Suzanne Humphries on smallpox: what the evidence says · JRE #2294
SUBJECT: SMALLPOX
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
We added a chapter called The White Plague. The White Plague is also tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was a side effect of the smallpox vaccine. Tuberculosis rates were rampant. In fact, the inventor of the smallpox vaccine, his child died of tuberculosis and so did his two test subjects that he used. And it was well known to follow smallpox.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis and spreads through the air from person to person, so it cannot be a side effect of a vaccine made from cowpox (a virus), and there is no established causal link between smallpox vaccination and tuberculosis. TB was one of the leading causes of death in Jenner's era, which explains why it repeatedly struck his family: a biographical review notes that his eldest son Edward died of tuberculosis in 1810 and his wife Catherine died of tuberculosis in 1815, presented as personal tragedies of a common disease, not vaccine effects. That eldest son was never given the cowpox vaccine; by Jenner's own account his two eldest children were variolated (inoculated with smallpox itself) before he began cowpox vaccination, while the son he did vaccinate (Robert) had no reaction and lived to age 57. The framing that TB was a known side effect of, and known to follow, the smallpox vaccine is not supported by the medical record and conflates the era's high background TB mortality with vaccination.