Vaccinations saved us from...what, exactly?

There are those out there who claim that questioning the effectiveness of vaccinations is tantamount to killing children. I kid you not.

According to them, those who dare to ask about the safety and effectiveness of childhood shots; who presume to try and comprehend scientific information that doctors seem to feel is written in a language that can only be understood by the medical elite, is not only wrong, it is immoral as well.

According to these geniuses, it is irrational to even ask about whether or not the decline in infectious diseases through the 20th century was related to the vaccines that had been introduced to prevent them. The only obvious answer is that vaccinations are our saviour and, as the American media medico, Dr Laura so succinctly put it, "Just take the damned vaccines!"

Unfortunately for those pushing the party line, the evidence which is available in every developed country shows that it is most likely that vaccines had absolutely NOTHING to do with the decline of infectious diseases.

Actually, I take that back. Vaccination may not have contributed to this decline but in some cases, it appears that their introduction may have led to a plateauing of the drop in deaths and incidence prior to vaccination. In fact, as we saw with pertussis in the US, there was a marked increase in the incidence once the vaccine was mandated.

Dr Raymond Obomsawin has worked in both government and non-government health authorities in Canada where he currently resides. He has published widely on the problems with vaccinations and is a well-respected academic in the area of public health. He recently (2009) released graphs that demonstrate visually - using government statistics from around the world - the fact that vaccination had nothing to do with the decline in both incidence and mortality from diseases such as measles, pertussis (whooping cough), tuberculosis and more.

We who are sceptical of the government and medical community claims that credit vaccines with virtually wiping out infectious diseases over the last 50 years have been quoting official statistics for decades to prove that this is simply not to case.

Below is a graph of the incidence of measles in Canada from 1935-1983. Australia did not keep track of measles incidence for a long period of time so we can't compare the Canadian figures with our own but there is no reason to assume that they would be substantially different. As you can see, measles had declined by over 90% before the vaccine was introduced in 1963.

What follows is a graph of the mortality (deaths) from measles in England and Wales for the the 115 years before the introduction of the measles vaccine. As you can see, the decline in deaths parallels the decline in incidence - without the use of vaccines.

So, we are told on a daily basis that vaccines have been the reason that children are no longer dying from or even contracting measles; we are told that if the disease comes back from wherever it has been hiding since the early 1960s, it will be the fault of those who have not taken the measles vaccine, but what we are not told is that vaccine or no vaccine, measles incidence and mortality had declined to bugger-all BEFORE the vaccine was used. This vaccination success story isn't a success story at all - it is just more propaganda that will not survive even the smallest bit of scrutiny.