Gandhi on Smallpox and Other Contagious Diseases
…This has given rise to the superstition that it is a contagious disease, and hence to the attempt to mislead the people into the belief that vaccination is an effective means of preventing it. The process of vaccination consists in injecting into the skin the liquid that is obtained by applying the discharge from the body of a small-pox patient to the udder of a cow. The original theory was that a single vaccination would suffice to keep a man [Pg 106] immune from this disease for life; but, when it was found that even vaccinated persons were attacked by the disease, a new theory came into being that the vaccination should be renewed after a certain period, and to-day it has become the rule for all persons—whether already vaccinated or not—to get themselves vaccinated whenever small-pox rages as an epidemic in any locality, so that it is no uncommon thing to come across people who have been vaccinated five or six times, or even more. Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time. Its supporters are not content with its adoption by those who have no objection to it, but seek to impose it with the aid of penal laws and rigorous punishments on all people alike.
VLA Comment: The answer to the sound bite that “vaccines save lives”. “From the fact that some people who are not vaccinated do get the [Pg 107] disease, we cannot, of course, conclude that they would have been immune if only they had got themselves vaccinated.” –Gandhi
VLA Comment:How do we know that a person who got vaccinated…that his/her life has been “saved”? For that statement to be true one would have to know that the person, when they were unvaccinated, would have gotten the disease . Is there proof of that…impossible!
