Vaccination fears are like cockroaches: no matter how often they are stepped on, they survive. Smallpox was the first disease successfully prevented by vaccination. The term ‘vaccination’ came from the use of cowpox material to inoculate humans against smallpox. The Latin term for cow is ‘vacca,’ Latin being the preferred language for medical discourse in the late Eighteenth Century when Dr. Edward Jenner noticed that milk maids exposed to cows infected with cowpox did not develop smallpox. Twenty two years before Dr. Jenner advocated inoculating people with the cowpox material, an English farmer, Benjamin Jesty, observed the protective effect of introducing the cowpox pus into the skin of family and friends [using a knitting needle] and recommended it to his neighbors.
Vaccination effectively eradicated smallpox and the deaths and deformity associated with this highly contagious disease. Efforts to create vaccines to protect the general population from other lethal or disabling diseases during the Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries led to agents that protected against or prevented measles, mumps, rubella [German measles], influenza, polio [infantile paralysis], Covid-19 and a variety of other diseases. Some religious groups objected to the mandatory adoption of these vaccines because they frustrated the will of their gods, but the general public viewed them as a godsend, rather than as a test of faith. And then there came an article in the British medical journal ‘The Lancet’ that ‘flipped the script.’
Dr. Andrew Wakefield claimed in 1998 that the MMR vaccine given to children to protect them against measles, mumps and rubella caused a substantial increase in the rate of ‘autism,’ a developmental disorder causing lifelong disability. Although the conclusion was based on the study of only 12 children, all of whom were highly selected and several of whom were involved in on-going lawsuits targeting vaccine manufacturers, the public reaction to this claim of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism bordered on hysteria. Parents refused to get their children vaccinated. Wakefield insisted that the effect was not limited to the MMR vaccine but was rather an effect of vaccines in general.
In 2000, there were no cases of measles in the United States, but after the Wakefield article, vaccination rates plummeted. Since 2000, more than 2,200 cases of measles have been reported in the United States. By 2017, the incidence of measles cases in Europe had quadrupled, largely as a consequence of people rejecting vaccination. In 2017 alone, there were 35 measles-related deaths in Europe.
Wakefield’s methods were widely reviewed and dismissed as junk science. Subsequent studies established that there was no link between vaccinations and autism. The Lancet belatedly retracted the Wakefield article in 2010. Wakefield refused to admit that his techniques were flawed and his conclusions unjustified. His study had been funded by lawyers working on the vaccine lawsuits, and he was accused of conflict of interest. He was stripped of his license to practice medicine. All of this had no effect. The damage had been done. It was medical science versus rampant fear. Fear won.
Next month, the Trump administration will try to install as the heads of the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) men who have consistently undermined the public confidence in both of these institutions and in the safety and efficacy of vaccination programs. The nominee for HHS, RFK Jr., has only recently indicated that he is not opposed to the polio vaccine. His opposition to vaccines in general remains steadfast and inexplicable. The proposed head of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, is a longtime critic of the lockdown policy during the Covid epidemic and proposed achieving ‘herd immunity’ by leaving the general population exposed to the virus. This approach had been adopted at the onset of the Covid-19 epidemic in Sweden and resulted in an unequivocal excess mortality as compared to other Scandinavian countries which adopted stringent lockdowns.
Other nominees for sensitive medical positions include Marty Makary as the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Dave Weldon as the head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), both of whom are unapologetic vaccine skeptics. All of the nominees named to head these health-related agencies have two things in common: 1) a slavish adherence to the party line dictated by our soon-to-be Beloved Leader, and 2) a worrisome lack of experience or expertise in areas managed by the agencies they are expected to run. Rather than “draining the swamp,” as promised during the nine years of campaigning through which we have suffered, it is evident that the current plan is to stock the swamp with sycophants.
Dr. Lechtenberg is an Easton resident who graduated from Tufts University and Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts and subsequently trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. He worked as a neurologist at several New York Hospitals, including Kings County and The Long Island College Hospital, while maintaining a private practice, teaching at SUNY Downstate Medical School, and publishing 15 books on a variety of medical topics. He worked in
