History Never Repeats Itself, But It Does Often Rhyme

Alfred Russel Wallace and Vaccines

If I asked you who came up with the theory of evolution, most of you would say Charles Darwin. However, another scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, is also credited with conceiving the theory of natural selection.

Darwin began formulating his theory in the late 1830s after his voyage on the HMS Beagle but didn’t publish his ideas immediately. In 1858, Wallace sent Darwin his own independently developed theory of natural selection which prompted Darwin to get a move on with his own ideas. Both Darwin’s and Wallace’s ideas were presented to the Linnean Society of London in July 1858. The following year Darwin published his book “On the Origin of Species”.

But after his death, Wallace quickly disappeared into relative obscurity until he was brought back into the public consciousness at the start of this millennium. This was due to a number of reasons. Firstly, Darwin came from a prominent family and had the support of influential figures in the scientific community, whereas Wallace was from a more humble background.

His upbringing led him into social activism which criticised many of the establishment’s ideas and policies, especially those that had a negative impact on working-class people.

Wallace opposed eugenics, an idea supported by other prominent 19th-century evolutionary thinkers, on the grounds that contemporary society was too corrupt and unjust to allow any reasonable determination of who was fit or unfit. In his 1890 article "Human Selection" he wrote, "Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent ..." He said, "The world does not want the eugenicist to set it straight," "Give the people good conditions, improve their environment, and all will tend towards the highest type. Eugenics is simply the meddlesome interference of an arrogant, scientific priestcraft."

Wikipedia

He also wrote about the dangers and wastefulness of militarism and wanted people to realise “that all modern wars are dynastic; that they are caused by the ambition, the interests, the jealousies, and the insatiable greed of power of their rulers, or of the great mercantile and financial classes which have power and influence over their rulers; and that the results of war are never good for the people, who yet bear all its burthens (burdens)".

But secondly, Wallace enjoyed exploring non-mainstream ideas such as spiritualism. He believed that evolution showed the universe might have a purpose and human consciousness couldn’t be entirely the product of material causes. His thoughts caused the press to be quite harsh on him, especially The Lancet.

Even more controversially, Wallace became an ‘anti-vaxxer’. Mandatory smallpox vaccinations were in place, enforced by penal laws and similar to many people during the Covid pandemic, Wallace joined the debate to argue for personal liberty in the early 1880s. He disagreed with vaccine mandates but interestingly, as he studied the information and statistics presented to him, he quickly started to question the efficacy of vaccination.

In 1889, Wallace published a short book “Forty-five years of Registration Statistics, proving Vaccination to be both useless and dangerous”. Much of the book reads as if it was published in 2021. It begins:

HAVING been led to enquire for myself as to the effects of Vaccination in preventing or diminishing Small-pox, I have arrived at results as unexpected as they appear to me to be conclusive. The question is one which affects our personal liberty as well as the health and even the lives of thousands; it therefore becomes a duty to endeavour to make the truth known to all, and especially to those who, on the faith of false or misleading statements, have enforced the practice of vaccination by penal laws.

He attempts to establish the following four statements of fact within the book:

1. That during the forty-five years of the Registration of deaths and their causes, Small-pox mortality has very slightly diminished, while an exceedingly severe Small-pox epidemic occurred within the last twelve years of the period.

2. That there is no evidence to show that the slight decrease of Small-pox mortality is due to vaccination.

3. That the severity of Small-pox as a disease has not been mitigated by vaccination.

4. That several inoculable diseases have increased to an alarming extent coincidently with enforced vaccination.

He provides data, such as the diagrams below to show that vaccination did not diminish small-pox. The diagrams show deaths per million living during periods of ‘encouraged vaccination’, ‘compulsory vaccination’ and ‘penal vaccination’.

He claimed that other diseases had increased since vaccinations had started.

As has been now shown, vaccination is quite powerless either to prevent or to mitigate Small-pox. But this is not all, for there are good grounds for believing that it is itself the cause of much disease and serious mortality.

The increased deaths from these five causes [ Syphilis, Cancer, Tabes Mesenterica, Pyaemia & Skin Disease], from 1855 to 1880, exceed the total deaths from Small-pox during the same period! So that even if the latter disease had been totally abolished by vaccination, the general mortality would have been increased, and there is much reason to believe that the increase may have been caused by vaccination itself.

The unvaccinated were unfairly blamed in 1880s as they were in 2021/22.

IN his speech in the House of Commons, June 19th, 1883, Sir Lyon Playfair made the following statement: — "An analysis of 10,000 cases in the Metropolitan Hospitals shows that 45 per cent, of the Unvaccinated patients die, and only 15 per cent, of Vaccinated patients;" and he further showed that statistics of a similar character had been published in other countries. It will no doubt be objected by my readers that these statistics, if correct, are a complete proof of the value of vaccination; and I shall be expected to show that they are incorrect or give up the whole case. This I am prepared to do; and I now undertake to prove — firstly, that the figures here given are unreliable; and, secondly, that such statistics necessarily give false results unless they are classified according to the age-periods of the patients.

The definition of ‘unvaccinated’ was also manipulated to provide the results they required.

But, whether the deceased person had been vaccinated or not, is a fact by no means easily ascertained, because confluent Small-pox (which alone is ordinarily fatal) obliterates the vaccination marks in the worst cases, and the death is then usually recorded among the unvaccinated or the doubtful. For this reason alone the official record — vaccinated or unvaccinated— is altogether untrustworthy, and cannot be made the subject of accurate statistical enquiry.

(1.) — Mr. A. Feltrup, of Ipswich, gives a case of a boy aged 9, who died of Small-pox, and was recorded in the certificate as "unvaccinated." By a search in the register of successful vaccinations it was found that the boy, Thomas Taylor, had been successfully vaccinated on the 20th May, 1868, by W. Adams. {Suffolk Chronicle, May 5, 1877.)

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(5.) — In 1872, Mr. John Pickering, of Leeds, carefully investigated a number of cases entered as "not vaccinated " by the medical officers of the Leeds Small-pox Hospital, tracing out the parents, examining the patients if alive, or obtaining the certificate of vaccination if they were dead. The result was, that 6 patients, entered as "not vaccinated," and still living, were found to have good vaccination marks; while 9 others who had died, and whose deaths had been registered as "not vaccinated," were proved to have been successfully vaccinated. In addition to these, 8 cases were proved to have been vaccinated, some of them three or four times, but unsuccessfully, and 4 others were certified "unfit to be vaccinated," yet all were alike entered as "unvaccinated."

Simpson’s paradox was used to disguise the ineffectiveness of the vaccines

Thus the Small-pox death-rate is actually less for the unvaccinated than for the vaccinated in infants, and equal for all the higher ages; yet the average of the whole is higher for the unvaccinated, simply on account of the greater proportion of the unvaccinated at those ages at which the mortality is universally greatest.

It is thus made clear that any comparison of the Small-pox mortality of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, except at strictly corresponding ages, leads to entirely false conclusions.

Wallace concludes:

If these facts are true, or anything near the truth, the enforcement of vaccination by fine and imprisonment of unwilling parents, is a cruel and criminal despotism, which it behoves all true friends of humanity to denounce and oppose at every opportunity.

Such legislation, involving as it does, our health, our liberty, and our very lives, is too serious a matter to be allowed to depend on the misstatements of interested officials or the dogmas of a professional clique. Some of the misstatements and some of the ignorance on which you have relied, have been here exposed. The statistical evidence on which alone a true judgment can be founded, is as open to you as to any doctor in the land. We, therefore, demand that you, our representatives, shall fulfil your solemn duty to us in this matter, by devoting to it some personal investigation and painstaking research ; and if you find that the main facts as here stated are substantially correct, we call upon you to undo without delay the evil you have done.

As Mark Twain once said “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”