Vaccines and the Length of Our Lives [24/10/24]

The commercial imperative to extract money from human bodies is playing havoc with medical education, and the body of knowledge through which the medical professions operate. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of vaccines, and their place in determining the length of our lives. 

The History of Living Longer

As a medical student, I was taught that the reason we in wealthy countries now live far longer than our forebears was improvements in living conditions, sanitation, and nutrition. We don’t walk through sewage and horse dung each day, eat fly-blown meat, drink water from below the nearest latrines, or sleep eight to a room on rancid bedding. We get beaten less often and have more leisure time. Antibiotics also helped but came after most of these gains had been achieved.

Most vaccination came even later, mopping up some residual mortality in ‘vaccine-preventable diseases.’ This was all stated in a lecture hall of 300 medical students, with the relevant data to back it up, and accepted as fact. Because for wealthier countries it was, and is, undeniably true.

I recently asked a small group of students the major reasons for improved life expectancy, and was told “vaccination.” In a subsequent session, I showed some of the graphs laid out below. The students were shocked and asked where I obtained this information. It was actually fairly difficult to find. I remember searching 20 years ago and readily finding it on the web.

In 2024, it took a lot of sifting through information explaining how vaccinations have apparently saved humanity, and how those repeating what I was taught as a student were a subversive element undermining the greater good, spreading misinformation or similar daft claims. We have certainly not progressed.

his does not mean vaccines are not a great idea. Providing some immunity before an infection can mitigate much of its harm by giving the body a head start in fighting back. It just means their usefulness must be understood in context, as must their harms. Somewhat strangely, discussion of vaccines has become increasingly controversial within the medical establishment. It is as if an Inquisition has been imposed over the profession, seeking out anyone still prioritizing calm rational thought over a dogma dictated from above. However, if truth and calm discussion can form an anchor for policy, vaccination will be more effective. 

The charts shown here, from Australia, the United States, and England, reflect those of other wealthy countries. The same findings are reflected in various published papers. Facts are facts, even if they may with time become harder to find, buried under Big Search algorithms to keep us safe. They remain facts even if medical students are taught to believe alternate realities. Such false teaching, coupled with large financial incentives, drive their desire to ensure children be ‘fully vaccinated’ according to their country’s childhood schedule. They increasingly believe a lie, undeniable misinformation, that this is why most children in our countries now grow up without experiencing the death of a friend or sibling.

Vaccines in Context

The medical world calls these “vaccine-preventable diseases” because companies sell vaccines that can prevent them. They are vaccine-preventable to a large extent, and vaccines do stop them from killing people. But in wealthy countries, truthfully, the numbers they save are very low.

Vaccination probably had a major role in the elimination of smallpox. We cannot, of course, be absolutely sure, as there was no control group. Smallpox caused outbreaks that decimated populations isolated for thousands of years from the virus, such as Native Americans, where a vaccine would have made a massive difference. 

However, smallpox also had the hallmarks of a disease that might actually disappear through good public health education and improved living standards; it lacked an animal reservoir, required close contact with body fluids to spread, and was usually easy to recognize. It is probable that the vaccine considerably accelerated its decline, especially in poorer countries.

Measles is similarly interesting. As the graphic shows, most decline was long before mass vaccination. Like whooping cough, mortality was probably partly reduced through the advent of oxygen therapy, but mainly people just appear to have become less susceptible to its complications. 

It could nonetheless be a devastating disease, which decimated isolated, immunologically-naïve populations in the Pacific Islands and elsewhere that had no history of contact, and still causes avoidable child death in low-income countries today. Measles deaths are often associated with micronutrient malnutrition, such as vitamin A deficiency, and fixing that would also address many other health risks. This used to be emphasized 30 years ago. 

However, the measles vaccine is also very effective at stopping measles deaths in susceptible populations. It has very little impact on mortality in wealthy countries where it mainly stops infection and annoying sickness, as few kids are so micronutrient-deficient to be susceptible to very severe diseases. It is so good at stopping actual infection that mandates for measles vaccines that some countries impose are more about authoritarianism than public health. 

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