Fascination vs. Repulsion with NumbersAmong all the economists of the history, I admire Adam Smith most of all. Adam Smith’s works have been inspiring many economists throughout centuries, and many scholars can’t help mentioning him in the course of their work. His pen did leave few stones unturned, and each time with an economic point of view. Although most of the modern terms were inexistent at his time, he described things his own way and often cut to the core of the matter. I had to refer to his famous book, Wealth of Nations, for many times in the past, and the most recent review of it gave me a term that has become an anchor for my paper. That term is “Political Arithmetick”. Adam Smith remarkably acknowledged ‘I have no great faith in political arithmetick’ (Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, p.534). In a 1785 letter written from Edinburgh Custom House to George Chalmers, Smith reiterated his sentiment: ‘You know that I have little faith in Political Arithmetic’ (Smith, Correspondence, p. 288). There were serious limitations in gathering and analyzing quantitative information during the early introduction of vaccination to England, and no wonder many, like Smith, put little faith in numbers. Davenant gave a good definition to the term Political Arithmetick: “By Political Arithmetick, we mean the art of reasoning by figures, upon things relating to government.” (Hoppit, 1996) The golden age of political arithmetick began in 1662 with the publication of John Graunt’s book “Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality”, and passing with the death of its key proponents, Gregory King in 1712 and Charles Davenant in 1714. The term itself was devised by Sir William Petty in about 1671 or 1672. The use of statistics in policy debate became more prevalent at around the same period. It is up to one’s imagination to count the areas which were influenced by Political Arithmetick – social order, military matters, religious affiliation, economic performance, public finances, to name a few. Furthermore, ‘Medical Arithmetick’ was being enthusiastically championed by 1780s, though its origins are rooted in much earlier periods. As another author put it ‘Without medical arithmetic it is impossible to reach the “grandeur of generality”, the sublime of medical divination.’(Hoppit, 1996). Almost a century after Adam Smith’s remark about unreliability of political arithmetick, a medical man, Dr. Guy, was presenting a paper on smallpox and vaccination at The Royal Statistical Society, and to the question whether vaccination were a preventive of smallpox, he answered that “there can be no answer except such as is couched in the language of figures” (Greenwood, 1930). An amazing contrast in faith in numbers, isn’t it? Where does it come from? The thing is proponents of vaccination then and now had no other way of proving the efficacy of vaccines, smallpox vaccine in particular, than talking in the language of numbers. Even though it may sound very odd, medicine had little role in proving efficacy of vaccines. The thing is vaccines are injected mostly to people in near-perfect health, and it would be very unethical to expose control groups to the dreadful diseases in order to prove the efficacy of vaccines. The proponents of vaccination, people with strong ties in the governments and pharmaceutical-medical industry, have been trying to prove the efficacy of vaccines through statistical study of population mortality and morbidity, often making unbelievable claims. Having reviewed dozens of historical materials about smallpox vaccination, I saw an obvious “play with numbers” in order to reach “politically correct” conclusions. Medical historians McKeown and Record stated that 'the data (on mortality and natality) are so treacherous that they can be interpreted to fit any hypothesis' (Razzell, 1965). Few tables below will illustrate this point: Table 2. Mean Annual Rate of Mortality per million from smallpox at all ages in three groups of years, selected with reference to optional and obligatory vaccination (Milnes, 1897).
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