Individuals Instead of Statistics

How modern medicine can learn from criminal investigations.

By JOHN LEAKE

As a true crime author, I am interested in witness testimony. Because human perception and memory are often inaccurate and prone to distortion, it is a fascinating challenge to evaluate which witness testimony is probably reliable, and which is not.

While crimes are classified and their incidence is statistically analyzed, a good investigator would never reject witness testimony of a criminal act simply because such criminal acts are rare. Likewise, if a good investigator is called to the scene of an apparent suicide, he wouldn’t automatically rule out foul play simply because the house is located in an affluent neighborhood in which murder is extremely rare. He would still closely examine the death scene for clues that another party might have been involved.

When a terrible injury or death is caused by human violence, we carefully investigate what happened to the victim and determine who is responsible for it. However, our entire conception shifts when the suspect is not a man, but a medical product. If the suspect is a medical product, we immediately start thinking in statistical and epidemiological terms. 

A few months ago I touched on this strange reality in my review of the film VAXXED, directed by Andy Wakefield and produced by Del Bigtree, which documents true horror stories of children who—immediately after receiving MMR vaccines—developed febrile seizures followed by grave symptoms of autism. As I noted in my review:

I was most struck by the parents’ testimony. As producer Del Bigtree pointed out, many of these parents are intelligent and reasonable people who are acutely aware of sudden changes in their children. Mothers are exquisitely sensitive to what is going on with their infants. It is therefore the height of arrogant obtuseness to dismiss their testimony out of hand.

Even if the incidence of vaccine-induced autism turns out to be only a tiny percentage of the overall population, this doesn’t change the enormous significance of cases in which it does happen. Simply dismissing such cases as unworthy of consideration because they are statistically rare is no less wrongheaded than dismissing cases of serial murder because they are statistically rare. It would never occur to us to do the latter, even though we do the former all the time.

Likewise, if there is an underlying genetic susceptibility to developing this vaccine-induced autism syndrome, it should be ascertained, as knowing this could spare families terrible suffering. 

The vaccine syndicate thinks about vaccine-induced injuries and deaths much like a military commander thinks when he assesses the number of casualties he deems acceptable for a given military objective. Mass vaccination is conceived as something very akin to a military countermeasure. The objective is to eliminate the enemy—in this case an infectious disease—and to achieve this, a certain number of injuries and deaths are deemed acceptable. By longstanding habit, we accept this harsh reality when it comes to warfare against other humans. However, because the vaccine cartel perceives that the general public would not accept this calculus when it is applied to medical countermeasures, the reality of vaccine-induced injuries and deaths is ruthlessly denied and concealed.

The great Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, warned about the moral and spiritual hazard of thinking about the individual as a statistical unit, and not as a valuable human being worthy of careful consideration. As he wrote in a compilation of essays titled The Undiscovered Self.

One of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of his foundations and his dignity. As a social unit, he has lost his individuality, and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. … Looked at rationally from outside, that is exactly what he is, and from this point of view, it seems positively absurd to go on talking about the value or meaning of the individual.

Indeed, one can hardly imagine how one ever came to endow individual human life with so much dignity, when the truth to the contrary is as plain as the palm of your hand. Seen from this standpoint, the individual really is of diminishing importance, and anyone who wishes to dispute this would soon find himself at a loss for arguments. The fact that the individual feels himself, or the members of his family, or the esteemed friends in his circle to be important, merely underlines the slightly comic subjectivity of his feeling. For what are the few compared with 10,000 or 100,000 let alone 1 million?

The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual becomes. But if the individual—overwhelmed by the scent of his own puniness and impotence—should feel that his life has lost its meaning, which after all, is not identical with public welfare and higher standards of living, then he’s already on the road to state slavery, and, without knowing or wanting it, has become it’s proselyte. … We are all fascinated and overawed by statistical truths in large numbers, and are daily apprised of the nullity and futility of the individual personality, since it is not represented or personified by any mass organization.

Jung believed it was imperative for the health of our entire civilization to value the individual human being. Instead of regarding him as a statistical unit that is just one in a mass of hundreds of thousands and even millions, his individuality should be carefully considered. As it concerns the practice of medicine, this means that a good doctor will carefully evaluate a patient in terms of what is best for him as an individual.