No science is ever settled. That includes the very best science, conducted honestly and without financial or political pressure. Even Newtonian mechanics, as compelling as they are, were later modified by Einstein; and Einstein is hardly “settled science.” Darwin’s theory of natural selection still sparks serious discussion. If this is true for foundational theories in physics and biology, it is even more so for medical science, which often deals with incomplete data contradictory studies, and with aggressive commercial interests. When enormous sums of money are on offer—as in the pharmaceutical industry—one must be even more cautious.

It is therefore right that vaccines, like all other medical interventions, should be examined critically and regularly. The scandals surrounding the Covid-19 vaccines in particular—the rushed approvals, the omnipresent propaganda, the efforts at compulsion, the unprecedented censorship of critics, the growing body of evidence around serious side effects—require full and honest investigation. The results may, and probably will, be deeply unsettling. It is increasingly difficult to believe that modern science is a dispassionate search for truth. The regulatory bodies appear captured, the studies ghost-written, the risks downplayed.

All this being said, to question a body of scientific evidence is not the same as to overturn it. To replace a dominant hypothesis with a new one requires evidence that is not merely suggestive but compelling. And here, The Century of Evidence: Vaccines by “A Midwestern Doctor” falls short. It raises some interesting questions and points to genuine problems, but it does not make the case it claims to.

Casting Doubt Without Building a Case

The central thesis of the article is that “there is no good evidence vaccines have saved lives,” and that “most of the improvements in health we attribute to vaccines actually came from other factors.” This claim is repeated throughout, often with reference to the same few charts showing mortality rates declining before the widespread use of certain vaccines.

For example, the author writes:

In almost every case, the diseases we vaccinate for were already disappearing before the vaccine was introduced.

To support this, a number of graphs are presented—mostly from U.S., U.K., and Australian government sources—showing steep declines in mortality from measles, pertussis, and diphtheria before mass vaccination began. These graphs are not fabrications, and they do show a pattern. But they are also well known and widely discussed in the scientific literature. The issue is not whether vaccines alone reduced mortality, but what these graphs realy prove.

Declines in mortality do not necessarily mean the disease itself was going away. Better nutrition, cleaner water, improved housing, and access to antibiotics all helped people survive infectious diseases that would otherwise have been fatal. But this does not mean vaccines did nothing. To reduce mortality is one thing; to reduce incidence is another. The relevant measure for a vaccine is not whether it keeps you from dying of the disease, but whether it stops you getting it in the first place. The author does not engage with this.

In fact, the article often conflates incidence with mortality. One of the more glaring examples is this:

When you look at measles mortality, the biggest declines happened before the vaccine.

Yes—but what about measles incidence? The answer is well documented. Measles infections fell off a cliff after the introduction of widespread vaccination. In the U.S., for example, cases dropped by over 90% within a few years. That cannot be explained by better sanitation. Measles is airborne. Clean water and better plumbing do not stop its spread.

A Failure to Distinguish Correlation from Causation

At one point, the article argues that polio epidemics may have been caused not by a virus at all but by pesticide exposure—specifically DDT. This is not a new theory, and it has been thoroughly discussed and repeated rejected. Yet the author states:

The polio epidemic perfectly paralleled the introduction of DDT, and polio often appeared in areas where DDT had just been sprayed.

The implication is that polio was a misdiagnosis of pesticide poisoning. But this is not supported by virological evidence. Poliovirus has been isolated, sequenced, and studied in great detail. It causes a recognisable pattern of symptoms, and it can be transmitted from one person to another, which DDT poisoning cannot. There is a reason children in India still contract polio where vaccine coverage is incomplete, while no one suffers “DDT paralysis” in highly industrialised areas where pesticide use has continued.

The article also hints that the polio vaccine may have caused later outbreaks, citing the Cutter Incident of 1955. This was a genuine disaster in which poorly inactivated vaccine batches led to several cases of polio. But it was also quickly identified and corrected, and the net effect of polio vaccination—both in the U.S. and worldwide—has been a near-eradication of the disease. To raise the Cutter Incident without acknowledging this is selective and misleading.

Cherry-Picking and Misrepresentation

Much of the article’s power comes from its tone: a kind of weary insider’s outrage, filled with references to medical colleagues, suppressed data, and regulatory corruption. At times, this tone feels persuasive. But a closer look shows a tendency to cherry-pick data and to leave out inconvenient details.

For instance, the article discusses smallpox:

“Even smallpox—a disease everyone agrees was eliminated by vaccination—has a more complex history. Mortality was already declining before the vaccine campaign.”

This is not true in the way it is presented. The global eradication of smallpox by 1980 is one of the most rigorously documented public health achievements in history. It required extensive surveillance, ring vaccination, and international cooperation. Mortality may have declined in the industrialised West, but the disease persisted in parts of Africa and Asia until vaccination campaigns finally drove it out. These are facts, not speculative theories.

Another example is the mumps vaccine, which the author says was ineffective and unnecessary:

Mumps is a mild illness in children, and the vaccine has done little to stop outbreaks among vaccinated adults.

It is true that vaccine-induced immunity may wane over time and that mumps outbreaks have occurred among vaccinated populations. But this is an argument for improving the vaccine, not abandoning it. Moreover, mumps is not always “mild.” Complications such as orchitis, meningitis, and hearing loss are not rare. The article glosses over this.

Discrediting Vaccines by Association

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the article is its rhetorical strategy of guilt by association. It draws a line from Covid vaccine scandals—real and continuing—to all vaccines going back a century. This is intellectually lazy. It is one thing to question the use of a new mRNA product rushed through under emergency use authorisation. It is quite another to imply that the tetanus or rubella vaccine was always a scam.

By presenting all vaccines as part of a single “century of evidence,” the author ignores the enormous variety in how vaccines are developed and used. Live attenuated vaccines like those for yellow fever or MMR are very different from toxoid vaccines like tetanus, or the new mRNA formulations. Lumping them together blurs important distinctions.

The article also leans heavily on personal testimony: the author’s own experiences, the conversations he’s had with patients, the “common sense” observations about how children seem healthier without vaccines. But common sense is not epidemiology. We all know children who were vaccinated and then got sick. But that does not mean the vaccine caused the illness. We need population-level data. Unless the mainstream evidence is plainly corrupt, the plural of anecdote is not data, no matter how emotive the anecdotes.

Where the Article Has a Point

To be fair, there are moments in this piece that deserve attention. The author rightly criticises the revolving door between pharmaceutical companies and regulatory bodies. He notes, for example:

Many of the people involved in approving and promoting vaccines go on to work for the very companies that manufacture them.

This is true and worrying. Trust in public health has been seriously undermined by the appearance—if not the fact—of conflict of interest. The Covid vaccine rollout, in particular, featured aggressive suppression of dissent and an alarming disregard for normal safety protocols. If this article had stuck to a critique of that period, it would have had stronger footing.

There is also a legitimate concern over vaccine injury reporting. Systems like VAERS in the U.S. and Yellow Card in the U.K. are passive and underused. Serious adverse events may be undercounted. The article is right to call for better surveillance and more transparency. But again, this does not prove that vaccines have caused more harm than good. It means we need better systems of accountability.

Conclusion: Doubt is Not Disproof

In the end, this article fails not because it raises concerns—many of which are worth pursuing—but because it does not make a coherent case. It substitutes suspicion for evidence, correlation for causation, and indignation for analysis. It raises questions about polio, smallpox, and measles but does not offer a theory that explains what happened in their absence.

This matters. We are living through a crisis of trust in science. That crisis was made worse, not better, by the authoritarian way Covid vaccines were imposed. A full reckoning is still needed. But to respond to that failure by dismissing all vaccines as a century-long illusion is to replace one dogma with another.

We should be vigilant. We should demand better. But we should also be careful not to throw away a hard-earned public health achievement based on a collage of mistrust and misinterpretation. The author of this article invites us to question—but offers little to believe in.

Historical and Epidemiological Context

1. Orenstein, Walter A., and Paul A. Offit. Vaccines. Elsevier, 2022.
   – A comprehensive textbook on vaccine science, development, and impact, used widely in medical education.
2. Riedel, Stefan. “Edward Jenner and the History of Smallpox and Vaccination.” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2005.
   – Clear account of smallpox eradication and the origin of vaccination.
3. Plotkin, Stanley A., et al. Plotkin’s Vaccines, 7th ed. Elsevier, 2017.
   – The definitive technical reference for vaccinology, including data on efficacy, adverse effects, and historical campaigns.
4. Bhattacharya, Sanjoy. Expunging Variola: The Control and Eradication of Smallpox in India, 1947–1977. Orient Longman, 2006.
   – A critical but scholarly account of smallpox eradication in a postcolonial context.

Critiques and Ethical Analyses

1. Doshi, Peter. “Pandemics: Do We Know What We’re Measuring?” BMJ, 2009.
   – A subtle challenge to how pandemic data is framed and understood in policymaking.
2. Prasad, Vinay, et al. Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People With Cancer. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.
   – While focused on cancer, it includes valuable critiques of medical trial design, conflicts of interest, and evidence misinterpretation—relevant to vaccine debates.
3. Gøtzsche, Peter C. Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare. Radcliffe Publishing, 2013.
   – A controversial but well-documented critique of pharmaceutical corruption and regulatory capture.
4. Ioannidis, John P.A. “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” PLoS Medicine, 2005.
   – A landmark statistical analysis of systemic problems in medical research reliability.

Covid-Specific and Recent Vaccine Debates

1. The U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Final Report (December 2024).
   – A political document, but worth examining as it catalogues whistleblower testimony and inconsistencies in Covid-19 response.
2. Smalley, Hannah. “The Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout: Public Health Triumph or Regulatory Failure?” Journal of Bioethics & Policy Studies, 2023.
   – Balanced academic discussion on both the benefits and missteps of the mRNA vaccine campaigns.
3. Baral, Stefan D., et al. “Competing Health Risks Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic and Response.” The Lancet Global Health, 2021.
   – Looks at the unintended consequences of pandemic policies, including vaccine mandates and lockdowns.

Data Transparency and Surveillance

1. Brighton Collaboration. https://brightoncollaboration.us
   – Global initiative for standardising vaccine safety data collection and reporting.
2. CDC VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) – https://vaers.hhs.gov
   – The U.S. system for collecting self-reported vaccine side effects. Useful as a raw dataset but not evidence of causation on its own.
3. MHRA Yellow Card Scheme (UK) – https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk
   – UK equivalent of VAERS, used for flagging early signs of adverse events.

Additional Balanced Resources

1. Reiss, Dorit R. “Compulsory Vaccination and Human Rights: The Legacy of Jacobson v. Massachusetts.” Health Matrix, 2014.
   – Legal history and philosophical justification for vaccine mandates—clear but open to rebuttal.
2. Attkisson, Sharyl. Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism. Harper, 2020.
   – Journalistic critique of Covid-era media coverage, including vaccine reporting, by a former CBS investigative reporter.