From Spanish flu to bird flu, someone stands to make a fortune

IT is now evident that bird flu has become synonymous with vaccination. What does that tell us about other scares in the past linked to vaccines?

At the end of World War 1, newspapers orchestrated a warning that soldiers were returning from battlefields infected with dangerous diseases and everyone should avail of the life-saving jabs immediately. And that is what hysterical populations did, with the result that from 50-100 million died from the virulent viruses in the vaccines.

What newspapers omitted to tell their readers was that sufficient quantities had already been stockpiled to vaccinate the whole world, the scare having all too obviously been anticipated. Just like today’s bird flu.

That is what caused the pandemic of 1918-20, though history books tell us it was Spanish ‘flu.

One morning in the 1960s, British newspapers carried big headlines warning that a Pakistani immigrant was found to be infected with smallpox. Everybody was advised to get their jabs at once. Huge crowds lined up outside doctors’ surgeries and clinics. Shortly after the scare was over, TV newsreaders reported that around 100 people had died from the smallpox jab. This was the official figure, but the real number must have been a great deal more. I wrote to three Fleet Street editors and pointed out that smallpox was not contagious, and that the huge amount of vaccines stocked up suggested the scare had been anticipated. None of my letters was published.

About 25 years ago we had a rabies scare. French rabid foxes were said to be lining up to board ships bound for Britain and Ireland. When vaccine sales had reached saturation point, it was rumoured that the ‘rabid’ foxes had informed the vaccine firms they had changed their minds about emigrating. In 1994, the British Health Department launched a measles vaccine campaign against an epidemic the following year. Within a month, almost seven million children got measles booster jabs. Then hundreds of children suffered crippling disorders, including epilepsy, brain damage and many other afflictions.

Dr R Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, had cause to protest... “there never was going to be a measles epidemic in 1995. The evidence showed clearly that the incidence of measles had been dropping over the decades.”

When he asked the Department of Health to produce the figures on which the prediction for the epidemic was based, they were unable to do so. So much for vaccine scaremongering.

Patrick J Carroll

Lady Lane House

Waterford