Dr. Howard Markel: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Vaccines
[Dr. Howard Markel, a professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, is the author of “An Anatomy of Addiction,” to be published in July.]
As a pediatrician, I was baffled by scientifically baseless attacks on the substances that have tamed smallpox, polio and a host of other deadly and disfiguring diseases, at least in the developed world.
But as a historian, I found it even more bewildering to hear speakers claim that government-sponsored vaccines were a violation of the founding fathers’ design.
It is true that in their time there was no such thing as safe, standardized immunization. But even then, inoculation was used to quell smallpox, the deadliest scourge of the day. Such preventive public health measures framed the early days of our nation as tightly as the “unalienable rights” of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
John Adams was inoculated in 1764. Twelve years later, while he was in Philadelphia declaring American independence, his wife and children were inoculated as an epidemic raged in Boston. Gen. George Washington ordered his soldiers to be inoculated in 1777 because more men were falling to smallpox than to Redcoat muskets. Thomas Jefferson, who avidly followed the scientific literature on the subject, inoculated himself and his children in 1782.
But the most eloquent advocate of smallpox inoculation was Benjamin Franklin....
Read entire article at NYT
As a pediatrician, I was baffled by scientifically baseless attacks on the substances that have tamed smallpox, polio and a host of other deadly and disfiguring diseases, at least in the developed world.
But as a historian, I found it even more bewildering to hear speakers claim that government-sponsored vaccines were a violation of the founding fathers’ design.
It is true that in their time there was no such thing as safe, standardized immunization. But even then, inoculation was used to quell smallpox, the deadliest scourge of the day. Such preventive public health measures framed the early days of our nation as tightly as the “unalienable rights” of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
John Adams was inoculated in 1764. Twelve years later, while he was in Philadelphia declaring American independence, his wife and children were inoculated as an epidemic raged in Boston. Gen. George Washington ordered his soldiers to be inoculated in 1777 because more men were falling to smallpox than to Redcoat muskets. Thomas Jefferson, who avidly followed the scientific literature on the subject, inoculated himself and his children in 1782.
But the most eloquent advocate of smallpox inoculation was Benjamin Franklin....