opposed to vaccination, read up all she could on the subject of pOst-vaccinal encephalitis and through this case was convinced that vaccination could cause very serious injury to the brain.

Vaccination damages other organs as well as the brain. During the 26 years ending 1956, 86 babies under one year died of vaccination, and not one of smallpox. We had most smallpox when we had most vaccination. With little vaccination we had little smallpox.

For a long time the Ministry of Health maintained that anti-diphtheria inoculation was perfectly safe; in fact, they advertised that it was; But seven-and-a-half years ago, after a member of their own staff had collected details of at least 60 cases of nervous injury such as paralysis, following inoculation with diphtheria toxoid, or combined toxoids, or anti-whooping cough toxoids, and after Dr. Geffen, of St. Pancras, and an Australian poliomyelitis expert, Dr. McCloskey, had made public details of cases of poliomyelitis which developed within three months of inoculation, the Ministry sent round a circular telling medical officers they could, if they thought fit, stop all inoculations during the poliomyelitis season.

But although the Ministry felt obliged to go that far, it still did not want to admit that there was any definite causal connection between inoculation and these nervous diseases, so a Committee of the Medical Research Council spent a long time investigating the matter, and a year ago (December 1956) they reported. They said that there was considerably more risk of children getting paralysis after these inoculations than without them, if done in the poliomyelitis season.

You probably all know of the American tragedy in 1955, when the Salk Vaccine gave polio to some 400 adults and children and killed 12 of them. Since then there have been 73 American cases in which the Salk Vaccine caused or provoked paralysis.

These 73 cases are referred to in at least three reports issued by the Poliomyelitis Survey Unit of the American Public Health Service. One of them was referred to in the Sunday Times of last May. The Ministry of Health and the Medical Research Council have had them, but every attempt to get them to admit this has been baulked. The Clerks at the Table of the House of Commons would not accept a question on the matter, making the excuse that the Ministry of Health receives many reports and cannot be expected to look one out specially to ascertain whether it contained certain information. These cases are the ones that have come to light. Up and down our own country there are many more. At public meetings, a speaker on vaccination or inoculation is often told by members of the audience of the terrible results of those operations on their own children and in some of these cases the brain has been affected.

In this connection there is another point to be considered. Professor Macintosh, when he told the Royal Society of Medicine in 1926 about the cases of encephalitis caused by vaccination which he had investigated, deplored the use of living vaccine. He said the virus might lie dormant for years and then resume its former virulence. It is not unwarrantable to believe that the brains of many people may have been affected by these horrible concoctions although no outward sign of this appeared at the time of vaccination.

And if the brain is affected so seriously in some of the sufferers from post-vaccinal encephalitis, may not some of the shocking things done by men and women who should be guiding the nation into paths of truth, honour, kindness and justice, be partly due to brain injury resulting from all the vaccine and serums that have been pumped into them?

Now we turn to the other angle of Miss Lind-af-Hageby's proposition— the effect on the mind and conscience of millions of people, resulting from this cult of disease with its accompanying exploitation of animals in the laboratories.

We have seen one instance of it in America during the last three years and in the United Kingdom during this year.

In America some 12 1/2 years ago a foundation for infantile paralysis was founded by Basil O'Connor, partner of Franklin D. Roosevelt in a law business. Mr. Roosevelt had been crippled by poliomyelitis and it was thought that the finest memorial to him that could be thought of was a foundation to help sufferers from polio, to investigate the causes of the disease, and to find a cure and also a preventive.

By a system of high pressure salesmanship, such as the Americans above all other people know so well how to put over, this foundation became one of the richest in the Stales. Millions of dollars were collected in the annual " March of Dimes " and by other spectacular methods.

The foundation spent large amounts on financing vivisectors. amongst them Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, to enable them to experiment with poliomyelitis viruses with the object of producing a protective vaccine.

Salk, after using 15,000 monkeys in manufacturing and testing his vaccine, declared in September 1953 that he had found a vaccine which created antibodies in the blood of inoculated animals and it was inferred that it would do the same to human beings.

The theory that the creation of antibodies in the blood indicates that protection against disease has been established is not supported by experience. The Medical Research Council's Report on Diphtheria Outbreaks in Gateshead and Dundee, published in 1950. showed that many of the persons actually in hospital with diphtheria had far more anti-toxin in their blood than was said to be required for complete protection against diphtheria, whilst nurses and others in close contact with diphtheria infection and without sufficient anti-toxin remained immune.

During 1954 tests on a very large scale were carried out with the vaccine in a number of American States. When the tests ended, statisticians at Ann Arbor, Michigan, were commissioned to make a statistical analysis of the results, and it was arranged that the report of the experts should be made on 12th April 1955. Franklin Roosevelt's birthday.

In the meantime the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis worked up through the Press and other means of publicity an almost hysterical fear of polio amongst American parents. Also, without waiting for the results of the statistical analysis of the test of the vaccine, it commissioned five drug and vaccine manufacturing firms to go ahead with the manufacture of the vaccine, and millions of doses were ready for distribution when the "All Clear" was given on that momentous day in April 1955.

Then came the terrible tragedy. But what I would like to stress is that the Evaluation Report which was said to establish the effectiveness and harmlessness of the vaccine did nothing of the kind. Eminent statisticians in the United States have criticised the report, and in the May 1957 issue of Science, one of the top scientific journals of the U.S.A., Dr. Meier demanded the appoint­ment of a committee of leading scientists to make a thorough investigation of the whole business. Had the editors who acclaimed the vaccine—sometimes in headlines 3 in. long—studied the report for themselves, they would have had to admit that there was not sufficient evidence to justify the claims made for it.

After the shocking results of the Salk vaccination were publicly admitted, everything was done to reassure the public. They were told that the cause of the disaster had been discovered and that the wonderful safety measures now devised would pre­vent anything of the kind happening in the future. It was suggested that only one lot of the vaccine—that made by the Cutter firm, who were outside the ring of manufacturers—were responsible for the disaster, which was not true.

For a long time American parents fought shy of the vaccine and the State medical officers had millions of doses left on their hands, especially in California, where the majority of the cases of polio had occurred.

But the American Public Health Service and the heads of the various States kept up their assaults on the brains of the public They extended the age classes for the vaccine downwards to the babies and upwards to people aged 20 and in some States to 40, and urged expectant mothers to be done. They concealed the hundreds of failures of the inoculation to protect and the hundreds of cases of polio that developed within 30 days of the inoculation. The fact that in 1956 73 cases of paralysis within 30 days of inoculation occurred was kept dark. There were also cases within 60 days.

By these methods nearly half of the American population under 40 has been inoculated.

Over here the position is nearly as bad. Last July and August several London newspaper editors carried on a systematic campaign against the Ministry of Health because it refused to buy the American Salk Vaccine. Every attempt to get these newspapers to publish the facts failed. Some medical contributors to other papers tried to reassure the public. They pointed out the rarity of polio, the fact that often less than half of the cases have any paralysis, and that the majority of these recover. But Dr. Agerholm, a fanatical supporter of the inoculation, won, and in the end the Ministry found itself compelled to buy the American vaccine.

What the motives of these alarmist editors was had better not be investigated. While undoubtedly the original impulses towards these inoculations were started by the inventors and manufacturers of the vaccines, and while the Ministry of Health is always boosting one or other of the vaccinations or inoculations, the emotional campaign last summer was originated by individual doctors, and carried on by about half-a-dozen newspapers.

There is also the political aspect to consider. At one time the Labour Party was led by avowed disbelievers in vaccination. But the years have brought changes, and the policy makers seem to think the Party will win votes if they appear always to be watching over the health of the people. Several of the more prominent Labour leaders—Marquand, Edith Summerskill, Bessie Braddock, and others—are keen supporters of vaccination and inoculation This may have been one reason in April 1955 why Labour M.P.s clamoured for the purchase of American Salk Vaccine and even after the tragedy some of them continued to agitate for its wide­spread use here.

To counter this Socialist claim of constant care over the health of the people, the Tories put into their last Election Manifesto, a reference to their intention to deal with polio, and when all the fuss over the Ministry of Health's refusal to buy the Salk Vaccine was at its height, local Liberal Parties passed resolutions condemning the Government, and individual Liberal candidates expressed similar views.

But the fact that during 1956 only 29 per cent, of the English children aged 2 to 9 years were registered for the vaccine, and the most recent figures show only 40 per cent, of children of all ages so registered suggests that both the Liberal and the Labour Party are mistaken in thinking that by jumping on the inoculation band wagon they will win votes. The Star of 16th December 1957 reported that the London County Council had decided to get the heads of all schools in their area to send a letter to the parents of every school child urging them to register the children for Salk Vaccine. This procedure indicates the reluctance of parents to have children inoculated and the London County Council's determination to overcome that reluctance. More brain washing, of course, but parental resistance is certainly to be reckoned with. 

Nevertheless I think all workers in the Anti-Vivisection movement must confess that the constant repetition by newspapers, the B.B.C., Child Welfare organisations, Health Visitors and Doctors for claims for this, that, and the other inoculation, must tend in time to break down the natural resistance of the majority of the public, and particularly the younger folks.

And this is where we come in. We must not let ourselves sink into despair in spite of the odds against us. Constant circulation of the truth, repeated challenges of those who spread false­hoods, the use of every opportunity to let all those with whom we come in touch know that we will not have these products of cruelty, greed and ignorance, and resistance in this work in spite of every setback, are called for. For those whose mental and spiritual stature is high, the moral argument against cruelty will be sufficient, but others must be shown that these inoculations do not protect and may themselves damage health and even have fatal results.


APPENDIX   
LARGE  INCREASE  IN  NERVOUS  DISEASE   HAS ACCOMPANIED   INCREASE   IN  INOCULATION
A doctor who unfortunately is obliged to avoid publicity wrote the following letter to a County Health Officer who has introduced inoculation against tetanus for young children, and is arranging for eleven separate inoculations of babies during the first year of their lives (smallpox, 1; whooping cough, 3; poliomyelitis, 2: diphtheria, 2; tetanus, 3):—

" When I consider the increase of metabolic and allergic diseases in recent years, I am rather perturbed at receiving your notice that yet a further foreign protein is to be injected into our healthy children.

" At present, under pressure from the Ministry of Health, they are subjected to no less than nine metabolic shocks by means of toxic foreign proteins, during the first year of their life when growth is intense and tissues unstable. Now it is ordained that they are to have yet three more such injections this time for tetanus. Such an edict seems to me to show the loss of all sense of proportion, and to be carrying Ministry of Health theory beyond the bounds of common sense.

" I think it is quite safe to say that every man, woman and child in this country gets a skin injury from prick, cut, scratch, or abrasion, at least once in five weeks. This means that on five hundred million occasions per year, the people of this country run the risk of tetanus, according to Ministry of Health theory. Yet from all this gigantic number of risks only the most trifling few get tetanus! In their enthusiasm for this mass protein shock attack on the childhood of the country, the Ministry of Health in the past have caused paralysis in some children who would otherwise have escaped it, as they implicitly admit by now telling doctors not to use alum preparations in future, though recommending them to do so in the past. Their advice having once been proved to be harmful, may it not be so again.

" It is not generally realised that of all the hospital beds occupied by the sick in this country, about 50 per cent, are for diseases of the nervous system only; and now it is suggested that a virulent poison, having a special predilection for the nervous system, be regularly injected into all healthy babies in order to satisfy a Ministry of Health theory.

" Don't you think that in the interests of Public Health it would be better at this juncture if we started reducing these shock tactics instead of increasing them, and thus tried to reduce the cases of metabolic disease, and diseases of the nervous system, which at present outnumber all the other hospital cases put together."