One of Ben Franklin’s early efforts was making fun of inoculation for smallpox – as an older man, he ran a mea culpa over the episode, but the damage done was from decades in the past.
The Franklin brothers’ Boston newspaper was critical of smallpox inoculation in 1721. Inoculation used a string which had been drawn through the pustule of a smallpox victim. The string was dried out and saved. For inoculation, an incision was made and the string was drawn through it to infect the recipient with attenuated smallpox. The recipient would more often get a milder form of smallpox with a lower risk of death. During that period the recipient would be contagious to others. (This would not be the case for Jenner’s later cowpox vaccine, an important improvement.)
One article from August 1721 tried to guilt readers into resisting inoculation. If someone gets inoculated and then spreads the disease to someone else, who in turn dies of it, the article asked, “at whose hands shall their Blood be required?” The same article went on to say that “Epidemeal Distempers” such as smallpox come “as Judgments from an angry and displeased God.”
In contrast to Mather and Boylston’s research, the Courant’s articles were designed not to discover, but to sow doubt and distrust. The argument that inoculation might help to spread the disease posits something that was theoretically possible – at least if simple precautions were not taken – but it seems beside the point. If inoculation worked, wouldn’t it be worth this small risk, especially since widespread inoculations would dramatically decrease the likelihood that one person would infect another?
Okay, it was Ben’s older brother who took sides [bc he hated Cotton Mather more than that he had any particular issue with inoculation], but Ben was writing/editing for the paper at the time.
As an older man, Ben was pro-inoculation. His own toddler son died from smallpox, but it wasn’t b/c Ben was anti-inoculation, but that he had put it off due to illnesses the boy had, and then the boy caught smallpox in the normal way, and then died.
our district last week had 3 people speaking about the health curriculum, particularly the sexual health curriculum. said it was too graphic, too gay friendly, too anti-religious, and was essentially a form of child abuse. they were: one community member with 0 kids; one community member w kids she home schools; and a person from 60 miles away. they had their videos recorded by peers and were so excited to stop this abuse.
That shit happens at our school board meeting every week, in the “open forum” portion. I’m guessing there is some law (local/state) protecting their freedums to waste everyone else’s time.
Agree with everything the whistleblower said. Facebook is destroying civil society and bringing down humanity. Also agree that Instagram is incredibly harmful to teenage girls.
Yes humans are inherently terribly, but facebook enables that side
Instagram suddenly has a definite change to show less content to garner a negative reaction and more feel good type stuff in the explore bar. It is very obviously a decision to change it from what I saw just yesterday. Now, instead of obnoxious tik toc type stuff in the top right of the explore bar, it is clips from old sit coms I watched in my youth like friends or the nanny or a video of marylin monroe. It is stuff that is far more likely to only have positive reactions. This is definitely due to the whistleblower