Book Review: The Poisoned Needle (short form)

Title: The Poisoned Needle 

Author: Eleanor McBean

Date: 1977

Publisher: Lord's Covenant Church

ISBN: none

Length: 16 pages

Quote: "This is the photographically reproduced cover of a 235-page book which every American should read. Look inside for sample pages and information on how you can obtain a copy."

The information on how you could, in 1978, buy a copy of McBean's 235-page book is probably as outdated as the vaccine studies in this "trailer" booklet. 

I'm willing to sell this short version of the original anti-vax book because my parents distributed it for years. There is some very important information in it but I would expect that all of you Gentle Readers would see, on first glance, why it lacks final authority. It's the reverse of what the corporate lobbyists were saying--and no more authoritative than what they were saying. The corporate lobbyists naturally said "All our products are Good"; McBean says "All vaccine products are Bad." 

Vaccination is of course a homeopathic sort of approach to protecting health. Most Americans generally favor either allopathic or naturopathic approaches, so the homeopathic approach goes so deeply against our grain that many of us don't even think of vaccination as being homeopathic--although that's what the idea of stimulating a patient's immune system to fight a disease is. 

Many of us just naturally happen to hate needles and/or doctors' bills.

Many of us who don't hate needles, who would demand vaccines for rabies or dysentery if we were exposed to such deadly diseases, just frown on the idea of trying to vaccinate everybody against every infection however trivial. For most people flu, measles, and many other things for which some pediatricians will urge parents to vaccinate babies, are not serious concerns; the risk of having these diseases does not compare to the risk of getting a contaminated "shot." I've had the vaccines for diphtheria and polio and a few other oldfashioned diseases of comparable awfulness, and would encourage anyone at any risk of exposure to have those, but as this web site has noted before, if measles were a hazard of a vaccine against mononucleosis I might recommend everyone consider having that vaccine. 

McBean discusses in detail the hazards associated with certain specific batches of vaccine in the mid-twentieth century (some even going back to the nineteenth century). Some of them were dire. McBean has blurry black-and-white photos of the hideous form of cancer some people developed as a side effect of the swine flu vaccine in 1976. No other flu vaccine has been solidly linked to cancer; that one was. 

I think it's important that everyone know that some vaccines have caused death in efforts to prevent what would probably not have been disabling diseases. (Swine flu spread like, well, the flu, because most people honestly did not think it was painful enough to miss work or school for; many people worked right through it.) 

I hope that most people will catch the fallacy of McBean's generalizations. If you believe it is a sin to ingest other animals' or people's blood into your body through vaccinations, that is a legitimate belief that can be supported by some sacred texts and I support your right to act according to that belief; after all, if a vaccine is going to save any lives, it will save those lives regardless of whether or not any other people have it. But the fact that some batches of vaccine have been contaminated does not prove that all of them are. The belief that taking a vaccination is a sin has to be supported by sacred texts alone; it is not supported by consistent scientific research. Many vaccines are a waste of time and money, and a few have been harmful, but more vaccines have prevented diseases than produced diseases, overall.

Read this book if you want to see some facts that have been suppressed--but read it with a careful eye, please, and a scientific mind.