We Need to Dish
Don’t let the clear, rounded walls fool you into thinking you’re still on the outside. Just reach out and you’ll feel the smooth edges of your new existence. You, along with 341 million of your friends and neighbors, are currently living inside a national petri dish. It sits in a lab in Washington DC, where RFK Jr and his band of mad pseudo-scientific, sorcerer’s apprentices—nostalgic for ailments of the past—are using glass stirring sticks to spin up beakers-full of once-defeated viruses, which they plan to tilt into our communal receptacle to see how we test subjects will react to, say, a few drops of the measles virus or, maybe for old time’s sake, a couple test tubes’ worth of polio.
You can try to avoid the toxic tonic, but the deadly brew doesn’t just attack directly; it spreads from one test subject to another. That’s the only way these inverted alchemists, determined to reverse the elixers of life their sane counterparts discovered long ago, can efficiently run tests measuring how much damage can be done and in how little time, as they move to achieve the Frankensteinization of human health.
Consider this idea from Kirk Milhoan, Head Quack of our Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, who recently opined on the upside of the downturn in those who get the measles vaccine. “What we’re going to have is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles. What is the new incidence of hospitalization? What’s the incidence of death?” (Uh, I’ll take Things That Dr. Mengele Might Ask for 2000, Alex.) You might argue that we experienced the incidences, and they are specifically what motivated the creation of a vaccine, but, sadly, you’re not holding the beaker. You’re stuck in the dish. NYT (Gift Article): Rejecting Decades of Science, Vaccine Panel Chair Says Polio and Other Shots Should Be Optional. “He said there were emerging concerns that repeatedly stimulating the immune system with multiple vaccines might increase the risk of allergies, asthma and eczema. Large studies have dismissed that claim, but Dr. Milhoan said he trusted his own observations over what ‘established science’ might suggest about vaccines.” (Hey, you can’t make a do your own research death omelet without cracking a few observations from established science.)
+ Think any of this sounds like an exaggeration? Consider the recent plan RFK Jr. had to delay the introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine to babies in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, just to see how that would go. Kennedy Plan to Test a Vaccine in West African Babies Is Blocked. Maybe this is Jr’s way of easing the news that the U.S. Just Formally Withdrew From The World Health Organization. “Global health experts worry that a lack of international coordination will lead to death and disaster.” (Well, at least we’ll have some fresh data from a real-world experience on the incidence of death and disaster.)
