Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History

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Approximately 24% of polio infections in children consist of a minor, nonspecific illness without clinical or laboratory evidence of central nervous system invasion. This clinical presentation is known as abortive poliomyelitis, and is characterized by complete recovery in less than a week. This is characterized by a low grade fever and sore throat. Polio’s special status was due, in large part, to the efforts of a remarkable group, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis [the formal name for the March of Dimes], which employed the latest techniques in advertising, fund raising, and motivational research to turn a horrific but relatively uncommon disease into the most feared affli Prior to the antibiotic era, due to a 10% to 20% case-fatality rate, typhoid was a much feared disease. Beginning with chloramphenicol in 1948, the case-fatality rate plummeted to below 1% (Levine, 2018). Current research indicates that babies receive most of their initial antibodies via the placenta before birth If you grew up and live in the US, then you have been indoctrinated to believe vaccination to be effective in the prevention of infectious disease, and to have minimal adverse side effects. Be prepared to have those illusions shattered by this unique book which is a monument of scholarly work on this topic, and deserves multiple re-readings. The care and detail of the documentation is intentional and overwhelming. My congratulations to the authors for a job well done. You might also find interesting, Confessions of a Medical Heretic by Robert S. Mendelsohn MD. He was an early pioneer in the anti-vaccination movement and also my medical school adviser.

Not too long ago, lethal infections were feared in the Western world. Since that time, many countries have undergone a transformation from disease cesspools to much safer, healthier habitats. Starting in the mid-1800s, there was a steady drop in deaths from all infectious diseases, decreasing to relatively minor levels by the early 1900s. The history of that transformation involves famine, poverty, filth, lost cures, eugenicist doctrine, individual freedoms versus state might, protests and arrests over vaccine refusal, and much more. Today, we are told that medical interventions increased our lifespan and single-handedly prevented masses of deaths. But is this really true? Dissolving Illusions details facts and figures from long-overlooked medical journals, books, newspapers, and other sources. Using myth-shattering graphs, this book shows that vaccines, antibiotics, and other medical interventions are not responsible for the increase in lifespan and the decline in mortality from infectious diseases. If the medical profession could systematically misinterpret and ignore key historical information, the question must be asked, "What else is ignored and misinterpreted today?" Perhaps the best reason to know our history is so that the worst parts are never repeated.

The classic symptoms of pertussis are a paroxysmal cough, inspiratory whoop, and fainting, or vomiting after coughing. The cough from pertussis has been documented to cause subconjunctival hemorrhages, rib fractures, urinary incontinence, hernias, and vertebral artery dissection. Violent coughing can cause the pleura to rupture, leading to a pneumothorax [lung collapse].

The substrain of variola minor that was later called “alastrim” (see Chapter 2) remained the dominant form of smallpox in the USA thereafter. All the gravely ill patients were also tortured by mucosal symptoms. The tongue was more or less swollen and misshapen and hindered breathing through the mouth. The voice was hoarse and faltering. Swallowing was so painful that the patients refused all nourishment and, in spite of agonizing thirst, often also refused all fluids. We saw patients with deep invasion of the respiratory passages… Wails and groans filled the rooms. The patients were conscious to their last breath ( Fenner, 1988, p. 27). Typhoid and paratyphoid fever Ask any physician who treated measles cases in the 1960s and they may paint a very different picture of the disease. A Cochrane review of various studies in the field of vitamin A therapy for measles summaries the matter thus: Thus, typhoid fever, a mainly waterborne disease, was brought under control by public health measures with vaccinations protecting those traveling abroad and antibiotics those few unfortunate enough to become infected. Note that currently in the United States typhoid fever isn’t even included in the list of foodborne illnesses ( CDC, 2016). Whooping cough (pertussis)Although P. falciparum traditionally accounts for the majority of deaths, recent evidence suggests that P. vivax malaria is associated with potentially life-threatening conditions about as often as with a diagnosis of P. falciparum infection.

In May 2015, the journal Science, published a report in which researchers found that the measles infection can leave a population at increased risk for mortality from other diseases for two to three years. ( Wikipedia. Measles; see also: CDC. Pink Book. Measles; Cliff, 1993; Mina, 2015; Perry, 2004; Strebel, 2018) These data suggest that cellular responses to measles virus may be better sustained than antibody titers after vaccination and revaccination in some subjects. ( Source ) Suzanne Humphries, MD and Roman Bystrianyk (2013). “Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines. and the Forgotten History.” CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Bizarrely, she alleges that this post-vaccine measles rash should in fact be counted as genuine measles to boost the number of annual notifications and prove that the vaccine is ineffective: Complications of smallpox [variola major] include bacterial infections of the skin and other organs, pneumonia, generalized sepsis, destructive arthritis in young children and arthropathies, corneal ulceration resulting in blindness, keratitis, osteomyelitis, and encephalitis. The latter, present in approximately 1 in 500 cases (Kennedy, 2018, p.1003).

Table 5: Correlation of Laboratory Findings of Poliomyelitis with Muscle Examination Performed 60 Days from Onset of Illness (from Table 7 in Brown, 1960). Original diagnosis

Total reported cases From 1951, MMWR separated paralytic and nonparalytic cases. Before 1951, MMWR included both as Total Cases. The last outbreak of smallpox in the USA occurred in Texas in 1949 (8 cases with 1 death), probably after importation from Mexico. ( Fenner, 1988, pp. 328-33) Graph 12.1 referenced in the quote above is copied below as Figure 1. Note, that as the graph appears in her book, it is difficult to discern by color which of the lines represent which disease, so I have included a red arrow to indicate the line representing poliomyelitis. The data Humphries used to produce this graph is in Table 1 below Figure 1.

The largest measles epidemic in North America in a decade—Quebec, Canada, 2011: Contribution of susceptibility, serendipity and super-spreading events on elimination. author: Gaston De Serres, Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec. A disease may be feared on account of its causing death, but a disease which permits the patient to live in an enfeebled conditions is even more dreaded and its occurrence in a community makes a much deeper impression ( Ruhräh, 1917, p. 97). The March of Dimes Even decades after measles immunization, both the CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell pools contain high levels of measles virus-specific memory T cells. This indicates that measles vaccination induces a long-lived T-cell memory response. ( Source) So, with further data, based on the criteria for paralysis that Greenberg used to adjust the earlier data, where he concluded the vaccine reduced the incidence of cases, with additional data, his original conclusion not only was right, but proved even more valid. How did Humphries miss this? In other words, what worked for typhoid, a bacteria, didn’t work for polio, a virus. Polio epidemics, incidence, morbidity (paralysis), and mortality