--R Obosawin MD
Although smallpox is apparently now accorded to the history books, it will be necessary to re-examine the issue of this disease having been universally eradicated, with particular reference to the WHO eradication campaign. An honest look at this question is of considerable importance, as the current worldwide UCI-EPI program gains much of its legitimacy and inspiration from this widely acclaimed success story.
A strong challenge to this now popular view, is reflected in the post-campaign findings of medical researchers like Buttram and Hoffman:
Most people probably credit the smallpox vaccine with playing the major role in recent eradication of smallpox throughout the world, but let us examine the facts. In the article 'Vaccines a Future in Question,' statistics showed that less than 10 percent of children in developing countries have received vaccines.
They went on to comment that with this level of coverage, the WHO campaign was not a real factor in the eradication. Data obtained in their broad based research also led them to conclude that "mass smallpox vaccination was not necessary for the eradication of smallpox.
In further examining this question from a longer historical perspective, it became readily apparent that the WHO claim did not at all square with the earlier data, i.e., historical smallpox eradication efforts. If we go back as far as the last century, we discover that Creighton's independent research findings as published in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, strongly contradict the effectiveness of mass smallpox immunization programs. A few revealing excerpts follow: . . . in Bavaria in 1871 of 30,742 cases 29,429 were in vaccinated persons, or 95.7 percent.
Notwithstanding the fact that Prussia was the best re-vaccinated country in Europe, its mortality from smallpox in the epidemic of 1871 was higher (69,839) than any other Northern state.
According to a competent statistician (A. Vogt), the death-rate from smallpox in the German army, in which all recruits are re-vaccinated, was 60 percent more than among the civil population of the same age . . . although re-vaccination is not obligatory among the latter.
It is often alleged that the unvaccinated are so much inflammable material in the midst of the community, and that smallpox begins among them and gathers force so that it sweeps even the vaccinated before it. Inquiry into the facts has shown that at Cologne in 1870 the first unvaccinated person attacked by smallpox was the 174th in order of time, at Bonn the same year the 42d, and at Liegnitz in 1871 the 225th.
As we move on into the earlier part of this century we find the same dismal picture of increased susceptibility correlated with increased vaccination coverage. Dettman and Kalokerinos describe a visit they paid to the Philippines about 15 years ago: . . . We were fortunate enough to address their own medical (and) health officials where we reminded them of the incidence of smallpox in formerly "immunized" Filipinos. We invited them to consult their own medical records and asked them to correct us if our own facts and figures disagreed. No such correction has been forthcoming, and we can only conclude that between 1918-1919 there were 112,549 cases of smallpox notified, with 60,855 deaths. Systematic (mass) vaccination started in 1905, and since its introduction case mortality increased alarmingly. Their own records comment that "The mortality is hardly explainable."
Speaking at a 1973 environmental conference in Brussels, Professor George Dick admitted that in recent decades, 75 percent of those that have contracted smallpox in Britain, have had prior a history of vaccination. In that "only 40%" of children were vaccinated (and at most 10 percent of adults), such figures clearly indicate that the vaccinated--as in the much earlier historical record--continue to show a higher tendency to contract the disease. Dick also admitted that smallpox had been eradicated in certain tropical countries without mass vaccination.
(Table VIII reveals that in the 16 year period preceding the year the WHO eradication campaign was launched--38 additional countries had ceased to report any smallpox cases.)
A. Hutchison writing in the Journal of the Royal Society in 1974, referred to the smallpox vaccines "lack of potency" and the inadequacies of
other measures for containment, in his words, "I have given details of the various outbreaks of smallpox in Britain and where they were diagnosed.
These clearly indicate that the (preventive) measures are most ineffective.
An article in the New Scientist indicates that "The smallpox family of viruses is genetically unstable," and that new viral strains which threaten the "WHO smallpox eradication programme, could emerge anywhere.
It is thus of interest that in a 1980 article in the Australasian Nurses Journal, Dettman and Kalokerinos pointed out that electron-microscopy cannot distinguish between the various "poxviruses.
(According to D, de Saving of IDRC, as of 1990 DNA sequencing can make the distinquishment.
What is not known though, is whether this has any bearing on the reporting of the various "pox" diseases worldwide.) This fact led them to raise a vitally significant question "as to whether smallpox may be declared conquered, (it's estimated that only 10 percent of the world population actually received the vaccine) with the possibility of it masquerading under the guise of a similar pox." Their line of evidence and reasoning is summarily stated: . . . we claim that if the evidence is honestly evaluated that smallpox has actually been prolonged and that the so called protective vaccinations actually put the recipient at risk from . . . the disease itself. Authorities now realize this and the 'top world' countries are
making vociferous protests about third world countries continuing use of smallpox vaccination because (a) suddenly it has become recognized that it is an extremely dangerous procedure, (To give some idea of the vaccine's dangers, it was reported--in the late sixties--that annually, roughly 3,000 children were experiencing varying degrees of brain damage due to the smallpox vaccine; and according to G. Kiftel in 1967, smallpox vaccination damaged the hearing of 3,296 children in West Germany, of which 71 became totally deaf.117) and (b) it has now been conquered. The ultimate in ingenuity. . . .
In turning to recognized textbooks on human virology and vertebrate viruses we find that attention has been given since 1970 to a disease called "monkeypox," which is said to be "clinically indistinguishable from smallpox." Cases of this disease have been found in Zaire, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (by May 1983, 101 cases have been reported). It is observed that " . . . the existence of a virus that can cause clinical smallpox is disturbing, and the situation is being closely monitored."
(For a highly detailed account of the history of this disease and efforts to eradicate it, which further corroborates these observations, see, Razzell P., The Conquest of Smallpox, Caliban Books, United Kingdom, 1977.)