If Vaccines Were Never Invented...

[MyLilPwny]

Do you think that most of us would not be around today and the world's population would be really small because most people would have died from "VPD's"? Why or why not? For the people who would and have historically survived through "VPD's" (by either not developing the VPD or surviving through it after developing it)---why did they never develop the VPD or how did they survive through it before the vaccine was ever invented? What is different about them? How do you relate all your answers here to your decision now of whether or not to vaccinate?

[caned & able]

NO.

I believe we would have less vaccine damage.

Better sanitation would have taken care of the rest.

As Thomas Alva Edison said, "If all of the medicine were tossed into the sea, would be better for the humans and worse for the fishes"

[mamakah]

no.
when you look at the diseases we vaccinate against, none of them seemed to be really wiping out a population. Measles? Mumps? Rubella? tetanus? Pertussis? Chicken pox? Even Polio. I don't believe any of these would have wiped out enough people to make the world less populated.
I agree with previous poster, I think we would have a lot less chronic illness today if vaccines were never invented.

[Belle]

Seeing as how the first vaccine was for small pox I think it would still be running rampant if it had never been invented. Yes, there wuld be a lot more deaths from it.

The diseases that we vaccinate against now are a different story.

[Otto]

Originally Posted by mamakah

no.
when you look at the diseases we vaccinate against, none of them seemed to be really wiping out a population. Measles? Mumps? Rubella? tetanus? Pertussis? Chicken pox? Even Polio. I don't believe any of these would have wiped out enough people to make the world less populated.

Indeed, it's just a few thousand here and there. One might actually guess at an increase in population, since people seem to have more kids in circumstances of higher childhood mortality. Whether that, in the 20th century, would have led to increased urban density and potential squalor or a dispersal of population is an interesting question.

[caned & able]

The smallpox vaccine began in 1799. Some of the worst outbreaks of smallpox were in fully vaccinated populations.

It was better sanitation that wiped out smallpox. It has been better sanitation and nutrition that has alleviated the intensity of the other VPDs.

http://www.naturodoc.com/library/pub...ox_vaccine.htm

[mummytoH]

I can't help but feel we'd still be dying at a young age - life expectancy in the future is thought to be nearing 100, whereas in *the olden days* you were lucky to live till your 30s. In those days & indeed nowadays if things were the same, we'd still have a high mortality and infant mortality rate & people would have larger familes to compensate, but I do think we'd all be dying off younger.

[caned & able]

That is an average for life expectancy. Childhood diseases killed because of lack of sanitation and lack of good nutrition.

If a person were healthy enough to make it to adulthood, most lived to 60-70. Even in Biblical times this was true...the old threescore and ten...Thomas Jefferson lived to be ninety years old. He was not the only one.

[ema-adama]

Originally Posted by Belle

Seeing as how the first vaccine was for small pox I think it would still be running rampant if it had never been invented. Yes, there wuld be a lot more deaths from it.

The diseases that we vaccinate against now are a different story.

The smallpox vaccine in the 1800's was horrific. And the mass vaccination programmes were a complete nightmare. Poor people had to bring their babies into clinics where previously vaccinated babies' wounds were opened and the contents of the wound smeared into a new wound on the babies arm. That was the vaccine.

And death from smallpox was assumed to be the disease if they couldn't see the vaccine scar. Only problem was the body was so badly marked you wouldn't see any scar. You can imagine just how difficult it would be to have any real statistics with such problematic information.

The history of the smallpox vaccine is really horrifying.

[13Sandals]

Originally Posted by mummytoH

I can't help but feel we'd still be dying at a young age - life expectancy in the future is thought to be nearing 100, whereas in *the olden days* you were lucky to live till your 30s. In those days & indeed nowadays if things were the same, we'd still have a high mortality and infant mortality rate & people would have larger familes to compensate, but I do think we'd all be dying off younger.

you are talking about the really olden days when there was little protection from the elements. 100 years ago in 1909, the average life span was 50-55 years old. and the number one killer 100 years ago; heart disease (as now). improvements in sanitation, clean water, nutrition, the invention of antibiotics are to thank, not vaccines.

look at third world countries that have vaccines but no clean water, no sanitation. Countries like Africa that the WHO keeps trying to vaccinate into oblivion but the life span remains in the mid 50s. those mild childhood vpd were never the real problem, just a symptom of poor conditions.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

I think the population would be the same as it is now and everyone would be more healthy since we would have natural immunity to things instead of the iffy immunity from vax.

[Noelle C.]

'm going to be flamed to hell and back for this and called heartless, but...

I think this world would be better off without vaccines. Not only are we really not keeping more people alive with vaccines, but there is such mass hysteria every time a "new" illness is named. One upon a time, getting sick here and there was a part of life. Now getting sick means someone has to be sued as causing it.

Interesting to think about: The black death several hundred years ago essentially leveled the playing field between the abusive nobility and the degraded, poor, starving workers who were essentially slaves and depended on the nobles not raising rents several fold is retaliation for not working hard enough. In this way, the disease actually did some good. There is more to "good" than just keeping people alive, harsh as that sounds. It wasn't good when a small minority was so abusive and cruel to the rest because they could be, when there were so many poor people that they scrambled and begged for whatever job gave a few crumbs.

And let's not even get into the injuries from vaccines.

It can't be denied that there are some diseases that are all but eradicated thanks to vaxes, but is the virtual end of small pox, at least on our radar, worth the mass damage over time caused by vaxes? I do think that more harm than good has ultimately come of vaxes. Sheesh, it's routine to vax against illnesses that are really rather mild such as measles. Not fun, but NOT this great killer we non-vaxers supposedly don't understand because we've "never seen it." Do a little research. Areas where it's deadly lack sanitation. Correlation doesn't equal causation.

[mummytoH]

I wouldn't say that measles is a mild disease, the complications can be horrendous & it remains one of the most unpleasant & dangerous childhood diseases.

[Deborah]

I've done some intensive digging into these questions and my sense is that vaccines have done very little to save people from death. I won't claim no benefit at all, but the credit given to vaccines is way out of line for what was actually accomplished.

In addition to direct damage from vaccines, I'm also concerned about interfering with normal childhood illnesses like measles, mumps and chickenpox. My suspicion is that a few good hot fevers are beneficial for a healthy child and help to develop the immune system in the right way. Plus shifting childhood illnesses into adulthood, as can happen with vaccines, can be a disaster.

The smallpox vaccine was not a big success. It wasn't until someone figured out that mass vaccination was ineffective and the public health folks switched to a combo of quarantine and ring vaccination that the disease was eliminated. Also, in the U.S., for unknown reasons, the most dangerous variety of smallpox was suddenly replaced by a much milder strain. So for the last 60 years of vaccine use, the very dangerous vaccine was probably killing more people than the quite mild variety of smallpox ever could have. The story of the smallpox vaccine in the 20th century is a triumph of faith over facts.

In order to get a good picture of the reasons people died of infectious disease, read a good biography of a progressive leader: the recent biography of Jacob Riis, for example.

Then read this paper: The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century by John B. McKinlay and Sonia M. McKinlay (Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly: Health and Society, Summer 1977).

For those who want a lighter intro to the topic, insidevaccines has an excellent series on the scary statistics being spread around by the vaccine enthusiasts. Here is part I.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

Originally Posted by mummytoH

I wouldn't say that measles is a mild disease, the complications can be horrendous & it remains one of the most unpleasant & dangerous childhood diseases.

Generally mild but like anything else it can go the other way. My brother who was born with a heart condition survived it just fine.

[caned & able]

Originally Posted by mummytoH

I wouldn't say that measles is a mild disease, the complications can be horrendous & it remains one of the most unpleasant & dangerous childhood diseases.

Measles is extremely mild. In the words of the ncib itself...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...027%2D0069.pdf

And of course they went right ahead and developed a vaccine anyway.

Thankyou Deborah for that post that links to Rene Dubos. He was a wonderful writer and person.

[zinemama]

I think it's possible that the general population would be healthier.

But only because VPDs would kill off the weak and sick. More children would die young.

And if smallpox was epidemic? It wouldn't be pretty.

[BeckyBird]

Instead of calling them "Vaccine Preventable Diseases", we should call them :
"Nutrition/Sanitation Preventable Diseases".

I believe we have a better chance of eliminating these diseases through TRUE nutrition/sanitation, rather than injecting poisons into people. Look at the countries with vaccines, but poor nutrition and sanitation. The vaccines have not eliminated disease in those countries.

[Noelle C.]

mummytoH, you believe exactly what the vax companies want people to believe. Any disease or illness can have severe complications in the "right" person. This doesn't mean that for the vast, vast majority, it's not still mild. They're starting on chicken pox now, and ost of us have seen with our own eyes and experience that it's itchy as the dickens, but the chance of death or serious consequence is extremely small. In another hundred or so years, they'll probably be talking about how chicken pox was this horrid disease that killed so many people and how it was once of the worst childhood diseases. Truth? It's mild. Itchy, not fun, but not a big deal.

There seems to be this idea that no one should ever ever ever ever EVER have a single moment of not feeling well, and that if an illness can cause any down-time and time of not feeling well, the solution is a shot. Oh, but ignore the potentially-deadly side effect every shot carries.



Becky, I agree with you. In fact, vaxes often result in people letting their guard down. If one received the flu vax, there must be no need to still wash one's hands after sneezing, right? There's so much to preventing illness and disease, and so many people are under this assumption that a bunch of shots are the cure.

When looking at 50 years ago, when some things did kill a bit more, it's important to look at other factors as well. Sanitation and nutrition weren't so well understood. A hundred years ago, surgeries were done with bare hands that had maybe been rnsed in a bowl of cold water, certainly conditions that weren't sterile. These things do play heavily into how well the population at large was able to handle disease.

[Cristiaz]

If vaccines were never invented AND chemicalized fake food was never invented, the world would be a happier healthier place.