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May 17: Edward Jenner Day?
Tigerlily and I were chatting in the car just now, and reflecting that if Talk Like A Pirate Day could become an international phenomenon, why not Edward Jenner's birthday? I mean, it's often said of him that his work has saved more lives than any other person's (which is of course arguable, but I think he has a good case, and has doubtless saved millions). He's a clear case of the triumph of science over ignorance, of progress over misery.
OTOH, my first thought was to imagine the pushback -- I have one degree of separation from multiple often-otherwise-sensible people who consider vaccination "pointlessly shooting children full of monkey pus" as one of my high school teachers (the bug-eyed math guy) often put it, and I don't think I want to have endless disheartening arguments over the merits of vaccination. Besides, a holiday about how much worse the world could be would be kind of an uphill sale.
Still. In May I'll try to remember Dr. Jenner.
OTOH, my first thought was to imagine the pushback -- I have one degree of separation from multiple often-otherwise-sensible people who consider vaccination "pointlessly shooting children full of monkey pus" as one of my high school teachers (the bug-eyed math guy) often put it, and I don't think I want to have endless disheartening arguments over the merits of vaccination. Besides, a holiday about how much worse the world could be would be kind of an uphill sale.
Still. In May I'll try to remember Dr. Jenner.
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Say, have you ever read Jessica Mitford's Hons and Rebels? I think you'd like it. (Vaccination- and indeed medical-care-relevant.)
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I've developed a standard policy of not talking to anti-vaxxers about vaccines, because it's an attitude so thoroughly grounded in fearmongering and willful ignorance. (Also, how many of them drive with their children in their cars? Yeah, my case: I rest it.)
And yet I am, myself, fairly moderate re: vaccination. I am not flapping with joy about combination vaccines (I'd rather have an M, an M and an R spread out across a greater time period than an MMR in one day, especially in tiny babies), or the extremely short time period between vaccines for infants. But being at least as cautious about jabbing our hypothetical kids with dead bacteria as we are with feeding them peanuts, wheat and honey is not the same thing as decrying vaccination all together.
(Wow, that was longer than it had to be. In brief, yay herd immunity!)
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"In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it, my example showing that the regret may be the same either way and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen." - Benjamin Franklin
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I am disappointed to note that GIANTmicrobes does not have a stuffed smallpox bacterium.
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But it could surely also be If You're Not Dead of Smallpox, Thank a Vaccination day. :)
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Have you got a citation? Not that I doubt it, but there are so friggin' many bogus and misattributed quotations out there that I always try to supply the source.
ETA: Found it! Autobiography. ... That's a web version, and I don't know what the pagination means. Google Books finds it on p. 183 of the reprint by H. Holt and company, 1916. That would be near the end of Chapter X, "Poor Richards Almanac and Other Activities".
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I recall the stories about Norman Borlaug. It's claimed that he saved 500 million lives.