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Webwatch
November 2006
As previously outlined in Webwatch, statistics are treacherous. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the MMR/Autism debate. One camp, driven by emotion, will take up a side opposite the facts only camp. No communication takes place and positions become entrenched. The truth becomes harder and harder to find.
The word entrenched is itself emotional, coming into widespread use after the Great War of 1914-1918. Writing this as I am just before Armistice Day and having just returned from the hallowed ground of the Western Front, the word has a very powerful emotional effect on me. Everyone knows the Western Front was the scene of the Lost Generation so beloved of the war poets. The trouble is, it isn't true.
Statistics again. Whilst the slaughter in the mud of the Somme or Passchendaele is enough to break a heart of stone, far far more died in the Spanish Flu of 1918, mostly from the young and the fit, the same group as died in the trenches. Another oddity about the Lost Generation is that in 1914, the rate of emigration of young men from the UK was far higher than the rate of killing would become in the war. The war almost stopped the emigration so the net effect of the war was to slow the decline in the numbers of males of military age. Facts against emotion, there never was a Lost Generation killed by the war.
What has all this to do with ITP? Nothing directly but it provides a powerful argument to continue with one of the main aims of the association, to give the best possible source of facts and advice about ITP and to avoid simply repeating "what everyone knows".
This brings us back to MMR/Autism, facts and emotion. A group of drug companies have formed themselves into the UK Vaccine Industry Group and they have a website at www.uvig.org. There are several references to MMR and to what may be far more important, influenza. You may take the view that the drug companies bend their results to suit sales but it is worth considering a simple statistical argument. Suppose a flu vaccine killed one in 10,000 children and damaged the same number but provided good protection to the rest*. Had this been widely available and used in 1918, about 40 million people would have survived, more than FOUR TIMES the total number killed of all nationalities in the Great War across all fronts. Would you administer this vaccine to your children? (*A purely hypothetical number)
I have included here an article written by a friend and reproduced here for convenience even though it is available on the Western Front Association's Website. It comes full circle and shows that even in 1918, people "knew" that the epidemic was caused by the compulsory vaccination.
Happy surfing
Howard
The Western Front of the Great War and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918
Introduction
History records several great pandemics (i.e. country-, continental-
or world- wide outbreaks of disease). Prominent among these were The Black
Death, 1347 - 1351, The Great Plague in the 1660's, Cholera in the late
19th and early 20th Centuries and The 1918 Influenza Pandemic (Spanish
Flu). As the 1918 Influenza Pandemic only broke out on the Western Front
when the Great War was drawing to its climax, it had no great effect on
the strategic and tactical prosecution of the war by the Allies. And,
in any event, it affected the Central Powers as badly as it did the Allies.
But on a personal scale it was a disaster of enormous proportions, dwarfing
all the other casualty lists of the war. To give this pandemic some perspective,
if the graves of the 750,000 Western Front Commonwealth dead and missing
were concentrated into a single location, they would occupy an area of
about 3 square kilometres or 1.2 square miles. If all the dead of the
1918-1919 flu pandemic - 40,000,000 - were similarly concentrated, their
graves would cover an area of around 160 square kilometres or 62 square
miles.
Genesis of 1918 Pandemic
For many years epidemiologists have thought that the 1918 flu epidemic
started in San Sebastian, Spain - hence the soubriquet 'Spanish Flu'.
It was here, in the early months of that year, that the definitive signs
and symptoms of this strain of the disease were reputedly first recorded.
Uniquely, it produced a deep cyanosis (blue skin) and a bluish froth around
the nose and the mouth - the so-called heliotrope cyanosis - culminating
with the horrific drowning of the victim in his (her) own body fluids.
There was also an extraordinarily high mortality rate of 20 times the
norm for influenza. Death often occurred within a few hours. In many of
the cases that did survive the critical first few days of the influenza
attack, death was precipitated by a rampant secondary infection with pneumonia
bacteria. Another unusual characteristic was that most of the 1918 influenza
victims were from healthy 20 to 50 year old age groups (i.e. the age of
military service), as opposed to the normally more susceptible age groups
of the very young, or very old. Epidemiologists and virologists have made
strenuous efforts over the years to determine how this relatively common
and seasonal disease mutated into this virulent and fatal 1918 strain.
But all attempts so far to isolate all of the viral DNA to determine the
genetic characteristics that engendered this unusual virulence, have only
led to limited success in completing the viral genome. In 1951 and 1998,
respectively, it was hoped that the bodies of Spanish Flu victims buried
in Alaska (Brevig Mission) and Norway (Spitzbergen) would yield tissue
bearing useful samples of the virus. But, unfortunately, it was discovered
that in both localities the bodies were buried in shallow graves, so were
not preserved sufficiently well by the permafrost to give perfect samples
of the complete viral- DNA.
Current research and findings
In the United States, test procedures for the influenza virus are
currently being carried out by the US Army Medical Services on preserved
autopsy sections taken from American Great War servicemen who died in
1918 flu pandemic. Also, in the UK, it is hoped that 1918 Spanish Flu
victims buried in an lead coffins - which usually preserve the cadaver
well - will be more productive. Plans for the exhumation of the first
body - a young woman who died aged 20 - from a brick-lined vault in London,
UK, are well advanced. Only the necessary ethical clearance and approval
are awaited at the time of writing. It is hoped that a whole infected
lung can be recovered. It has long been known that epidemic influenza
mutates in domestic animals and then passes through direct contact to
the human population. The huge pig and poultry populations of China and
South East Asia are considered as primary sources - hence Asian Flu.
In 2002, epidemiological studies, and a review of the contemporaneous medical journals, indicated that influenza demonstrating the signs of heliotrope cyanosis and high mortality rates was already present in 1916 in the huge British Army transit and training camps in France - notably at Etaples (home to the infamous 'Bullring'). It is also, perhaps, significant that the Etaples camps maintained pig and other livestock farms to feed the troops. Therefore, it is quite feasible that the 1918 influenza pandemic did not have its genesis in Spain, but rather in the British Army pig farms on the Western Front. Evidently, the huge scale of troop movements before and after the Armistice would have provided an excellent means of the propagation of the virus to the 57 former combatant countries - from Aden to The West Indies - and thus globally. It is also of interest to note that many Great War soldiers believed that the pandemic was due to the typhoid vaccination that was compulsory for all Allied troops on the Western Front. (Shades of the Gulf War Syndrome). Large numbers of the civilian populations of the former warring nations were also vaccinated for typhoid after the Armistice to provide protection from 'disease-ridden soldiers returning from the battle-field'. There is, as yet, no scientific evidence to support any connection with these vaccinations and the 1918 flu pandemic. There were also suggestions by the Allies of the use of biological warfare by the Central Powers, but no corroboration of this ever came to light and, as already stated, the Central Powers suffered from the 1918 flu pandemic as severely as the Allies did.
All in all, yet another extraordinary casualty list generated by the war on the Western Front.
Dr David Payne
Dr David Payne is a retired medical scientist who served for 34 years as a staff member with the World Health Organisation in 45 countries across the globe. His field is that of tropical medicine and, in particular, malaria control and diagnosis.
Writing as a strictly amateur war historian, Dr Payne has a particular
interest in preparing articles about the Great War for school children
and students. Accordingly, his contributions to the Western Front Association's
web-site go towards fulfilling the WFA's commitment to making the younger
generations more aware of the deeds and sacrifice of their forebears in
the Great War. And Remembering. www.westernfrontassociation.com