The Case Against Vaccination

Abstract

IN his Chadwick Public Lecture delivered at the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, on November 1, Dr. C. Killick Millard discussed the vaccination question. In the past, one either had to believe in vaccination or to disbelieve in it. Dr. Millard said that his faith in vaccination, as a means for protecting the individual against smallpox, is just as strong and unassailable as ever it was, but he recognises that, as a State institution for protecting the community, infant vaccination has been largely a failure. Until recently, it was taught that the neglect of infant vaccination entailed serious and imminent risk of a return of smallpox mortality. The experience of the City of Leicester, which abandoned infant vaccination fifty years ago, and yet where, during the last thirty years, there have been only two deaths from smallpox, makes such a belief difficult. Since the War, an ultra-mild form of smallpox has appeared in Great Britain and considerable spread has taken place. It has now been officially recognised as a distinct variety, which breeds true, and it has been accorded a separate name, Variola minor’, to distinguish it from the severe form of smallpox, ‘variola major’. As a matter of fact, although not officially recognised as such, variola minor existed in Great. Britain long before the War, and in certain countries, under the name of ‘alastrim’, it has existed from time immemorial. Variola minor presents quite a different administrative problem from variola major. Compared with the latter it is non-fatal, non-disfiguring, non-loathsome. In some ways it is no more serious than vaccination, so that no case can be made out for retaining compulsory vaccination merely on account of variola minor. Dr. Millard concluded by expressing the opinion that the repeal of the vaccination Acts is now over-due.