MinorityView
27-12-08, 10:19 AM
This thread is for older articles about vaccination--
This one is from Time Magazine, 1970, on the smallpox vax. I'm going to cut and paste the entire thing because it might disappear. You'll see why when you read it.:giggle:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943146,00.html
The Dangers of Vaccination
Monday, Jan. 05, 1970
Vaccination against smallpox is almost 200 years old, yet it is still far from being an invariably safe procedure. Although production methods have become more sanitary, the vaccine itself has changed little since Edward Jenner scraped it from sores on the hand of a cowpox-infected dairymaid. It causes severe and even fatal reactions in a small but appreciable number of people, with an average of seven deaths reported annually in the U.S. since 1950. Also, it probably leaves a greater number of victims with permanent mental damage from spread of the cowpox virus to the brain. Yet the U.S. has had no death from smallpox itself since 1949 and not one case of the disease since 1954. What the country now needs, argues the University of Colorado's Dr. C. Henry Kempe, is protection not against smallpox but against vaccination.
Routine vaccination has become an American fetish. There is no doubt that in its first 150 years vaccination was enormously effective in virtually eliminating smallpox from the developed countries of Europe and much of the Americas. But it is deceptively easy to assume that the current U.S. immunity to the disease is the result of continuing mass vaccinations. Probably far more significant is effective border control, which keeps out infected travelers. Changes in vaccination policy are resisted, says Tulane University's Dr. Margaret H.D. Smith, because of "an emotional investment in the traditional role of smallpox vaccination."
First Year Worst. Nor is this cautious attitude limited to oldtimers. Dr. Samuel L. Katz, 42, Duke University's brilliant pediatrician who worked with Harvard's great virologist John F. Enders, is chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee that is drawing up vaccination schedules for children. In its next revision, Katz insists, there will be "no recommendation banning mass vaccination programs for smallpox." That means no widespread change in the current practice of vaccinating infants between six and nine months of age. However, vaccination is three times as likely to cause severe illness in the first year of life as it is in the second. So, says Tulane's Dr. Smith, vaccinators should at least postpone their needling until the second year.
Colorado's Kempe would go much farther. He would totally abolish routine vaccination of children, and of all stay-at-home Americans except those engaged in health services that might bring them into contact with an accidentally imported case of the disease. He would, however, continue to vaccinate young men entering the armed forces and maintain the presently required vaccination for any traveler to areas where smallpox is still rife.
I'll paste the second half into another post.
This one is from Time Magazine, 1970, on the smallpox vax. I'm going to cut and paste the entire thing because it might disappear. You'll see why when you read it.:giggle:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943146,00.html
The Dangers of Vaccination
Monday, Jan. 05, 1970
Vaccination against smallpox is almost 200 years old, yet it is still far from being an invariably safe procedure. Although production methods have become more sanitary, the vaccine itself has changed little since Edward Jenner scraped it from sores on the hand of a cowpox-infected dairymaid. It causes severe and even fatal reactions in a small but appreciable number of people, with an average of seven deaths reported annually in the U.S. since 1950. Also, it probably leaves a greater number of victims with permanent mental damage from spread of the cowpox virus to the brain. Yet the U.S. has had no death from smallpox itself since 1949 and not one case of the disease since 1954. What the country now needs, argues the University of Colorado's Dr. C. Henry Kempe, is protection not against smallpox but against vaccination.
Routine vaccination has become an American fetish. There is no doubt that in its first 150 years vaccination was enormously effective in virtually eliminating smallpox from the developed countries of Europe and much of the Americas. But it is deceptively easy to assume that the current U.S. immunity to the disease is the result of continuing mass vaccinations. Probably far more significant is effective border control, which keeps out infected travelers. Changes in vaccination policy are resisted, says Tulane University's Dr. Margaret H.D. Smith, because of "an emotional investment in the traditional role of smallpox vaccination."
First Year Worst. Nor is this cautious attitude limited to oldtimers. Dr. Samuel L. Katz, 42, Duke University's brilliant pediatrician who worked with Harvard's great virologist John F. Enders, is chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee that is drawing up vaccination schedules for children. In its next revision, Katz insists, there will be "no recommendation banning mass vaccination programs for smallpox." That means no widespread change in the current practice of vaccinating infants between six and nine months of age. However, vaccination is three times as likely to cause severe illness in the first year of life as it is in the second. So, says Tulane's Dr. Smith, vaccinators should at least postpone their needling until the second year.
Colorado's Kempe would go much farther. He would totally abolish routine vaccination of children, and of all stay-at-home Americans except those engaged in health services that might bring them into contact with an accidentally imported case of the disease. He would, however, continue to vaccinate young men entering the armed forces and maintain the presently required vaccination for any traveler to areas where smallpox is still rife.
I'll paste the second half into another post.