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by Ingri Cassel

From the October 2005 Idaho Observer:

As the bird flu hype intensifies, suddenly people who had never heard of it before remember the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 as if it just happened. It’s interesting how the modern remembrance of the 1918 outbreak, being leaked into our minds from the CDC through the mainstream media, is dramatically exaggerated from doctored historical accounts.

For instance, an Associated Press story from 1997 cited a study done by the Armed Forces Institute under the leadership of Dr. Jeffery K. Taubenberger. Taubenberger, et al., analyzed specimens from some of the 43,000 servicemen that died as a result of the "Spanish" flu and had been preserved in formaldehyde and wax for future studies. It was theorized that "the virus … is a mutation that evolved in American pigs and was spread around the globe by U.S. troops mobilized for World War I."

Regarding flu epidemiology, pigs may have wings

In February, 2004, the BBC reported that British scientists determined that the strain of flu virus responsible for the 1918-19 "Spanish" flu pandemic was an avian virus that had mutated. This information was determined by exhuming bodies from villages within 700 miles of the north pole from people who had died during the 1918-19 flu pandemic.

Is the reason for this confusion due to the fact that the existence of viruses was known but not isolated and categorized until after 1933, the year the electron microscope was invented? Some articles from the late 90s even theorize that the virus originated in birds that infected pigs that then infected humans. Hmmm…

1918 death toll still rising

Another problem is the evolving numbers of people who were infected with the "Spanish" flu and the numbers of people who actually died. An "AP Statistics Lab" claims that 25 million people died worldwide from the 1918 flu pandemic with half a million dying in the U.S. The CDC claimed in 1999 (Preparing for the Next Influenza Pandemic) that 20 million people died worldwide from the 1918 flu pandemic but now claims, in 2005, that the death toll was 50 million worldwide.

Another article justifies these discrepancies by saying that anywhere from 20 million to 100 million people died worldwide during the 1918-19 flu pandemic.

Aside from this "official" confusion, it is clear that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bush administration are using recreated 1918 flu pandemic history to sound the alarm justifying the $4 billion tagged onto a defense spending bill passed by the Senate September 24, 2005.

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), with the backing of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), wants the government to spend nearly $3.1 billion to stockpile enough doses of an anti-viral pharma drugs (not vitamin C or oregano oil) for half the U.S. population. If half the current U.S. population (not counting the illegal immigrants) were to "benefit" from this boondoggle, it amounts to $21 for each anti-viral dose administered at taxpayer expense.

Learning from the past

Historians puzzle over the virulence of the "Spanish" flu versus deadly medical treatments used nearly 90 years ago. According to medical researcher Jim West, chloroform was used as a preservative in several orthodox cough syrups in 1918 and would convert to highly poisonous phosgene when oxidized, causing liver failure and various cancers.

Patrick J. Carroll wrote a piece in the August 5, 2003 edition of The Irish Examiner recounting relatively unknown vaccine history. He claimed that a report from then U.S. Secretary of War Henry L Stimson verified 63 deaths and 28,585 cases of hepatitis as a direct result of the WWI yellow fever vaccination program of only six months duration. Yellow Fever vaccination was only one of the 14 to 25 shots given to army recruits. Quoting from the article that can be accessed at www.vaclib.org/news/vaccinenotflu.htm:

"Army records also reveal that after vaccination became compulsory in the U.S. Army in 1911, not only did typhoid increase rapidly but all other vaccinal diseases increased at an alarming rate. After America entered the war in 1917, the death rate from typhoid vaccination rose to the highest point in the history of the U.S. Army. The deaths occurred after the shots were given in sanitary American hospitals and well-supervised army camps in France, where sanitation had been practiced for years.

"The report of the Surgeon-General of the U.S. Army shows that during 1917 there were admitted into the army hospitals 19,608 men suffering from anti-typhoid inoculation and vaccinia. This takes no account of those whose vaccine diseases were attributed to other causes.

"The army doctors knew all these cases of disease and death were due to vaccination and were honest enough to admit it in their medical reports. When army doctors tried to suppress the symptoms of typhoid with a stronger vaccine, it caused a worse form of typhoid: Paratyphoid. But when they concocted an even stronger vaccine to suppress that one, they created an even worse disease: Spanish flu."

As several other sources confirm, it was this newly-concocted typhoid vaccine, as well as several other vaccines, that were mass disseminated to allegedly protect a "panic-stricken" world from the disease-infected soldiers returning from WWI battlefields that triggered the 1918 flu pandemic.

Following is an excerpt from Eleanor McBean’s eyewitness account as memorialized in Chapter Two of her book, "Vaccination Condemned":

All the doctors and people who were living at the time of the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic say it was the most terrible disease the world has ever had. Strong men, hale and hearty one day would be dead the next.

The disease had the characteristics of the black death added to typhoid, diphtheria, pneumonia, smallpox, paralysis and all the diseases the people had been vaccinated with immediately following World War I. Practically the entire population had been injected "seeded" with a dozen or more diseases - or toxic serums. When all those doctor-made diseases started breaking out all at once it was tragic. That pandemic dragged on for two years, kept alive with the addition of more poison drugs administered by the doctors who tried to suppress the symptoms. As far as I could find out, the flu hit only the vaccinated. Those who had refused the shots escaped the flu. My family had refused all the vaccinations so we remained well all the time. We knew from the health teachings of Graham, Trail, Tilden and others, that people cannot contaminate the body with poisons without causing disease.

When the flu was at its peak, all the stores were closed as well as the schools, businesses—even the hospital, as the doctors and nurses had been vaccinated too and were down with the flu. No one was on the streets. It was like a ghost town. We [who didn’t take any vaccines] seemed to be the only family which didn’t get the flu; so my parents went from house to house doing what they could to look after the sick, as it was impossible to get a doctor then. If it were possible for germs, bacteria, virus, or bacilli to cause disease, they had plenty of opportunity to attack my parents when they were spending many hours a day in the sick rooms. But they didn’t get the flu and they didn’t bring any germs home to attack us children and cause anything. None of our family had the flu—not even a sniffle—and it was in the winter with deep snow on the ground.

It has been said that the 1918 flu epidemic killed 20,000,000 people throughout the world. But, actually, the doctors killed them with their crude and deadly treatments and drugs. This is a harsh accusation but it is nevertheless true, judging by the success of the drugless doctors in comparison with that of the medical doctors.

While the medical men and medical hospitals were losing 33% of their flu cases, the non-medical hospitals such as BATTLE CREEK, KELLOGG and MACFADDEN’S HEALTH-RESTORIUM were getting almost 100% healings with their water cure, baths, enemas, etc., fasting and certain other simple healing methods, followed by carefully worked-out diets of natural foods. One health doctor didn’t lose a patient in eight years…

If the medical doctors had been as advanced as the drugless doctors, there would not have been those 20 million deaths from the medical flu treatment.

There was seven times more disease among the vaccinated soldiers than among the unvaccinated civilians, and the diseases were those they had been vaccinated against. One soldier who had returned from overseas in 1912 told me that the army hospitals were filled with cases of infantile paralysis and he wondered why grown men should have an infant disease. Now, we know that paralysis is a common after-effect of vaccine poisoning. Those at home didn’t get the paralysis until after the world-wide vaccination campaign in 1918.

Homeopathy also gained quite a reputation during the 1918 flu pandemic. Raymond Seidel, HMD (homeopathic medical doctor), decided to be a homeopathic doctor during the 1918 flu epidemic when he was a 10-year-old delivery boy for a local homeopath. He said, "I saw that the people who were taking aspirin were dying, about half those who were drinking a lot were dying, and those that received homeopathic remedies were living."

In Julian Winston’s article, Influenza-1918: Homeopathy to the Rescue (The New England Journal of Homeopathy, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1998), he noted that most of the deaths were caused by a virulent pneumonia that was especially devastating to those who depressed their system with analgesics, especially aspirin. The following citations from his article prove this point:

Three hundred and fifty cases and lost one, a neglected pneumonia that came to me after she had taken one hundred grains of aspirin in twenty-four hours. ~Cora Smith King, MD, Washington, DC

I had a package handed to me containing 1,000 aspirin tablets, which was 994 too many. I think I gave about a half dozen. I could find no place for it. My remedies were few. I almost invariably gave Gelsemium and Bryonia. I hardly ever lost a case if I got there first, unless the patient had been sent to a drug store and bought aspirin, in which event I was likely to have a case of pneumonia on my hands. ~J. P. Huff, MD, Olive Branch, Kentucky

One physician in a Pittsburgh hospital asked a nurse if she knew anything better than what he was doing, because he was losing many cases. "Yes, Doctor, stop aspirin and go down to a homeopathic pharmacy, and get homeopathic remedies." The Doctor replied: "But that is homeopathy." "I know it, but the homeopathic doctors for whom I have nursed have not lost a single case." ~W. F. Edmundson, MD, Pittsburgh

There is one drug which directly or indirectly was the cause of the loss of more lives than was influenza itself. You all know that drug. It claims to be salicylic acid. Aspirin’s history has been printed. Today you don’t know what the sedative action of salicylic acid is. It did harm in two ways. It’s indirect action came through the fact that aspirin was taken until prostration resulted and the patient developed pneumonia. ~Frank L. Newton, MD, Somerville, Massachusetts

Aspirin and the other coal tar products are condemned as causing great numbers of unnecessary deaths. The omnipresent aspirin is the most pernicious drug of all. It beguiles by its quick action of relief of pain, a relief which is but meretricious. In several cases aspirin weakened the heart, depressed the vital forces, increased the mortality in mild cases and made convalescence slower. In all cases it masks the symptoms and renders immeasurably more difficult the selection of the curative remedy. Apparently aspirin bears no curative relation to any disease and it ought to be prohibited. ~Guy Beckly Stearns, MD, New York

By doing a bit of research into books and periodicals from the 1918 flu pandemic era, it is clear that allopathic "cures" were deadlier than the disease itself. Many homeopaths, autologists and other "drugless" doctors understood that the blood was the life force of the body and its purity was a barometer of health as well as an indicator of disease susceptibility. They also witnessed that the poisoning of the blood via yellow fever, typhoid and smallpox vaccinations was the prerequisite condition for contracting the "Spanish" flu. But even then, the flu itself was not a death sentence. The deaths occurred among those who stifled their body’s attempts to heal itself by taking allopathic potions such as aspirin and other inappropriate treatments.