Have You Ever Heard of Mamie Powell?

The Real Truth About Vaccines

This is another fact check of an old vaccine injury story that anti-vaccine influencers like to tell…

Neither Roman Bystrianyk nor Robert McNamara provide any proof that Mary ‘Mamie” Powell suffered from a reaction to a smallpox vaccine.

A story that ends with her dying because of the side effects of a smallpox vaccine.

Have You Ever Heard of Mamie Powell?

But, not surprisingly, that’s not the real story.

There is no mention on her death certificate of her ‘arm and side turning black’ on her death certificate.

If you look at the death certificate from her doctor, there is no mention of a smallpox vaccine reaction.

Instead, it simply says that she died from diphtheria.

And so, another vaccine injury story that ‘has survived decades’ is easily debunked in a few minutes with just a little research.

A vaccine injury story that was originally copied from Lora Little’s book, Crimes of the Cowpox Ring!

Since Mamie Powell died in 1895, it would have been at least seven years before Lora Little would have heard about her from someone, as that’s when she began collecting her stories.

A book full of “sensational muckraking” in which she blames anything and everything on smallpox vaccines, from blindness and diabetes to cancer and meningitis.

Not surprisingly, she even blames her own child’s death at age 7 years on a smallpox vaccine, even though he actually died from diphtheria seven months after he was vaccinated.

A death that is now easily prevented with a DTaP vaccine!

More on Historical Vaccine Injury Stories

• Roman Bystrianyk’s History of Vaccination

• Have You Ever Heard of Miss Fannie Lent?

• That Time a Man With Rabies Used a Madstone and Died

• Anti-Vaccine Pamphlets Are Coming Back!

• Lora Little: The Vaccine Liberator