Hidden History: Bush’s Misguided 2002 Initiative to Vaccinate All Americans Against Smallpox

Dissolving Illusions

Dr Suzanne Humphries (2017)

Film Review

In this film, Dr Suzanne Humphries discusses highlights of her 2013 book (with co-author Roman Bystrianyk) Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History. Humphries, a board certified nephrologist (kidney specialist) starts by describing her transformation from pro-vaccine advocate to vaccine skeptic. This occurred in 2009, when hospital administrators persisted in administering (despite her explicit orders) flu and pneumococcal vaccines to patients whose renal failure was worsened by the aluminum in the vaccines.

After the administrators rebuffed numerous peer reviewed studies she found validating the adverse effects of aluminum-based vaccines in renal patients, she felt she had no choice but to resign her position.

The experience led her to delve more deeply into the peer reviewed vaccine literature. What she found astounded her: According to Humphries, there is a vast medical literature documenting the adverse effects of vaccines, but doctors never read it. Instead they rely on the mainstream media and public health officials (who apparently don’t read the medical literature, either) for information about vaccines.

Mack’s testimony came during George W Bush’s initiative (which has conveniently been erased from history) to vaccinate Americans against smallpox. Although the World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated in 1980, Bush claimed Americans needed protection against a potential terrorist biological attack with smallpox virus. Mack and others warned the CDC that administering smallpox vaccine to two thirds of Americans (ie all the ones in good health) would lead to 285 deaths and 4600 serious health problems.

When plans were drawn up to start with health workers, they wisely consulted the vaccine information sheet. The latter warned of a high risk the vaccine could cause myocarditis, pericarditis, angina and heart attacks.*** Armed with this information, most health workers declined to be immunized and the Bush CDC was forced to scrap their smallpox immunization campaign.

In her talk, Humphries also traces the history of the anti-vaccination movement back to 1889 in Leicester England. The anti-vax campaign, which started in Leicester, quickly spread throughout the country, forcing the government to suspend compulsory vaccination. At the time, so many children died following vaccination that parents opted to go to jail and/or be stripped of their property rather than risk their children’s lives.

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*In her book Dissolving Illusions, Humphries also traces how polio vaccination didn’t eradicate polio. See How the Polio Vaccine Didn’t Conquer Polio

**The smallpox virus, which isn’t transmissible by air, can only be transmitted by direct contact. The mode of vaccination (via direct insertion of the virus into the skin) led to frequent transmission of the illness to family members and unvaccinated children.

The Hidden History of Smallpox Vaccine

Suzanne Humphries – Dissolving Illusions

Dr Suzanne Humphries (2017)

In this video, board certified nephrologist Suzanne Humphries explodes the myth that mass vaccination was responsible for eradicating small pox in the developed world.

She begins by describing the vaccine’s development by Edward Jenner in the 18^th century. Jenner’s decision to inject children with pus from cows infected with cowpox was based on his theory, which has never been proven, that it would protect them from developing smallpox.

A close examination of the medical literature reveals Jenner’s vaccine was never effective against the most virulent form of smallpox. In England an 1871 outbreak of smallpox, after 33 years of compulsory vaccination (leading to unprecedented levels of sickness and death in healthy children), would lead to first anti-vaccine movement by outraged parents. By 1889 when they finally overturned compulsory vaccination, only 15% of parents were complying with the law – they preferred risking imprisonment and seizure of their property to jeopardizing their children’s lives.

Humphries goes on to discuss more recent smallpox outbreaks in vaccinated populations – in 1945 in 100% vaccinated US troops and in 1972 in Yugoslavia, where over 95% were vaccinated.

Most interesting, however, is her description of George W Bush’s abortive attempt to mass vaccinate Americans in 2003. This initiative was based on alleged intelligence that “terrorists” were planning to attack the US with weaponized smallpox virus.

The project was scrapped after the CDC ruled that patients would have to give informed consent acknowledging the vaccine was more likely to kill them than small pox (the CDC predicted 285 deaths in otherwise healthy individuals). The required package insert revealed that small pox vaccine is contraindicated in patients under 18 and those with a personal or family history of heart disease, diabetes or elevated cholesterol.

Humphries maintains that smallpox vanished from the developed world (in 1979) for the same reason as other infectious illnesses, such as typhoid, scarlet fever and cholera. The infectious epidemics that scourged 18^th and 19^th century slums were largely the product of contaminated drinking water, near-starvation diets, overcrowding and poor hygiene. As smallpox virus is only transmitted through direct physical contact, most 19th century cases were transmitted by doctors, nurses and carers who failed to wash their hands.

At the end of her talk, Humphries compares doctor’s superstitious attitudes towards non-evidence based vaccinations to blood letting, another common medical treatment in the 19^th century. Owing to the power of Big Pharma and the failure of medical schools to expose students to the extensive  medical literature about vaccination drawbacks, doctors (like Humphries) who raise legitimate concerns about vaccine safety continue to be treated like criminals and quacks.