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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(107,063 posts)
Mon Jun 22, 2020, 02:32 PM Jun 2020

Meet the vegetarian anti-vaxxers who led the smallpox inoculation backlash in Victorian Britain

As the world hangs its hope on a new vaccine for COVID-19, it is easy to forget how controversial these life-saving treatments have been throughout history. People may have heard some of the divisive and controversial arguments of today’s anti-vaxxers. But it is perhaps more surprising to learn that there was a significant backlash from vegetarians and animal rights advocates when the first smallpox vaccines were being introduced almost 200 years ago.

When smallpox vaccination was introduced in England in 1840, the government abolished inoculation using the live smallpox virus taken from the blisters of humans with the infection. The live virus was dangerous because it infected people with smallpox and so carried the risk of death, disfigurement and bringing smallpox into an area which was previously disease-free.

This made cowpox lymph the only option. This is where lymph containing white blood cells which fight against the disease are extracted from calves which had been inoculated with smallpox. But using calf lymph (also taken from blisters) was unacceptable to vegetarians and anti-vivisectionists who were growing in number from the mid-19th century.

Smallpox vaccination was made compulsory for children in England in 1853. In the following years, groups opposing compulsory vaccination began to appear across England. They had coalesced into a more structured movement by the mid-1860s under the leadership of Richard Butler Gibbs, a noted vegetarian and food reformer.

-more-

https://www.yahoo.com/news/meet-vegetarian-anti-vaxxers-led-141505977.html

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Meet the vegetarian anti-vaxxers who led the smallpox inoculation backlash in Victorian Britain (Original Post) Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin Jun 2020 OP
Thanks for this bit of history. A couple of good sites I follow that deal with these types: erronis Jun 2020 #1

erronis

(14,941 posts)
1. Thanks for this bit of history. A couple of good sites I follow that deal with these types:
Mon Jun 22, 2020, 02:49 PM
Jun 2020
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaccine-leader-del-bigtree-on-covid-19-lets-catch-this-cold-why-antivaxxers-and-coronavirus-conspiracy-theorists-are-often-one-in-the-same/
Last week, antivaccine activist Del Bigtree posted a rant denying the severity of COVID-19, blaming the chronically ill for having made themselves vulnerable to severe disease through their lifestyle choices, and urging the young and healthy to “catch this cold”. His rant shows exactly why COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and antivaxxers have such an affinity for each other and have teamed up to resist public health initiatives.
David Gorski on June 22, 2020


https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/06/19/becker-and-blaxill-use-covid-19-to-claim-vaccines-cause-sids/
One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed is the affinity between the antivaccine movement and conspiracy theorists who deny the severity of COVID-19 and the necessity of the public health measures instituted to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19). This affinity and alliance between antivaxxers and anti-lockdown protesters and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists who, for example, blame the 5G rollout for COVID-19 came as a surprise to many, but not to those of us who’ve been following the antivaccine movement for a long time. The reason, of course, that the antivaccine movement is based on a conspiracy theory, what I like to refer to as the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement, and groups of conspiracy theorists tend to be attracted to each other, and COVID-19 has been a magnet for medical conspiracy theories.




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