Suzanne Humphries, MD and Roman Bystrianyk (2013). “Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines. and the Forgotten History.” CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

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. 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). Although some cases of variola major were reported every year from 1900 until 1927, there were only 2 major outbreaks during this period. The first, in 1902-1903, affected particularly Boston, New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Ohio; variola minor was then prevalent in the Mid-West. The last large epidemic of variola major in the USA occurred in 1924-1925, when some 7400 cases were reported, over one-third of them in 4 cities: Cleveland and Toledo (Ohio), Detroit (Michigan) and Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania). The substrain of variola minor that was later called “alastrim” (see Chapter 2) remained the dominant form of smallpox in the USA thereafter.Humphries graph above, Figure 1, and Table 1 from the Bureau of the Census also above give the incidence of poliomyelitis from 1912-1969/70. However, to repeat what I wrote above: Humphries downplays not only deaths; but acute suffering and long-term disabilities. In the case of measles, she discounts an average of 450 deaths per year in the U.S. (even if these were eliminated, the following remains), the 7-10 days suffering, possible diarrhea, otitis media, and seizures, given > 50% of cases were in 5-9 year-olds, their missing up to two weeks of school, the estimated 48,000 hospitalizations, and permanent disabilities. In addition, given that nowadays approximately 60% of families are dual income households, one of the parents would more than likely have to stay home to take care of the child for up to two weeks ( Pew Research Center, 2015). As only about 14% have access to paid family leave, for many, a child ill with measles can also represent a substantial financial burden ( DeSilver, 2017). Humphries seems unaware of how measles weakens our immune systems, increasing the mortality risk for 2-3 years afterwards ( Mina, 2015). Finally, given that the estimated number of cases per year in the U.S. was 3-4 million annually, the actual number of deaths and persons with measles-associated disabilities may have been substantially higher due to under-reporting or misdiagnosis ( CDC. Pink Book. Measles). For instance, if a child developed secondary bacteria pneumonia, the death record may only list pneumonia. Smallpox Scientists were surprised when they learned that individuals with a deficit in antibody production recovered from measles just as well as normal antibody producers. […] Therefore the antibody part of immunity is not at all necessary for the natural recovery from measles (p 364). Dr Suzanne Humphries is a board certified nephrologist and a very smart woman. When her kidney patients were thrown into renal failure after routine flu vaccinations administered upon entry to the hospital, her pleas to spare her patients were rebuffed. She had requested that her patients not be vaccinated until hospital discharge. This was the turning point, after which, her colleagues, doctors on staff at the hospital, and administrators regarded her with suspicion, as anti-vaccination. Apparently, that’s all it takes to be regarded as a pariah, scorned and outcast-ed. Perhaps this book is a form of revenge, an acute lesson for the mediocre pro-vaccine colleagues who opposed her.

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: A disease may be feared on account of its causing death, but a disease which permits the patient to live in an enfeebled conditions is even more dreaded and its occurrence in a community makes a much deeper impression ( Ruhräh, 1917, p. 97). The March of Dimes Measles can be controlled by large-scale vaccination, and where this is employed successfully the frequency of non-measles associated disease should be considerably reduced. This is based on the mistaken belief (possibly drawing conclusions from the 1963 inactivated measles vaccine) that the measles virus elicits an antibody-only immune response. The reality, however, is that the live measles vaccine elicits both an antibody mediated and cell-mediated immune response. This is discussed in more detail below with citations.These data suggest that cellular responses to measles virus may be better sustained than antibody titers after vaccination and revaccination in some subjects. ( Source ) 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. Though mortality was exponentially lower with variola minor, the suffering from variola minor could be substantial as shown in Table 3 below:

Wrong About Polio: A Review of Suzanne Humphries, MD and Roman Bystrianyk’s “Dissolving Illusions” Part 1 (the long version) c) The incidence was already on a decline. Like smallpox, she claims, the disease was “slowly burning out”.Vaccination played an important role in both the progressive fall in the incidence of smallpox and in the replacement of variola major by variola minor. When Silfverdale evaluated thousands of vaccinated and unvaccinated breastfed and non-breastfed children looking at the risk of measles, breastfeeding had a far larger impact on measles risk than vaccinating. (p 389) Paralytic Polio Was Underdiagnosed. Studies document the underdiagnosis of paralytic polio. Shaw and Levin reported that “mild degrees of muscle weakness may be easily overlooked” if manual muscle testing were employed without a functional assessment of strength. The response to poliovirus infection is highly variable and has been categorized on the basis of the severity of clinical presentation.