[7.]
Now and again, however, we have the sad spectacle of
some one really well educated but apparently either ignorant of logic or
desirous of wilfully misrepresenting facts. The Hon. Stephen Coleridge
has an article in the June (1914) number of the Contemporary
Review which is, to say the least of it, highly immoral in ethics
and statistics.
I shall examine only that part of it bearing on
vaccination. The statements are that in the last five recorded years,
58 persons died from smallpox vaccination (he means vaccination against
smallpox), whereas in the same five years, 85 persons died from smallpox
itself. The inference we are intended to draw from these figures is that
to be vaccinated is nearly as fatal as to have smallpox itself.
Now this kind of argument is a very common one with statistically
immoral persons, and is known as the suppression of the ratio. Before we
can appreciate the fact that in five years 58 persons died after being
vaccinated, we at least need to know the total number of persons who
were vaccinated. If only 58 persons were vaccinated and they all died,
then the mortality was 100 per cent., but if, as was practically the
case, thousands of infants in Great Britain were vaccinated in five
years, then if only 58 died after vaccination (although not necessarily
in consequence of it) the mortality falls some thousands of a per cent.
The suppression of the ratio, i. e., 58/many thousands is the deceit
that is practiced.
Fifty-eight per year for five years, is 11.6 deaths per year of
persons vaccinated: presumably these were infants: taking the birth-rate
in England as 30 per 1,000 living, we may say that 900,000 infants were
born; deduct 100,000 as not vaccinated, we have 800,000 infants
vaccinated, of these 11.6 died after
being vaccinated, which is 0.0014 per cent. This is not much of a
mortality from any cause; but using Mr. Coleridge's own figures, it is a
splendid demonstration of the safety of infant-vaccination, the
opposite of what he pretends it shows.
Mr. Coleridge proceeds to tell us that in five years 85 persons
died of smallpox in Great Britain, i. e., an average of 17
persons per year. In other words 17 persons died of smallpox in a
country with 30 million inhabitants, or 0.000056 per cent. of persons
living, not a high mortality. And we strongly suspect, may we hope, that
those 17 were persons who had not been vaccinated.
But in Pre-Jennerian days, 17 persons died of smallpox out of
every 100 persons dying from all causes.
Mr. Coleridge's figures, properly and honestly interpreted,
testify loudly to conclusions exactly the opposite of what he desires to
insinuate; he has no doubt taken the statistics of the
Registrar-General, but he has prostituted them.
Mr. Coleridge's paper could not be a better example of the art of
concealing the causes of phenomena.
He exhibits the following table:
Deaths from smallpox per annum per a million living:
| 1862-1870 | 172.2 |
| 1871-1880 | 244.6 |
| 1881-1890 | 45.8 |
| 1891-1900 | 13.3 |
| 1901-1910 | 12.8 |
So that the table shows that since 1880 in Great Britain the
deaths from smallpox per million per year have declined until they are
only about 1/14th of their original number.
The natural inference from these figures, viewed in the light of
the history of smallpox in Great Britain, is that compulsory vaccination
has been steadily eradicating the disease; but this is not Mr.
Coleridge's conclusion: He says it is due to the large number of persons
who have refused to be vaccinated! This would be laughable if it were
not really serious; it is sad and serious that a man of Mr. Coleridge's
education and social position should so consistently mislead the
uncritical readers of the Contemporary Review to whose pages he
has unfortunately very free access. If Mr. Coleridge really believes
these things he is either very stupid or very ignorant; if he knows them
to be otherwise, but wilfully deceives the public, he is immoral. He
suffers from the worst form of bias, the anti-scientific.
