Tuesday, December 21, 1937
Address of William Howard Hay, M.D., Pocono, PA., on June 25, 1937, before The
Medical Freedom Society
MR. BURDICK. Mr. Speaker, under the leave to extend my remarks in the
RECORD, I include the following address by William Howard Hay, M.D., of
Pocono, PA., on June 25, 1937, before the Medical Freedom Society on the
Lemke bill to abolish compulsory vaccination:
I was glad to hear the Honorable Mr. Lemke’s presentation of the subject
matter of his bill. I have thought many times of all the insane things
that we have advocated in medicine, that Is one of the most insane-to
insist on the vaccination of children, or anybody else, for the
prevention of smallpox, when, as a matter of fact, we are never able to
prove that vaccination saved one man from small-pox. Naturally not. When
you have protected anybody, as we denote protection in medicine, you have
at the same time destroyed your evidence. If that man doesn’t take the
disease against which he is supposed he be protected, how can you ever
know he would have taken it if he hadn’t been protected? We have
destroyed the evidence.
As a matter of fact, perhaps it is safe to say that not more than 10 per
cent of the people ever would take smallpox if sleeping in the same bed
with an infected smallpox victim. We know there is a large immunity to
smallpox. Very few people are subject to it, and these usually in the
filthiest surroundings. Now, if we carry that natural immunity to
smallpox as we do other diseases, and we have been protected by
vaccination and then we are exposed to smallpox and don’t take it, don’t
you see there is no proof there? We may be carrying a natural Immunity.
If one case that has been successfully vaccinated afterwards develops
smallpox, that is proof that it isn’t protection, now, isn’t it?
I know of one epidemic of smallpox comprising nine hundred and some cases
in which 95 per cent of the infected had been vaccinated, and most of
them recently. I have had in my own experience one very small epidemic
comprising 33 cases, of which 29 had vaccination histories a “good” scar,
and some of them vaccinated within the last year. There was no protection
there.
Among these was one girl who was not vaccinated, never had been, who had
five cases of smallpox in the family, nursed those cases that were ill, a
baby among the others, the worst case of small-pox among them, refused
vaccination and was never infected at all—a natural immunity.
What is true of smallpox is true of every other disease. We are not all
equally subject to all the diseases that occur. We know that king. an
epidemic of influenza sweeps over the country. Why doesn’t everyone have
it? The germ, if it is a germ, and we don t know that it is, is
ubiquitous. They are everywhere. You can’t hide from them. And yet
perhaps but 10 per cent of the population of any region will be infected.
What protects the 90 per cent? Natural immunity.
We may have natural immunity this year and we may not have It next year,
but we can’t create it artificially by using a so-called immune serum. As
I say, when we do use an immune serum we have destroyed every possibility
of using that case as evidence, because we have no way of knowing whether
it would ever have been infected.
We have always recognized the fact that but 15 per cent of children are
subject to diphtheria, no matter how thoroughly they are exposed.
Statistics of every epidemic of diphtheria in every section of the
country, if averaged, will show that average, with 85 per cent who are
not infected. We have taken diphtheria antitoxin, we have used
toxin-antitoxin and toxoid, and if we found a susceptibility or reaction
to this, we have immunized that case against diphtheria by a series of
three injections of anti diphtheric serum. We have to admit 15 per cent
of the children are still unprotected because they take diphtheria. Isn’t
that the same 15 percent? We have no way of proving it isn’t.
A number of years ago when we were just beginning to study diphtheria
antitoxin minutely, Cook County, Ill., hospital decided to immunize
one-half of the nursing staff and not the other half. Diphtheria broke
out soon afterward among the immunized cases, not the others. It invaded
both halves, both the immunized and the unimmunized, and the total of
cases was much higher among the supposedly immunized cases than among
those not immunized. We didn’t do much for those nurses.
When we took over the management of the Philippines and all of its
destinies, we announced to the bloomin’ cockeyed world we were going to
dean up smallpox in the Philippines. Well, we waited a few years but we
did make a serious effort. In fact, in a population of 10,000,000 people
we consummated 30,000,000 vaccinations within a period of 6 years. The
Province of Rizal, of which Manila was the center, was the most
accessible, of course; the little rascals couldn’t get away there, we
could catch them, and did, and some of them were vaccinated three and
four and five and six times in the 6 years. We were going to make it
thorough. In Mindanao and some of the other more outlying provinces, more
mountainous, we couldn’t catch the little rascals, so there was a smaller
percentage of vaccinations In the outlying districts. Rizal had to take
it.
Within 6 years of that time the Philippines suffered the worst attack of
smallpox, the worst epidemic three times over, that had ever occurred in
the history of the islands, and it was almost three times as fatal. The
death rate ran as high as 60 per cent in certain areas where formerly it
had been 10 and 15 per cent, and the thing that climaxed the whole point
was this: In Rizal we had the highest incidence and the highest mortality
of any part of the Archipelago. The Navy reported that vaccination of the
sailors went on as regularly as drills, every so often they were
vaccinated, but they had their usual percentage of smallpox, and yet they
were protected!
Now we are asking in many States to have the privilege of deciding
whether we will be vaccinated or not. No one wishes to deny his brother
the privilege of being vaccinated if he has any faith in it, but here is
the ridiculous thin g about it: The ones who are objecting to abolishing
the law and who are insisting on vaccination are the ones who are afraid
that they will take smallpox if their brothers are not vaccinated. Now if
you are vaccinated, you are protected, aren’t you? What are you afraid
of? Suppose your next-door neighbor does get smallpox because he was not
vaccinated; that is his business; he has a right to have smallpox if he
wants to; he can’t give it to you if you have been vaccinated, so what
are you worrying about? Let him do as he pleases. That is all we are
asking; we are not asking that they forbid vaccination. Let everyone have
what he wants, but let us not compel those to have vaccination who know
there is nothing in it, who know it is not a protection.
It is now 30 years since I have been confining myself to the treatment of
chronic diseases. During those 30 years I have run against so many
histories of little children who had never seen a sick day until they
were vaccinated and who, in the several years that have followed, have
never seen a well day since. I couldn’t put my finger on the disease they
have. They just weren’t strong. Their resistance was gone. They were
perfectly well before they were vaccinated. They have never been well
since. Now you can’t record those as deaths from vaccination because they
are still alive; but in England, where statistics are a little more frank
than they are with us, where they are kept a little more accurately, a
little more aboveboard than In this country, the actual official records
show three times as many deaths directly from vaccinations as from
smallpox for the past 21 years. If they record three times as many
deaths, I will guarantee, you that there are three times as many deaths
that were not recorded that are directly traceable to vaccination. That
doesn’t take into account the many, many cases of encephalitis or
sleeping sickness, of this or that form of degeneration, that occur as a
direct result of vaccination. That case Is still alive. It hasn’t entered
here the mortality records yet, but it is suffering and has suffered ever
since vaccination.
And if you have been dealing, as I have, with the derelicts from all over
the world for 30 years, you would find an almost fatal relationship
between this history of vaccination and some failing that follows this
for many years that has kept a person from being as well as he should
have been.
It is nonsense to think that you can inject pus-and it is usually from
the pustule of the dead smallpox victim; that is the basis of it; we used
to think it was from cowpox, but the manufacturers deny that and say the
most reliable form originates in the pustule of someone who had died from
smallpox—it is unthinkable that you can inject that into a little child
and in anyway improve its health.
What Is true of vaccination is exactly as true of all forms of serum
immunization, so called. There is no such thing as immunization, but we
sell it under the name, “immunization”. We jab a needle full of pus
germs, we will say the streptococcus, for instance, in attenuated form so
it won’t pollute too badly, and we increase the dose or potency of that
little by little until we build up what we call a resistance to it. You
can do the same thing with the rattlesnake venom. You can be bitten just
a little by a rattlesnake and not die, and If you are bitten often
enough, you can be bitten In a vital part and not die; you have built up
a resistance to the venom of the rattlesnake, but have you improved your
physique by doing so? If we could by any means build up a natural
resistance to disease through these artificial means, I would applaud it
to the echo, but we can’t do it. The body has its own methods of defense.
These depend on the vitality of the body at the time. If it is vital
enough, it will resist all infections; if it isn’t vital enough, It
won’t, and you can’t change the vitality of the body for the better by
introducing poison of any kind into it.
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