The year is 1903. Dr. Robert Alexander Gunn, a professor at New York Medical College, testified in a case where parents were challenging the state of New York's requirement for smallpox vaccinations to attend school. His expert and clear testimony showed that vaccination was a failure, and this should have compelled the court to side with the parents. Instead, the court ruled that the law must be upheld, regardless. This blind loyalty to lawmakers, as if they are always wise and free from special interests, is a fundamental flaw in our society—one that persists to this day.

First. One vaccination was claimed to protect for life against smallpox. When this proved untrue, one vaccination during infancy and one at puberty were deemed necessary. This failing a third vaccination was advised at maturity. Still smallpox attacked those vaccinated at the three periods mentioned; and now vaccination every seven years was recommended. This also failing, it was claimed that vaccination to be effected, must be repeated every three or four years while the latest claim is, that vaccination to be absolutely protective, must be repeated at short intervals (every few weeks) till it no longer takes. Being known as an opponent of vaccination, I have had hundreds of children brought to me every year, with swollen and inflamed arms, large sloughing ulcers, erysipelas, inflamed eyes, enlarged glands and various skin eruptions and in hundreds of instances, the health of said children was ruined for life. I have been a careful student of the question of vaccination for the past thirty years and I have found the average physician never investigated the subject for themselves, accepting it because of the general belief in its efficacy. I am firmly convinced (1) that vaccination never protected against smallpox, and never has been relied upon to do so; (2) that smallpox, like other zymotic diseases, has decreased because of our better sanitary and hygiene conditions and the disinfection and isolation practiced when the disease is present; (3) that vaccination, as practiced now and at all times since its introduction, has caused untold suffering to countless thousands of helpless victims, and that disease, life-long suffering and death have followed in its trail; (4) that physicians, even now, do not agree as to what constitutes effective vaccination, or the kind of virus that should be used; (5) that no one has ever been able to tell what vaccine virus is, or how it acts upon the system. So strong are my convictions on this subject that I would defend, with my life, any attempt to vaccinate me or mine. If vaccination protects why should one unvaccinated person be a menace to the vaccinated in the school room? — Professor Robert Alexander Gunn, MD, New York Medical College, New York, 1903. [1]

References

1. Order to Show Cause. N. Y. SUPREME COURT, KINGS COUNTY, In the Matter of The Application of Edmund C. Viemeister for a Peremptory Writ of Mandamus, Patrick J. White, President of the Board of Education, and F. H. Meade, Principal of Public School No. 12. Borough of Queens Supreme Court: Appellate Division-Second Department, 1903, pp. 5–10.