Whooping cough

Pertussis is caused by a bacterium, Bordetella pertussis, that settles in the airways of the respiratory tract. While the bacterium itself is not so dangerous, it secretes a toxin known as the pertussis toxin. This toxin irritates the respiratory tract and results in the release of mucus, ultimately leading to a severe cough with a characteristic sound (whoop). The cough can last for weeks, the reason why the Japanese and Chinese call this disease the "100-day cough". Although this disease can be quite unpleasant for both children and adults, it is generally not dangerous. However, for babies, especially those below the age of 3 months (those who cannot really cough to withdraw mucus), whooping cough can be fatal. In infants up to four months, about 1% of all whooping cough cases have a lethal outcome.

Pertussis is transmitted exclusively through airborne droplets. As such, you can only become infected if you come close to a sick person (a distance of less than 2-3 meters). Outside a person, this bacterium dies very quickly.

Since the 1950s, a single vaccine against pertussis is not manufactured. Instead, it is always administered as part of a combined vaccine that also includes diphtheria and tetanus. This vaccine, DTP, is a whole-cell pertussis vaccine (plus diphtheria and tetanus). This means that it contains whole bacteria, which have been killed with formalin. While this vaccine has not been used in developed countries since 2001 because of its reactogenicity, it is still used throughout the rest of the world.

DTaP, on the other hand, is an acellular pertussis vaccine, meaning that instead of containing whole bacteria, it merely contains individual bacterial membranes and the pertussis toxin. This vaccine is intended for children, administered in five doses at 2, 4, 6, and 15 months and at 5 to 6 years. In recent years, some countries have also introduced a sixth dose of the vaccine.

Tdap is a DTaP-like vaccine with a reduced amount of diphtheria and pertussis antigen designed for adults. Today, however, DTaP is rarely used; most countries have switched to five- and six-valent vaccines, which also intend to immunize the subject against hepatitis B, poliomyelitis and Hib.

The whole-cell vaccine (DTP), which can cause a large number of neurological side effects, is the most dangerous vaccine that has ever existed.

All of the aforementioned pertussis vaccines contain aluminium, ranging from 330 μg in Daptacel to 1,500 μg in Pentacel. In addition, most of the pertussis vaccines also contain polysorbate 80 (previously discussed in the chapter on the papilloma vaccine). Moreover, the DTP vaccine, apart from containing 1,250 μg of aluminium, it also contains 25 μg of mercury.

A long but informative article on the history of the pertussis vaccine. If you still believe that the main goal of pharmaceutical companies is to create effective and safe drugs, this article might make you see things differently; we highly recommend reading it!
- The pertussis toxin is added to the whole-cell vaccine. This toxin increases the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, rendering this barrier more penetrable to other toxins and viruses. In fact, the pertussis toxin itself is a neurotoxin.
- Since the 1930s, it has been known that the whole-cell pertussis vaccine (DTP) is somewhat dangerous and can lead to neurological consequences.
- Since the 1950s, scientists analysed DTP vaccine toxicity in mice, evaluating toxicity based on mice survival and weight. In 1963, it became apparent that there was no correlation between the results in mice and the number of neurological consequences in children.
- In addition to the pertussis toxin (an exotoxin – a toxin that is secreted by a living bacterium), the vaccine component itself contains an endotoxin (a toxin released from a bacterium only after its decay). This endotoxin, whose presence was carefully concealed by the vaccine manufacturers, is in fact, very toxic.
- In an article from 1953, it was stated that practically every vaccinated child suffered systemic intoxication, with often permanent CNS lesions.
- The first acellular vaccine appeared in 1937. While it was widely used in the 1940s, it was later discontinued as the company did not want to invest in clinical trials. In the 1960s and 1970s, other acellular vaccines were widely used, but also got withdrawn from production due to their higher costs.
- After two babies died from vaccination in Japan, the Japanese developed the acellular vaccine that has been used since 1981.
- Sweden banned the whole-cell vaccine in the late 1970s. From 1970 to 1985, no child died of pertussis.
- In Tennessee in 1979, four children died after being vaccinated with the same lot of the pertussis vaccine. At this point, the CDC discovered that the vaccine was associated with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). While the director of the vaccine department of the FDA was on vacation, the FDA decided to withdraw the entire lot from circulation. However, when the director returned, he ordered that the whole lot be returned for distribution, apologizing to the pharmaceutical companies and promising them that it would not happen again. After this incident, manufacturers stopped sending entire lots to the same place, and instead, began distributing each lot throughout the country.
- This paper is also about how the pertussis vaccine led to the approval of a law for compensating victims of vaccinations. It also mentions how the Department of Health does everything possible to not compensate the injured, how almost all vaccine experts have a conflict of interest, and how the experts of committees investigating vaccine side effects are selected, and much more. The United States switched to the safer, acellular vaccine in 2001, 60 years after it was developed, and 20 years after Japan started using it. Nonetheless, not only is the whole-cell vaccine still licensed in the US, but pharmaceutical companies still sell the vaccine to the WHO, who then distribute it to other countries whose residents are improperly informed about the potential risks.

This is one of the most important studies because not only was it conducted by the FDA, but it also directly compares vaccinated subjects with unvaccinated ones, albeit baboons. The baboons were divided into four groups: the first group received three doses of a whole-cell vaccine, the second group received three doses of an acellular vaccine, the third group was not vaccinated, and the fourth group consisted of baboons that were not vaccinated but had previously been infected by pertussis. A month after administration of the last booster dose, all four groups were infected with pertussis and the infection monitored. While the whole-cell, acellular and unvaccinated groups remained infected for 18, 35 and 30 days respectively, the previously infected, unvaccinated group resisted infection altogether.
Although the unvaccinated group had much more bacteria in the first two weeks compared to the two vaccinated groups, the acellular group remained infected for longer. This was true even though the acellular group had developed more antibodies against pertussis than the group that had previously been infected (we will come back to this point later on).
Thus, it appears that no type of pertussis vaccine – when administered in three doses – is able to prevent pertussis infection.
It has also been reported that during clinical trials of acellular pertussis vaccines, participants were tested for infection with whooping cough only if they had been coughing for at least 1-3 weeks. Therefore, there is no evidence regarding the impact of pertussis vaccines on human colonization and infection.

This study is a meta-analysis comparing the efficacy between three and five doses of DTaP. The authors concluded that five doses of the vaccine are not more effective than three doses and that the vaccine is valid for only three years (this means that after three years, 50% of vaccinated children are no longer immune). After vaccination, the risk of contracting pertussis increases by 33% each year. In fact, three years is a long time considering an initial efficacy of 85% was assumed. According to studies mentioned in the previous article (Geier), the efficacy of the acellular vaccine is about 60%. Pregnant women, for example, according to the recommendations of the CDC, should be vaccinated against whooping cough every pregnancy, even if only one year passed after the previous pregnancy. The authors conclude that five doses of the vaccine are not enough, and that one more dose should be administered.

The risk of contracting pertussis after the fifth dose of the vaccine increases every year by 42%, and after five years the vaccine is already ineffective (assuming an initial effectiveness of 95%). Out of all the pertussis-affected children in northern California, none have been hospitalized, and none have died. More: [1].

This is an epidemiological study in Spain analysing 421 cases of Pertussis, mostly in children under the age of one year. The vast majority of infected individuals (90%) had actually been fully vaccinated. The carriers were mostly fully vaccinated children aged 5-9 years. Only 8% of the 421 cases were hospitalized, and not one died. The authors conclude that despite a high level of vaccination in Spain, whooping cough is totally uncontrollable. Furthermore, they suggested that the real number of patients is probably much higher since only confirmed laboratory cases were considered in their analysis.
There are dozens of studies claiming the same thing: despite high global levels of pertussis vaccination, there have been more and more pertussis epidemics in the last 20 years. In addition, most of the infected have been vaccinated. More: [1], [2].

Most infants six months of age and younger are infected with whooping cough by their fully vaccinated siblings, especially two- and three-year-old siblings. Those who are not infected by their siblings, are often infected by their parents. More: [1].

While the number of cases of whooping cough among unvaccinated individuals has increased, the number of cases among vaccinated individuals has increased even more. Most cases of whooping cough happen among vaccinated.
Also, according to data from the CDC, most patients with pertussis-induced whooping cough have been vaccinated.

Among 1,800 adolescents and adults, only 20% had antibodies against the pertussis toxin one month after vaccination. Antibodies to other vaccine antigens were found in only 39-68% of the subjects.

During the whooping cough epidemic of 2010, the majority of cases were children aged between 8 and 12 years old. There was no difference in the incidence between vaccinated, under-vaccinated and unvaccinated children (2 to 12 years).

After 1978, it was discovered that 84% of pertussis patients had been vaccinated with three doses of the vaccine. Consequently, in 1979 Sweden stopped administering the vaccination. Only in 1996, when the acellular vaccine appeared, was vaccination reinstated.

An article by a British doctor states that, according to his long-term experience, whooping cough hasn't disappeared. In fact, after vaccination was implemented, whooping cough only disappeared from official records because doctors stopped diagnosing it.
This article reports that even though vaccination coverage against pertussis in England fell from 78% to 42% between the 1960s and the 1970s, whooping cough-related mortality during this same period decreased 3-fold.

This is an example of doctors refusing to diagnose whooping cough among vaccinated individuals. A mother repeatedly took her two children to various doctors in Australia as they both presented classic pertussis symptoms. However, all doctors refused to check the children for whooping cough and paid no attention to the mother. After two months of symptoms however, the children were finally tested and it turned out that they indeed had whooping cough.

While there are hundreds of case reports for different vaccines, we have not yet cited any until now. This case occurred in the year 2000, when a whole-cell (i.e., more effective) vaccine was administered to a 2-month-old child in Israel. Despite the entire family (mother, aunt and three brothers - 2, 5 and 11 years old) being fully vaccinated, the child died of whooping cough at an age of 4 months. Moreover, both younger brothers who were at kindergarten had also been fully vaccinated with four doses. The mother of the child developed a cough that lasted for three consecutive months. The two other brothers also coughed heavily, and although the 18-year-old aunt who lived with them did not cough, she was also ill. In the end, it turned out that the whole family – five people - was infected with pertussis. In addition, five children from both kindergartens (11%) were also infected, although only two of them fell under the new definition of whooping cough as stated by the WHO. The authors of this study concluded that the pertussis vaccination does not fully protect children from whooping cough, that its effectiveness does not even reach into early childhood, and that vaccinated children act as a "quiet reservoir" of infection in current society.

As mentioned above, there is a "new definition of whooping cough" as notified by the World Health Organization. When a new vaccine appears on the market, the definition of a disease usually changes. For example, while before 1991 it was necessary to hear the characteristic cough, detect the presence of antibodies, or detect the presence of the pertussis bacteria to diagnose pertussis, after 1991 (when the clinical studies of the acellular vaccine began), these observations were no longer sufficient; it became necessary that the cough last for at least three weeks. Without a strong three-week cough, whooping cough is now no longer diagnosed as whooping cough. This new definition obviously led to a sharp decrease in the number of patients being diagnosed with whooping cough, and as a consequence, the apparent effectiveness of the vaccine appeared to be high. Similarly, as soon as the polio vaccine came onto the market, the definition of the disease immediately changed. This too resulted in fewer patients being diagnosed with polio. Surprisingly, everyone thinks that the vaccine saved us from the polio epidemic, ignoring that the disease fell under a new definition.

As the pertussis vaccine is extremely inefficient, and whooping cough can be very dangerous, primarily for infants, scientists from the CDC decided that as soon as a new baby was born into a family, the entire family should be vaccinated. They recommended that mothers, fathers, siblings, and grandparents, as well as everyone else who comes into contact with the child, should be vaccinated in order to create a cocoon around the child. This is called cocooning and aims to prevent any pertussis bacterium breaking through and causing infection in the child. In fact, although this strategy has been used since 2005, the number of cases of whooping cough has not decreased.
This article explains that although pharmaceutical companies claim that cocooning is the most effective vaccination strategy, in reality, more than 10,000 people need to be vaccinated to prevent one hospitalization, and more than a million people need to be vaccinated in order to prevent one death. This is undoubtedly a very effective strategy for pharmaceutical companies. In the study, they fail to mention that some parents become disabled after getting vaccinated against whooping cough.
According to some studies, the acellular vaccine increased the number of asymptomatic cases of whooping cough about 30 times, and this explains why cocooning does not work.

In the last 20 years, the incidence of whooping cough in many countries has increased significantly. Three hypotheses have been proposed to explain this phenomenon: 1) a weakening protective immunity from vaccination, 2) evolution of pertussis, and/or 3) low vaccination coverage. More recent studies have also suggested a fourth possible explanation: the asymptomatic infection of vaccinated individuals.
The authors of this study analysed the incidence of whooping cough in the US and the UK, conducted a genetic analysis of the bacterial strains, and concluded that the asymptomatic infection of vaccinated individuals is the most logical explanation. According to their model, increasing the coverage via the acellular vaccination increases the incidence of the asymptomatic disease by a factor of 30, and the incidence of the symptomatic disease by a factor of 5-15. This is consistent with the observed data. The authors therefore propose to vaccinate pregnant women or return to the whole-cell vaccine until new vaccines are developed. More: [1].

As cocooning is not very effective, the CDC has recommended since 2011 that all pregnant women be vaccinated against pertussis during the third trimester. This is so that the antibodies against pertussis can be passed on to the foetus through the placenta. The CDC does not mention the fact that aluminium also passes through the placenta. Many women complain that they started contractions right after vaccination, and that the vaccination led to premature birth, but according to studies, they just think that the vaccination accelerated the birth. This happened completely by accident, and with no relation to the vaccine.
Number of pertussis cases since 2011 only increased.
Cocooning has not been abolished, and is still commonly used as a preventative technique along with vaccination of pregnant women.
In contrast, cocooning in Australia was also implemented, but as it was found to be ineffective, and they later abolished it.
While the CDC established that it is effective and perfectly safe to vaccinate pregnant women against whooping cough during pregnancy (based on two studies analyzing 52 and 16 pregnant women), no one has checked how this vaccine affects the foetus. Furthermore, it is not at all clear why the CDC recommends vaccination in only the third trimester. According to some studies, vaccination in the second trimester is much more effective. In Switzerland, for example, women are recommended to get vaccinated in the second trimester (starting from the 13th week of pregnancy).

We try not to delve too deeply into biology, but in order to realize the absurdity of vaccination against whooping cough, we need to understand a little how the immune system works. Let´s consider leprosy, a disease for which there is no vaccine. Leprosy, roughly speaking, can be of two kinds - tuberculoid or lepromatous. Tuberculoid leprosy is a relatively mild form of the disease in which only the skin is affected, and can often pass without treatment. Lepromatous leprosy, on the other hand, is more severe. In the kind of the disease, all mucous membranes become affected, and the outcome is often lethal. Intermediate forms between these two kinds of the disease are also possible.
What determines whether a person will develop tuberculoid leprosy or lepromatous leprosy? The answer to this question is straight forward: the reaction of the individual´s immune system in response to the bacterium.
The immune system is divided into two subsystems: cellular immunity and humoral immunity.
Humoral immunity is the immunity mediated by antibodies and other molecules. In response to antigens, B cells produce antibodies that are able to cling to pathogens and either neutralize them or signal to other cells to destroy them. Th2 cells are responsible for this system.
Cellular immunity is an immune response mediated by cells such as phagocytes, CD8 T-cells and others. These cells recognize infected cells and either devour them or kill them. In this system, Th1 cells are responsible.
These systems suppress one another by producing signalling molecules called cytokines. In other words, the cytokines secreted by Th1 cells suppress Th2 cells, and vice versa.
In the case of leprosy, if the immune response shifts towards cellular immunity then the disease is more easily controlled, but if the immune response shifts towards humoral immunity, then the disease can take a heavy turn. In this case, cellular immunity (Th1) is therefore much more effective than humoral immunity (Th2) at controlling the disease. Humoral immunity actually interferes with the ability of cellular immunity to perform its task.

Let's now return to whooping cough.
- While the acellular pertussis vaccine shifts the immune response towards humoral immunity (Th2), the whole-cell vaccine is more associated with cellular immunity (Th1; the whole-cell vaccine also shifts the immune response towards Th2, but to a lesser extent).
- Even though the acellular vaccine contains far fewer antigens than the whole-cell vaccine, it contributes to the production of a greater amount of antibodies.
- Thus, the greater the number of doses of the acellular vaccine, the shorter the immunity from these vaccinations lasts. This is because additional doses shift the immune response further and further towards the humoral immunity (more antibodies are produced), making the immune response less and less effective. In other words, the more doses a person receives, the more likely he will get sick, and the longer he will be contagious.

How is the effectiveness of vaccines measured during clinical trials? Scientists cannot simply vaccinate children, infect them, and then see how many of them become ill. As such, the effectiveness of vaccines is measured by the number of antibodies that the immune system produces in response to vaccination. In the case of whooping cough (as is the case for other vaccines), we see that the opposite is true: the more antibodies the immune system produces, the higher the probability of contracting the disease. Therefore, one of the recommendations of the authors of the previous article is to reduce the amount of antigen in vaccines. Even the CDC states that there is no correlation between the number of antibodies and the level of protection against pertussis.
That is, there is a big difference between the clinical effectiveness of the vaccine and its effectiveness during clinical trials. The more effective the pertussis vaccine looks during clinical trials, the less effective it is in reality, since the stronger it shifts immunity toward Th2.

Determination of Serum Antibody to Bordetella pertussis Adenylate Cyclase Toxin in Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children and in Children and Adults with Pertussis (Cherry, 2004, Clin Infect Dis.)
When the immune system meets a pathogen for the first time, it elicits an immune response. The second time the same or a similar pathogen is encountered, the immune system uses the same immune response, even if another (new) response would have been more effective. This phenomenon is called "original antigenic sin". In the case of whooping cough, after the pertussis bacterium settles in the airways, one of the toxins that it secretes, namely adenylate cyclase toxin (ACT), deceives the immune system so that it doesn´t recognise pertussis as a pathogen. After two weeks, however, the immune system realizes that it was deceived, and begins to fight against the pertussis infection. The next time the immune system will come across ACT, it will not be deceived and will immediately suppress the pathogen. Thus, an individual will not become infected a second time. However, since there is no ACT in the vaccine, the immune system of the vaccinated individual does not yet know how to react to it, and the vaccinated individual becomes infected with whooping cough. Now, as a result of original antigenic sin, the immune system in this case will never learn how to respond effectively to pertussis.
Moreover, the more doses an individual receives, the greater the effect of original antigenic sin. This is because with each dose, the immune system will produce more and more specific B-cells. These cells end up competing with naive B-cells that could have adapted and responded more efficiently to a slightly altered pathogen.
Thus, since the vaccine pathogen and the natural pathogen differ from each other, the immune response to the real pertussis bacterium in an unvaccinated individual will be much more effective than the immune response in a vaccinated individual. In this way, an unvaccinated individual will suffer pertussis once and only once, while a vaccinated individual will have ineffective response to the bacterium for the rest of his or her life.

In a 2019 study, James Cherry, a leading pertussis researcher at the University of California, writes that "because of the original antigenic sin, all children who were primed by DTaP vaccines will be more susceptible to pertussis throughout their lifetimes, and there is no easy way to decrease this increased lifetime susceptibility". Since the effect of vaccination disappears after 3 years almost completely, the author proposes to vaccinate every 3 years those who were vaccinated with the acellular vaccine.

Just as excessive use of antibiotics can lead to mutations of bacteria and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant species, universal vaccination can lead to the rapid appearance of vaccine-resistant bacteria.

Accordingly, a new, more virulent strain of pertussis appeared among vaccinated individuals, a strain that did not exist before vaccination began. This strain, unfortunately, leads to more hospitalizations and deaths than the original strain.

Sometimes, B. parapertussis (para-whooping cough) can occupy the place of the ordinary pertussis bacterium. Vaccination does not protect against B. parapertussis and, in fact, it is already responsible for 16% of all cases of the disease.
According to another study, parapertussis is actually responsible for 36% of whooping cough cases. In this study, while 62% of individuals with whooping cough had been vaccinated, 81% of those with para-whooping cough had been vaccinated.
According to research in mice, vaccination against pertussis increases the risk of contracting para-whooping cough by 40 times (compared to unvaccinated individuals).
Here is an example (here) of para-whooping cough outbreak in Minnesota: 100% of cases had been vaccinated.

Another component of the pertussis acellular vaccine is pertactin. Pertactin is a protein normally located in the membrane of the pertussis bacterium. In countries where the acellular vaccine is used, the bacterial responsible for whooping cough are generally the pertussis without pertactin. Here are the studies of this phenomenon in Finland, United States, Japan and Australia, where strains without pertactin almost completely replaced strains with pertactin in just four years.
A non-pertactin strain is more invasive than a normal strain. More: [1], [2].

The authors performed a genetic analysis of pertussis bacterial strains in the Netherlands and concluded that the bacterium had mutated and adapted according to the vaccine. The predominate strains became those with different, mutated forms of pertactin and pertussis toxin. These strains did not exist before vaccination against pertussis began. The same trend was also observed in Finland, the USA and Italy.

Another bacterial strain that has been found to replace B. pertussis is B. holmesii. This strain causes the same symptoms and its pathogenicity is not affected by the vaccine.

In Britain, pertussis vaccine coverage fell after the year 1975. Pertussis-related hospitalization declined between 1970-1983, and no cases of pertussis-induced encephalopathy, brain damage, lung damage, or death were reported between 1975-1982. There was no evidence of herd immunity, sufficient to protect babies.
The author of this study concludes that the risks related to pertussis vaccination are higher than the risks of whooping cough itself for people living in affluent areas of Britain. For people living in poorer areas, the incidence of pertussis is slightly higher, but there is still no evidence that pertussis is associated with excessive deaths or chronic complications.

In an analysis of 11,000 children who received a whole-cell vaccine in Canada, those who received the first dose of the vaccine two months later than usual developed asthma far less often (2-fold lower chance). Furthermore, those who received all three doses of the vaccine later in childhood had a 2.5-fold lower risk of developing asthma.
This phenomenon is due to the fact that the immune reaction shifts towards Th2. The exact cause of asthma is not yet known, but according to one of the prevailing theories, asthma is caused by increased hygiene. When children grow up in an extremely sterile environment, they do not come into contact with bacteria. This leads to the production of IgE antibodies. These IgE antibodies are responsible for asthma, allergies, dermatitis, and other problems that are much more common in vaccinated children. This is because vaccinations shift immunity towards Th2, which happens directly (due to vaccine antigens), and indirectly (due to protection against bacteria).

The vaccinated had asthma twice as often as the unvaccinated. The authors believe that 50% of asthma cases (2.9 million) in US children and adolescents would be prevented if the DTP or tetanus vaccination was not administered. More: [1]

In vaccinated with whole-cell vaccine, the risk of allergy was 76% higher. In those who took antibiotics in the first two years of life, the risk of allergy was 2 times higher.
Taking one course of antibiotics increased the risk of developing an allergy by 85%, two courses of antibiotics increased the risk 3-fold, and three courses of antibiotics increased the risk 8-fold.
Those who had measles and had not received the vaccine, had a 45% lower risk of developing an allergy (note: in this case there was no statistical significance).

Those individuals who had been vaccinated with a whole-cell vaccine, had a 5.4-fold greater chance of developing asthma compared to unvaccinated individuals.

The DTP vaccine has been associated with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in Los Angeles, and visits to the doctor have also been associated with SIDS.

After the vaccination coverage in England fell sharply due to fear of the DTP vaccine, the number of pertussis cases and pertussis-related deaths fell 4-fold.

Girls who received the first dose of DTaP at least one month after the suggested term developed allergies four times less frequently than girls who were vaccinated on time. Both boys and girls developed eczema two times less often if they were vaccinated at least one month after the recommended date.
Here it is also reported that vaccinated mice developed lung pathologies.

The acellular vaccine, of course, is much less dangerous than the whole-cell vaccine, but, nevertheless, according to VAERS, 1,077 people have died after being administered this vaccine in the USA since 2002. Moreover, 1,009 became disabled, 8,700 were hospitalized, but less than 200 people died from whooping cough itself (note: of these individuals some had been vaccinated). In other words, the risk of dying from vaccination is at least five times higher than the risk of dying from whooping cough. Since the VAERS figures should be multiplied by at least 10, the risk of dying from vaccination is 50 times higher than from the disease.

A systematic review of the effect of antibiotics on whooping cough conducted by Cochrane found that while antibiotics kill pertussis and reduce the probability that a person transmits the disease, they do not affect the actual course of the disease.
The use of antibiotics to help prevent infants from contracting pertussis is ineffective. Research has demonstrated that the use of antibiotics among children only leads to a longer illness.

In 1936, articles on the effectiveness of vitamin C against pertussis began to appear in the medical literature. The first study was by Otani in Japan, who administered the vitamin intravenously. Later, in 1937, an independent study by Omerod [1], [2] used the oral vitamin C to treat pertussis in Canada. Furthermore, in 1938, vitamin C was successfully used in a study by Vermillion to help cure pertussis in only a few days. It has also been reported that young infants who are breastfed are practically freed of pertussis because of the high vitamin C level in their mother´s milk.
In 1938, a controlled trial found that vitamin C is not more effective than a control substance. However, cod liver oil, belladonna and bromide were used as control substances despite the fact that in an article published in Lancet in 1871 it was shown that whooping cough could be successfully treated using cod liver oil. Even then, scientists have known a lot about choosing a placebo. In the 1950s, several more articles were published on the treatment of pertussis with vitamin C. At that point, however, a vaccine appeared and vitamin C was completely forgotten. As a result, during the past 70 years no one has made further investigations into the benefits of vitamin C against pertussis. Nonetheless, some doctors and parents still successfully use it to treat and prevent whooping cough.

Comparison between mortality from pertussis and mortality from scurvy:

Children who had whooping cough during childhood, had a 1.5-2 times lower risk of developing some types of leukemia.

The most frequent argument for the effectiveness of the pertussis vaccine is that when pertussis vaccination began in the 1950s, about 1,000 people were dying from pertussis per year, and now this number is much lower. However, if you look in more detail at the figures behind whooping cough-related mortality then it becomes clear that the vaccine has nothing to do with the reduction at all, since more than 90% of the decline in mortality occurred before vaccination began, and even before antibiotics were used. Here are the graphs for pertussis-induced mortality in the US and England.