Vaccination a Delusion: Its Penal Enforcement a Crime: Proved by the Official Evidence in the Reports of the Royal CommissionWallace, Alfred Russel
Science
Vaccination a Delusion: Its Penal Enforcement a Crime: Proved by the Official Evidence in the Reports of the Royal Commission
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Vaccination
[9] As an example of the Commissioners’ statistical fallacies in treating
the subject of changed age-incidence, see Mr. Alexander Paul’s _A Royal
Commission’s Arithmetic_ (King & Son, 1897), and, especially, Mr. A.
Milnes’ _Statistics of Small-pox and Vaccination_ in the Journal of the
Royal Statistical Society, September, 1897.
[10] The highest small-pox mortality in London was in 1772, when 3,992
deaths were recorded in an estimated population of 727,000, or a
death-rate of not quite 5,500 per million. (See Second Report, p. 290.)
[11] The small-pox deaths under one year in England have varied during
the last fifty years from 8·6 to 27 per cent. of the whole. (See _Final
Report_, p. 154.)
[12] This almost exactly agrees with the ages of the boys who are
admitted between nine and eleven, and leave at fourteen. (See Low’s
_Handbook of London Charities_.)
[13] From 1850 to 1873 the private vaccinations have been estimated
according to their proportion of the whole since they have been
officially recorded.
[14] Although the Commission make no mention of Mr. Biggs’ tables and
diagrams showing the rise of infant-mortality with increased vaccination,
and its fall as vaccination diminished, they occupied a whole day
cross-examining him upon them, endeavouring by the minutest criticism
to diminish their importance. Especially it was urged that the increase
or decrease of mortality did not agree _in detail_ with the increase or
decrease of vaccination, forgetting that there are _numerous_ causes
contributing to all variations of death-rate, while vaccination is only
alleged to be a _contributory_ cause, clearly visible in general results,
but not to be detected in smaller variations (see Fourth Report, Q.
17,513-17,744, or pp. 370 to 381). Mr. Bigg’s cross-examination in all
occupies 110 pages of the Report.
[15] It was introduced into the Navy in 1801, and in that year the
medical officers of the fleet presented Jenner with a special gold medal!
[16] These figures (for the Army and Navy) are obtained by averaging the
annual death-rates given in the tables referred to, and are therefore
not strictly accurate on account of the irregularly varying strength of
the forces. But the error is small. In the case of the Navy, from 1864
to 1888 the mortality accurately calculated comes out _more_, by nearly
six per cent. than the mean above given, and in the case of the Army for
the same years about one per cent. more. For Ireland the calculation has
been accurately made by means of the yearly populations given at p. 37
of the _Final Report_, but for the Army and Navy materials for the whole
period included in the diagrams materials are not available in any of the
Reports.
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