We were taught in high school that vaccines have saved millions of lives in America and Europe. One of the greatest heroes of modern medicine is Louis Pasteur, the creator of the "germ theory," the ideological foundation for vaccines. But the real history of vaccines, and the real story of Louis Pasteur, is something quite different.

In his early career, Pasteur did believe that germs were the cause of disease. But 15 years before his death he recanted this belief. He came to believe that it was not germs but the degradation of an organism's internal environment that causes disease. He came to believe that germs took advantage of degraded or susceptible "terrain."

Over a century of scientific research has validated Pasteur's terrain theory. Maintaining a healthy terrain, not eliminating germs, has proved to be the key to disease prevention. But Pasteur's germ theory retains a powerful hold on our collective imagination.

The polio vaccine is the most touted example of the human endeavor to triumph against germs. "Every schoolchild knows" that the polio vaccine eradicated polio in the Western hemisphere. But in fact there is no evidence to support this claim.

From 1923 to 1953, before Jonas Salk's killed-virus polio vaccine was introduced, the polio death rate in the U.S. and England had already declined by 47 percent and 55 percent, respectively. The epidemic ended not just in the United States and England, but in European countries that questioned the vaccine's safety and refused to systematically vaccinate their citizens.

Not only was the vaccine ineffective, it produced results opposite to those intended. In the U.S, the number of polio cases following mass vaccinations was significantly greater than before mass vaccinations.

Doctors and scientists on the staff of the National Institute of Health during the 1950s were well aware that the Salk vaccine was ineffective. Some frankly stated that it was worthless as a preventive and even dangerous. Many refused to vaccinate their own children. Dr. Salk himself said: "When you inoculate children with a polio vaccine you don't sleep well for weeks." But the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and pharmaceutical companies with a large investment in the vaccine, convinced the U.S. Public Health Service to sign a proclamation claiming that the vaccine was "safe and 100 percent effective."

From the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, a new live-virus polio vaccine became, in Salk's words, "the principal if not sole cause" of all reported polio cases in the U.S. Between 1973 and 1983, 87 percent of all cases of polio (excluding imported cases) were caused by the vaccine. More recently, every case of polio in the U.S. since 1979 (excluding five imported cases) was caused by the vaccine.

In Dr. Benjamin Sandler's book "Diet Prevents Polio," an unequivocal correlation is found between diet and susceptibility to polio. Sandler found that persons in contact with the virus but eschewing foods high in sugars and starches have significantly greater protection from the polio virus. Dr. Sandler is one of many advocates of the terrain theory whose work has been systematically ignored. The details of his work were published in the American Journal of Pathology in 1941.

Sixty years later, in the waning days of the year 2000, members of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) unanimously voted for an end to all government-mandated childhood vaccines. Jane M. Orient, M.D., AAPS executive director, said: "Children face the possibility of death or serious long-term adverse effects from mandated vaccines."

One of the most serious adverse effects of vaccines is that they cause the very diseases they're meant to prevent. Measles, for instance, which declined by more than 95 percent before the vaccine was introduced, is 14 times more likely to be contracted by vaccinated than by unvaccinated persons.

A recent study in Pediatrics found that women vaccinated with the measles vaccine pass on far less immunity to their offspring. Before the vaccine was introduced, it was extremely rare for an infant to contract measles. Now more than 25 percent of all measles cases are babies under a year of age.

One significant concern with vaccines today is their casual relation with the growing epidemic of childhood autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD has increased from 900,000 in 1991 to 5 million today. The MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine is the primary suspect.

Dr. Viera Scheibner, author of "Vaccinations: 100 Years of Orthodox Research" sums up the position of researchers not funded by pharmaceutical companies: "There is no evidence whatsoever that vaccines of any kind ... are effective in preventing the infectious diseases they are supposed to prevent. Further, adverse effects are amply documented and are far more significant to public health than any adverse effects of infectious diseases. [Vaccinations have] caused more suffering and more deaths than any other human activity in the history of medical intervention."

Vaccines are only the tip of the iceberg. For a look at how the medical industry has consistently defrauded the American public on issues from cancer to childbirth, see John Robbins' 1996 book "Reclaiming Our Health."
 

The above article can also be found at http://theunion.com/opinions/OArvare118476.html

Reprinted with permission from Jock Doubleday