It is not the incidence of a disease that is most relevant, otherwise all the diseases included in Humphries graph pale compared to the common cold and even food poisoning, which an estimated 1 in 6 Americans (48 million people) get every year, resulting in 128.000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths ( CDC. Burden of Foodborne Illnesses). What is important are:

Eight studies involving 2574 participants were included in this review and we found that there was no significant reduction in mortality in children receiving vitamin A. However, vitamin A megadoses (200,000 international units (IUs) on each day for two days) lowered the number of deaths from measles in hospitalized children under the age of two years. According to Roush the estimated annual average prevaccine from 1936-1945 was 21,053 cases and 1,822 deaths with a rapid decline following the introduction of the vaccine ( Roush, 2007). Starting in the mid-1800s, there was a steady drop in deaths from all infectious diseases, decreasing to relatively minor levels by the early 1900s. The history of that transformation involves famine, poverty, filth, lost cures, eugenicist doctrine, individual freedoms versus state might, protests and arrests over vaccine refusal, and much more. But the authors shows that vaccines, antibiotics, and other medical interventions are not responsible for the increase in lifespan and the decline in mortality from infectious diseases Person-to-person spread of poliovirus via the fecal-oral route is the most important route of transmission, although the oral-oral route is possible. In the year 1927, for the first time, no case of variola major was reported in the USA, and apart from an outbreak in 1929 no further cases were notified until 1946. In that year a soldier returning from Japan introduced smallpox into Seattle, Washington, which resulted in an outbreak of 51 cases, with 16 deaths (Palmquist, 1947). In 1947 a man with undiagnosed haemorrhagic smallpox died in a Manhattan, New York, hospital. Twelve other persons were infected.

Medical literature suggests that the lower risk of contracting clinical measles after being breastfed can last up to 10 years. So, Humphries displays a callous disregard for the significant number of cases with long-term paralysis and, based on her use of the Brown paper, her credibility is highly questionable!

Not too long ago, lethal infections were feared in the Western world. Since that time, many countries have undergone a transformation from disease cesspools to much safer, healthier habitats. Starting in the mid-1800s, there was a steady drop in deaths from all infectious diseases, decreasing to relatively minor levels by the early 1900s. The history of that transformation involves famine, poverty, filth, lost cures, eugenicist doctrine, individual freedoms versus state might, protests and arrests over vaccine refusal, and much more. Today, we are told that medical interventions increased our lifespan and single-handedly prevented masses of deaths. But is this really true? Dissolving Illusions details facts and figures from long-overlooked medical journals, books, newspapers, and other sources. Using myth-shattering graphs, this book shows that vaccines, antibiotics, and other medical interventions are not responsible for the increase in lifespan and the decline in mortality from infectious diseases. If the medical profession could systematically misinterpret and ignore key historical information, the question must be asked, "What else is ignored and misinterpreted today?" Perhaps the best reason to know our history is so that the worst parts are never repeated. Patients Did Not Present for Diagnosis. Failure to present for diagnosis may have resulted from symptoms being very mild or not being seen as indicative of poliovirus infection and from patients, especially those who were poor, not having access to or being financially unable to travel for medical care. It wasn’t long ago when infections plagued the Western world. Smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, typhoid, diphtheria, whooping cough, and other diseases were once considered a tragic part of life. Starting in the mid-1800s, there was a steady drop in the deaths from all these infectious diseases, decreasing by the mid-1900s to very low levels. The elimination of these diseases is one of the most amazing, yet unsung, public health revolutions in history. That journey from disease cesspool to our modern world is a tale of plagues and famine, crushing poverty and filth, lost cures, individual freedoms versus state might, protests and arrests, and much more.Note that the Trevelyan article and especially the Smallman-Raynor book cover in detail the history and geography of polio epidemics in the United States] Swimming pools, chlorine, and polio Talk about comparing apples to oranges. Almost all measles deaths are in children, the overwhelming majority with heart disease in middle aged and older adults. And motor vehicle accidents? I’m surprised Humphries didn’t just list the high death rate in those over 65, or murder victims. Maybe in a new edition of her book? As will be clear from my discussion below, the causes, and approaches to prevention, of Humphries hodgepodge of incidence and deaths differ significantly, that is, they are NOT comparable. Approximately 24% of polio infections in children consist of a minor, nonspecific illness without clinical or laboratory evidence of central nervous system invasion. This clinical presentation is known as abortive poliomyelitis, and is characterized by complete recovery in less than a week. This is characterized by a low grade fever and sore throat. Yes, there were more people who went into the field because Roosevelt was dramatizing his incapacities—not intentionally—but he was dramatizing in the sense that, whenever he got up to get to the podium to speak, it was quite an effort on his part. He was really handicapped. And this gave people some awareness of what the disease was all about [my emphasis] ( Hughes, 1982, p. 22). urn:oclc:record:1348973016 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier dissolvingillusi0000hump Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2fgbkqdqxr Invoice 1652 Isbn 1480216895

Lastly, Dr Humphries launches into a long-winded discussion on vitamin A as a miracle cure for measles: Wild poliovirus was never the big killer or paralyzer the public was led to believe it was through the many frightening images shown repeatedly in the 1950s. Dr. Lennette, a well-respected virologist and pioneer of diagnostic virology with the California Department of Health, said in reflection on September 1987: Table 2: United States of America: numbers of reported cases and deaths from variola major and variola minor, 1900-1950 (from Table 8.8 in Fenner, 1988, p. 330). Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary). The primary stage classically presents with a single chancre (a firm, painless, non-itchy skin ulceration) but there may be multiple sores. In secondary syphilis a diffuse rash occurs, which frequently involves the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. There may also be sores in the mouth or vagina. In latent syphilis, which can last for years, there are few or no symptoms. In tertiary syphilis there are gummas (soft non-cancerous growths), neurological, or heart symptoms.Dissolving Illusions details facts and figures from long-overlooked medical journals, books, newspapers, and other sources. Using myth-shattering information, this book shows that vaccines, antibiotics, and other medical interventions are not responsible for the increase in lifespan and the decline in mortality from infectious diseases. If the medical profession could systematically misinterpret and ignore key historical information, the question must be asked, “What else is ignored and misinterpreted today?” Table 3: Frequency of symptoms (percentages of cases) in the pre-eruptive stage in variola major and variola minor (from Table 1.3 in Fenner, 1988, p. 6). As shown in the table below, those infected with variola minor often experienced quite a bit of suffering lasting several weeks:

Actually, economically the disease wasn’t very important. Secondly, not many cases were seen in this country. There weren’t too many people paralyzed from polio in any one neighborhood, so it never made much of an impact (See also Graph 12.1.) (Humphries, p. 224). The largest measles epidemic in North America in a decade—Quebec, Canada, 2011: Contribution of susceptibility, serendipity and super-spreading events on elimination. author: Gaston De Serres, Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec. c) A paper on delayed reflexes in newborn primates who received the thimerosal-containing Hep B vaccine, a questionable study funded by anti-vaccine activists which too has been debunked deaths from asthma were 56 times greater, accidents 935 times greater, motor vehicle accidents 323 times greater, other accidents 612 times greater, and heart disease 9,560 times greater (p. 308). We believe that the present report is the first to clearly demonstrate that severe neurological disease can be caused by the vaccine strain of measles virus. The risk of such a serious adverse event must be balanced by the rarity of such an event and the overwhelming evidence supporting the efficacy of the vaccine in reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with measles. It is significant that our patient was found to suffer from a profound deficiency of CD8 cells as well as dysgammaglobulinemia, which were not suspected clinically at the time of vaccination.

We used logistic regression with data for 10 207 individuals from the 1970 British Cohort study. Breast-feeding data were collected at five years of age, and information on clinical measles infection, as well as socio-economic measures was collected at the age of ten years. However, the 1967 study in question reviewed the inactivated measles vaccine (used on roughly 900,000 persons from 1963 until 1967) which was found to be ineffective and was replaced by the live measles vaccine from 1968 onward. The study has no bearing on the present-day immunization schedule. Numerous ramblings throughout this chapter on immune systems “wrongly programmed” by vaccines and committing “original antigenic sin” only relate to the inactivated (now defunct) measles vaccine. Though many articles and papers emphasize the public health contribution to the decline of malaria in the United States (e.g., Andrews, 1950; Andrews, 1963; Wikipedia. National Malaria Eradication Plan; CDC. Elimination of Malaria in the United States (1947-1951); Sledge, 2013), Gerard Grob, Professor of the History of Medicine at Rutgers University, paints a slightly different historical picture, emphasizing economic policies: