Introduction

In 1995 I visited Davenport in the USA to celebrate the centenary of my profession of chiropractic. I purchased the book written by D.D. Palmer, the Founder of Chiropractic, The Chiropractor's Adjuster: The Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic, written in 1910. Palmer's hypothesis was that interfering with nerve function would affect optimal well-being. He also questioned the medical approach to health using drugs to suppress symptoms when the body had the capacity to self regulate and self heal, he recognised that drugs would interfere with this process. Palmer reported on the Illinois Supreme Court's decision to reverse a school's ban preventing an unvaccinated child from attending school. "To use the leverage of coercion or intimidation, with parental love as a fulcrum, and thus force parents to do certain things against their conscience, is neither ethical or equitable. As a legal resort it is unjustifiable".

As a child I had been vaccinated against TB and Polio. I did contract Measles and mumps which allowed me a week off school. I have been healthy all my life so I had no particular views on the subject and my children had been vaccinated. I wondered why Palmer described vaccinations as, "the biggest piece of quackery and criminal outrage ever foisted upon any civilised people. Medical ignorance he stated, is the greatest danger to humanity today". Rather perceptive when you consider 90 years later Thomas J. Moore estimated in his book, Prescription for Disaster, that you are ten times more likely to be put in hospital by prescription drugs than by an automobile accident. After reviewing the data available to him he estimated that up to 200,000 people may be disabled for six months or more by prescription drugs and between 70,000 and 140,000 deaths may be caused, making it one of one of the highest causes of death in the United States.

D.D. Palmer stated in his book in 1910, "It is the very height of absurdity to strive to "protect" any person from smallpox or any other malady by inoculating them with a filthy animal poison, and allowing the cause of such diseases to travel on! No one will ever pollute the blood of any member of my family unless he cares to walk over my dead body to perform such an operation". So I began to read about vaccinations.