Some of agruments people were making back then about small-pox vaccine were:
(1) Vaccines “caused” an increase in cancer
Before autism was something anti-vaccination activists linked to inoculations (despite substantial evidence to the contrary), other common diseases were said to be the result of vaccination — once again without a demonstration of causality.
“Cancer is reported to be increasing not only in England and the Continent, but in all parts of the world where vaccination is practised,” British activist William Tebb wrote in an 1892 paper.
(2) Vaccines are the result of a conspiracy by the medical establishment Vaccines are the result of a conspiracy by the lamestream media
J.M. Peebles wrote an entire anti-vaccination book after the school system in San Diego refused to let pupils without vaccines attend classes. (Sound familiar?) In the book, Peebles accused the media of refusing to give equal weight to the anti-vaccination argument, as part of an elite power conspiracy theory that, again, should sound familiar.
