Pertussis Vaccine Myth vs. Scientific Data

Introduction

“Before the 1940s when a pertussis vaccine for children was introduced, whooping cough was a leading cause of death in young children.”

That’s a statement I came across yesterday reading a 2007 article from the New York Times’ archive (about how false positive PCR tests caused a fake pertussis outbreak). The intended implication is that the vaccine was responsible for the dramatic decrease in mortality from whooping cough, which is caused by the Bordetella pertussis bacterium.

That’s what we’re supposed to believe, but it’s a myth. It’s a belief about the vaccine that is falsified by the published scientific data. The reason you can’t learn the truth from the New York Times or other mainstream media is because they are content to serve the state—and, by extension, the pharmaceutical industry—by doing public vaccine policy advocacy rather than journalism.

So let’s do some journalism and put this myth to rest, shall we?

Pertussis Deaths Had Already Declined Dramatically Before the Vaccine

I did a simple Google search for historical data on pertussis mortality and immediately found a report by epidemiologist C. C. Dauer titled “Reported Whooping Cough Morbidity and Mortality in the United States” and published in 1943 in the journal Public Health Reports.

It states that whooping cough at the time caused “more deaths in children under 2 years of age than any other acute infection with the exception of pneumonia and the diarrheas.” This supports the New York Times’ assertion that pertussis was “a leading cause of death in young children” before the 1940s.

But that’s not the whole story. Dauer goes on to note that the mortality rate had already declined dramatically—before the vaccine came into widespread use (emphasis added):

During the 5-year period from 1900 the mortality was 10.2 per 100,000 population and during the next two decades there was a decline of about 20 percent, the rate for the period from 1920 to 1924, inclusive, being 8.1. Beginning about 1925 mortality from whooping cough began to decline rapidly so that the rate for the 5-year period from 1935 to 1939 was only 1.8, a decline of about 80 percent in 15 years.

The decline in mortality since 1925 included an appreciable decline in deaths in infants under 1 year of age, who are at highest risk.

Dauer also notes that this reduction in deaths from pertussis occurred despite the incidence of the disease remaining constant. (Actually, an increase in incidence is present in the data, but the author attributes this to “more complete reporting of cases”.)

“The reason for this marked decline in mortality from whooping cough since 1900”, Dauer states, “is not apparent.” But he notes that deaths were associated with household crowding and illiteracy.

Instructively, Dauer concludes (emphasis added):

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the development and use of prophylactic inoculations of whooping cough vaccine. Although a number of favorable reports on the use of vaccine have appeared, it has not been given on a sufficiently large scale to make it possible to judge its value in reducing mortality. If mortality continues to decline at the same rate during the next 15 years that it did during the past 15 years, it will be extremely difficult to show statistically that this prophylactic procedure had any effect in reducing mortality from whooping cough. Furthermore, with a large percentage of deaths (40 percent) occurring in infants under 6 months of age, inoculations would have to be given at an extremely early age to be effective. Whether or not vaccination would be effective if given before 3 months of age remains to be seen.

When Was the Pertussis Vaccine Introduced?

I wanted to know the year that the vaccine came into widespread use and so consulted the CDC’s Pink Book on pertussis, which states, “Whole-cell pertussis vaccines were first licensed in the United States in 1914 and became available combined with diphtheria and tetanus toxoids (as DTP) in 1948.”