Nexus - 0204 - New Times Magazine-pages

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MEDICAL INTERVENTION MYTH? HIT THE MYTH OF MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENT . . The first major challenge to the integrity of conventional medi- by Dr. Ronald S. Laura, Professor in Education, cine came in 1959 when Rene Dubos urged in his book Mirage of University of Newcastle & P.E.R.C. Fellow in Health | Health that the technological innovations of modern medicine, Education, Harvard University including the development of antibiotics, had far less to do with the improved health of the community than it might at first appear.' Amassing an impressive array of statistics in support of his claim, Dubos argued that the most significant changes in the health of the WAR N l NG . population derived from social, economic, and nutritional advances. Environmental factors not clinical care factors, were There are an alarming amount of people applauded as the primary determinants of the improved state of general public health. Better housing, for example, meant less who have died or who have suffered overcrowding, thereby reducing the facility with which infectious serious adverse reactions to vaccinations. disease was previously spread. Similarly, the provision of safe . . . 9 drinking water in conjunction with the treatment of sewerage dealt Does immunisation really work anyway if a forceful blow to infectious disease. Other environmental factors . such as improved sanitary conditions and the effective disposal of With strong moves now afoot to make garbage also had a beneficial impact upon the virulence and inci- immunisation compulsory, before dence of infectious disease. Heralded by some writers as the sin- i gle most important factor in the decline of infectious disease, bet- ch ildren can attend school, these ter nutrition has been acclaimed to assist host-resistance, as well as questions must be answered soon. host recovery.” Indeed, by the time the etiology of infectious disease was suffi- ciently understood to develop and to administer vaccines, diseases The medical profession refuses to accept any responsibility for adverse reactions such as cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery had already been robbed of their virulence. In his presidential address in 1971 to the to vaccinations, to do so would raise British Association for the Advancement of Science, R.R. Porter questions of litigation and liability. confirmed that between 1860 and 1965 almost 90% of the total decline in mortality among children up to fifteen suffering from This has meant that the on ly "tabs" bei We diptheria, scarlet fever, measles and whooping cough had occurred kept on just how many people die, or prior to the introduction of antibiotics and immunisation on a sys- tematic basis.’ The virulence of tuberculosis had also declined become ‘retarded’ suspiciously close to markedly prior to the introduction of antibiotics. In 1812 the death a vaccination - is being kept by a small rate from tuberculosis in New York was estimated to be higher h of . . NSW. than 700 per 10,000. When Koch first isolated and succeeded in bunch of dedicated parents In . culturing the bacillus in 1882, the death rate had dropped to 370 If would lik register h per 10,000. By the time the first sanatorium was opened in 1910 you wou d € to register suc the rate had further declined to 180 per 10,000, until shortly after information, contact: World War II it had slipped from second to eleventh place with a PARENTS CONCERNED ABOUT rate of 48 per 10,000. Still before antibiotics were used routinely, tuberculosis had flourished and dwindled outside the control of VACCINATIONS medical science.* PO BOX 900, KATOOMBA. NSW. 2780 This is not to say that drug treatment has been entirely inciden- tal in the decline of certain infectious disease. Syphilis and malar- NEXUS - 17 PART ONE OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES EXAMINING THE SAFETY OF IMMUNISATION, AND VACCINATIONS. THE MYTH OF MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENT JULY/AUGUST 1991 + YEAR BOOK