LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. THE GOVERNMENT PROPOSALS RE VACCINATION.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 966, 5 November 1910, Page 3

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

THE GOVERNMENT PROPOSALS RE VACCINATION.

Sir—Tllo Minister for Public Health, the Honourable D. Buddo, has - outlined these proposals as the repeal of com- ' pulsory vaccination, with this special proviso: That in case of threatened epidemic °f smallpox, the area so exposed snail be zoned as a vaccination area,,, jvithm which it shall be -universal/ Grant me space to say : " " (1) If this repeal be t-horough J and absolute, all anti-vaccinists' (despite the 6 u special proviso) will naturv ? 1 t ' 10 P ro P osa l "'ith grateful delight, but they warn the Government that if it be partial,- not exempting/ for instance, all civil servants, if it be left possible 'for the Minister 'for Public Health to order, say, all post office officials to "bare their arms" and submit to. the infection of disease, then there will be no peace to such wicked autocracy, and what Sir Joseph Ward called "irresponsible busy-bodies" will again *' make themselves.heard and felt.. > (2) I submit that by .the proposed appendix, the zone-area compulsion, the Government plays shuttlecock 'with'-, democratic principle and stultifies itself. It proposes first to abolish compulsion because an overwhelming majority demand it,' and then to enforce it be- • cause a minority, scared by official ' alarmists, demand it/ 'It first' forbids'. and then authorises this minority to impose it upon the majority. It proposes to legislate at one and the same,, time for that which lessens, and for that 1 which increases the danger of smallpox epidemic. For what is it that .threat- - ens . such an epidemic? First, the ever-: standing peril of insanitap T conditions; and, secondly, the infectious influence . of vaccination itself, Dr. H. Valentino - Knaggs, M.R.C.S., etc., one of the. few,. medical men who have made independ-' : ent and prolonged investigation with % this subject, and has been repeatedly" fined for refusing to have forced upon' his .children a "legalised qU3ck rem r . . edy," which instils disease into..: the ; pure blood, maintains that it (vaccination) is sure to spread smallpox be-' cause the poison is constantly Kept. in . the air from desquamating arms, .and * that it is possibly for this reason that nearly all modern epidemics, as at Glasgow and Gloucester, are found to start with the vaccinated. So Dr. K. Millard, the health officer of Leicester, re-., ports that the vaccinated (not the unvaccinated) spread the disease in that. city. The late Dr. Bakewell gives 'a.,' striking illustration of this in-his-far- ; too-little-known book, "The Pathology and Treatment of Smallpox." He re*. lates' the history of the terrible , epidemic at Trinidad (West Indies) when .: he was the medical officer there, and that one distant part of the island was ■. free from smallpox until an energetic . vaccination officer was sent there and in a few weeks there were 100 cases, and - • the officer had to leave.

So deeply and widely does this con-; viction that vaccination diffuses. small- t pox prevail that some anti-vaccinists, both-in England and America, urge-its.' legal prohibition, as inoculation was in 1840. Dr. Bakewell, I should add, states:, "Certainly smallpox spread with amazing rapidity in Port of Spain after the house-to-house vaccinations had been a short time'in operation!" Who can be blind to such' an object -lesson as-this? Had ism had its way, the same_ criminal re« ! . suits would have followed in New Zealand! Only favourable " sanitary con.-: ditions can save from smallpox. These have saved - New Zealand in the past; and if. faithfully carried out .and relied upon ,(as in. the city. of- Leicester- and -elsewhere) will in the-j future. * And, moreover, does the Minister for Public Health or do. the medical officers whose mouthpiece he is, imagine that "conscientious objectors are such moral, illvertebrates that they, when a case of smallpox. appears and they hear the official foR-horn, will make. . wreck of their faith and of their good; conscience?" - Never! The "compulsory ■ zone law," will be resisted and die th©' lingering death of the contagious diseases, and the now condemned Yaseination Act of 1900!— I am, .etc., ■■■EDWIN COX. : Cambridge, October. 30, 1910. - - ■