The smallpox vaccine is often credited with eradicating smallpox. This is one of vaccination’s biggest claims to fame. But did it really?

Was the vaccine, first invented in 1796, responsible for the eradication of smallpox some 183 years later in 1979? 

This is one of those movie moments: 183 years of mandatory vaccination to eradicate a virus? And we are celebrating that?? Or maybe there was more to the story.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who believes the overgeneralized statements “Vaccines Save Lives” or “Vaccines Eradicated Deadly Diseases”, and then they puff up their feathers and ask a question like: “How do you explain Smallpox?”

Actual question from someone:

“Smallpox is an extremely contagious virus that ripped through populations killing millions for centuries . It wasn’t until a vaccination was invented that it was finally eradicated. How can you not see that?”

No one is debating whether or not smallpox was a potentially lethal virus, or that humans for centuries were extremely malnourished and suffered miserably with both nutritional deficiency diseases–such as scurvy, rickets, pellagra–and infectious diseases alike; many diseases we don’t have anymore. And it wasn’t because of vaccines.

We are debating whether the smallpox vaccine is responsible for smallpox’s apparent disappearance.

The assumption that one caused the other merely because there’s a temporal relationship is the cardinal sin of ‘correlation does not imply causation.’ We need more. We need evidence. And we can’t have any evidence to the contrary.

Was Smallpox Eradicated By a Vaccine?

In order for smallpox to have been completely eradicated by vaccination, we are going to need to unscientifically ignore some information that would invalidate or raise doubts within that argument…for example, we must…

Ignore the major improvements to public health that occurred around the turn of last century (I’m talking around 1900), such as installation of sewage disposal systems, water treatment, food safety, organized solid waste disposal, hygiene, clean drinking water, improved nutrition, discovery of antibiotics, improvements in housing which reduced overcrowding, etc. Please ignore this study that came to that conclusion.

Ignore that smallpox was caused by two viruses, variola major, the strain that had a mortality rate of 5%-20% was being replaced by the much less deadly strain variola minor, whose case fatality rate was below 1%, in many parts of the world, including United States in the late 1890s and introduced into the England from Boston in 1902. Here’s the study you’re going to want to ignore.

Ignore that this less deadly strain became the predominant strain in the United States after late 1897.

Ignore this table below that clearly shows vaccines do not affect case fatality rates. Despite widespread vaccination since the early 1800s, the fatality rates in both 1895 and 1896 are still 20%.

We only see a reduction in smallpox mortality once the less deadly strain (variola minor) starts circulating and offering cross-protection to variola major.

This means: Vaccines DO NOT affect case fatality rates

Ignore that this less deadly strain (variola minor, also called alastrim) conferred immunity (cross-protection) to the more deadly strain, variola major.

Ignore that infection fatality rates didn’t drop from vaccination, but only when variola minor became the dominant strain in the late 1800’s.

(And no, vaccination didn’t create variola minor. There were many strains of variola which diverged thousands of years ago.)

Ignore that variola minor was even circulating at the time of Jenner, before vaccination was discovered.

According to Jenner’s own writing The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, very mild waves of smallpox circulated in the 1700’s:

“There are certainly more forms than one, without considering the common variation between the confluent and distinct, in which the smallpox appears in what is called the natural way. About seven years ago a species of smallpox spread through many of the towns and villages of this part of Gloucestershire: it was of so mild a nature that a fatal instance was scarcely ever Heard of, and consequently so little dreaded by the lower orders of the community that they scrupled not to hold the same intercourse with each other as if no infectious disease had been present among them. I never saw nor heard of an instance of its being confluent.

The most accurate manner, perhaps, in which I can convey an idea of it is by saying that had fifty individuals been taken promiscuously and infected by exposure to this contagion, they would have had as mild and light a disease as if they had been inoculated with variolous matter in the usual way. The harmless manner in which it shewed itself could not arise from any peculiarity either in the season or the weather, for I watched its progress upwards of a year without perceiving any variation in its general appearance. I consider it then as a variety of the smallpox.” 

Ignore that compulsory smallpox vaccination began way back in 1809 in Massachusetts. Compulsory vaccination of infants three months of age began in 1853 in England. But it still wasn’t until the 1900s when improvements in living conditions, sanitation, and nutrition did we see a reduce mortality rate from the disease.

Ignore that variolation (a primitive form of vaccination using smallpox scabs, tissue and pus inserted into a healthy person, either in their nose, or in an open wound, to cause mild infection) began before the 1700s, and killed 1 in 33 who underwent the procedure, including royalty. Variolation was known to cause outbreaks, and be a horrific experience for those who underwent the process.

Ignore the Leicester Method, which was a method of dealing with smallpox formulated by anti-vaccination proponents in Leicester, England in 1877 who opposed vaccination, and developed a system of quarantining the sick, increasing sanitation, and created special hospitals for smallpox patients.

Ignore this graph that shows that Leicester, England which didn’t enforce mandatory vaccination had fewer cases than nearby cities who followed strict vaccination laws, because of their special methods in place.

Also please ignore that the smallpox vaccines spread all sorts of infections, from smallpox (yep the disease it was supposed to prevent) to measles to syphilis to tetanus, and sores often became infected with erysipelas, caused sepsis–it has a very sordid history. For many years, smallpox vaccination was arm-to-arm transmission so you were sharing actual human lymph. This was also before single use syringes, so there’s that.

And ignore this graph below which is based on data from US Vitality Statistics 1910 that shows an unusual spike in infant mortality due to ill-defined causes in the third month of life and gradually declining thereafter, precisely the age when smallpox vaccines would have been administered.

I plotted the deaths below:

Why such a high infant mortality rate at specifically the 3 month age mark?

It is well known that mandatory smallpox vaccination for infants was 3 months of age. There were fines if this was not done.

We don’t have many explanations for this unusual spike in unexplained infant mortality at this age. The pattern stayed true for States with mandatory infant vaccination laws in place at this time, or States which had high compliance, such as New York and Pennsylvania.

The only other thing I can think of is infants may have been given to founding hospitals (orphanages) at this age, once weaned. Infants may have been forfeited in greater numbers at the 3 month mark, or they may be initiating smallpox vaccination at the foundling hospitals at the 3 month mark–either option is heart wrenching.

Here is the actual Vital Statistics: page 154 for the data. If this is early SIDS, once again SIDS mirrors the vaccine schedule, whatever the vaccine schedule may be.

Ignore all the deaths and injuries caused as a direct result of smallpox vaccination documented in The Horrors of Vaccination, written by Charles Michael Higgins, published 1920.

Also, ignore that the smallpox vaccine was made using vaccinia virus (when syringes became the norm), an orthopoxvirus whose ancestry has been lost to time, which continues to cause outbreaks in cattle and farm worker handlers in Brazil, India, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

Finally, ignore that people got healthier, and living conditions improved at the same time that a much milder virus became the dominant strain. Most likely smallpox just eradicated itself. What do we call that? Letting a virus run its course?

And then….smallpox was finally gone. That part is true.

There are way too many confounding factors to simply say that the smallpox vaccine eradicated smallpox. We’d have to ignore a lot. And that isn’t very scientific.

SOURCES

1. Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century

2. Variation in Type of Infectious Disease as Shown by the History of Smallpox in the United States 1895-1912

3. Leicester and smallpox: the Leicester method.

4. The Horrors of Vaccination.