Anti-Vaccine Influencers Have Been Recycling the Same Old Story for Over 200 Years
The Real Truth About Vaccines
Steve Kirsch finally got something right!
Well he kind of got something right…
Anti-vaccine influencers have been telling the same old story - pushing the same misinformation and propaganda about vaccines, but for more than 70 years!
Anti-Vaccine Influencers Have Been Recycling the Same Old Story for Over 200 Years
That’s right, while each generation of anti-vaccine influencers might think they are on to something new, they are basically just rehashing the same old conspiracy theories that have long since been explained away.
And while all of these anti-vaccine influencers eventually faded away, it is important to realize that vaccines are still here!
What else is still here?
Most of the same, now vaccine preventable diseases…
Fortunately, most are being better controlled - at least they are in those of us who are vaccinated and protected.
Still, let’s take a quick look at anti-vaccine messaging over the years, and how, despite being refuted over and over again, the same ideas keep coming back.
Ideas that started with anti-vaccine pamphlets and satirical etchings soon after Edward Jenner developed his smallpox vaccine in 1798.
Anti-vaccine books pamphlets, which included:
Evils of Vaccination by Dr. C. C. Schieferdecker (1856), he set out to “prove vaccination to be nonsense before reason – a miserable illusion, in a scientific point of view, and, in regard to history, the greatest crime that has been committed in this last century.” He argued that vaccination is inherently dangerous, claiming it caused illness, death, and the transmission of diseases such as syphilis.
Papers on Vaccination by Charles Creighton, M.D. (1888), a collection of essays criticizing the scientific basis of vaccination. He argues that declines in smallpox were due primarily to sanitation rather than vaccination and questioned the evidence supporting vaccine effectiveness.
Vaccination a Medical Fallacy by Alexander Wilder, M.D. (1879), he said that vaccination is based on flawed medical theory, provided little protection against smallpox, and exposed recipients to unnecessary health risks.
Vaccination: Its Fallacies and Evils by Robert A. Gunn, M.D. (1882), he argued that vaccination is both ineffective and harmful, claiming it introduced disease into healthy individuals with overstated protective benefits.
Vaccination: The Story of a Great Delusion by William White (1885) - he presented vaccination as one of medicine’s greatest mistakes, asserting that public health improvements—not vaccination—were responsible for declining smallpox mortality.
Vaccination a Curse by C. W. Amerige, M.D. (1895), he portrayed vaccination as a source of disease, disability, and government overreach, urging physicians and the public to reject vaccination.
Vaccination and Leprosy by William Tebb, (1893), he pushes the idea that an increase in leprosy is caused by smallpox vaccinations. He also wrote A Century of Vaccination and What It Teaches, in which he concluded that vaccination failed to control smallpox while causing widespread injury and caused infant deaths.
Vaccination: A Delusion—Its Penal Enforcement a Crime by Alfred Russel Wallace (1898) argued that statistical evidence shows vaccination to be ineffective and that compulsory vaccination laws violate personal liberty. He also wrote Vaccination Proved Useless and Dangerous, in which he argued that vaccination neither prevented smallpox nor improved public health, attributing declining mortality instead to sanitation and living conditions.
Vaccination a crime : with comments on other sanitary superstitions by Barnarr Macfadden and Felix Oswald (1901), he argued that vaccination is not only ineffective but also a violation of individual liberty, claiming that improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and hygiene—not vaccination—were responsible for declining infectious disease.
Open Your Eyes Wide!, Vaccination Illegal, The Crime Against the School Child, Vaccination and Lockjaw: The Assassins of the Blood, and the Horror of Vaccination Exposed and Illustrated by Charles Higgins. He was also the co-founder and a long-time treasurer of the Anti-Vaccination League of America.
Crimes of the Cowpox Ring by Lora Little in which she alleged corruption among physicians, vaccine manufacturers, and public officials who promoted vaccination. It portrayed vaccination as driven by financial interests rather than science or public welfare.
Vaccination Brought Home to You by Dr. Reuben Swinburne Clymer (1904) “tells what vaccine is and how it is procured from the calf; tells how some have been killed and others made to suffer untold miseries by being inoculated with pure vaccine [poison]; gives facts and figures showing the results of vaccination… All of which show that vaccination don’t prevent small-pox, but rather tends to increase it. It exposes some of the lies of the wily Medicoes.”
The Fallacy of Vaccination by John Pitcairn, Jr (1911), the other co-founder of the Anti-Vaccination League of America. His book claimed that ‘Vaccination is the putting of an impure thing in the blood - a virus or poison - often resulting in serious evil effects.”
The Value of Vaccination by George Winterburn, a homeopath, on writing about vaccines, he tried to prove “how little of scientific research it was adopted, and how much the whim of a few fashionable folk shaped its destiny.”
Toxemia Explained: The True Interpretion of the Cause of Disease by Dr. John H Tilden (1926), calls vaccines poison and explains that “Every so-called disease is built within the mind and body by enervating habits.”
So, these books and pamphlets were basically filled with the same types of anti-vaccine propaganda we see today, pushing the ideas that vaccines are dangerous, don’t work, and aren’t necessary.
Propaganda that has been shown to be wrong, time and again, typically after these folks gain too much influence, causing immunization rates to fall, and outbreaks to return.
All of which, of course, helps to reinforce the important ideas that vaccines do indeed work and that they are necessary.
It is the fatal flaw in the anti-vaccine movement.
Oh, and let’s not forget Dr. Immanuel Pfeiffer!
He wrote The Fallacy of Vaccination in 1890 and famously got sick with smallpox a few years later. He was unvaccinated and became critically ill, taking months to recover. How many people who took his advice weren’t so lucky?