Medical Conspiracy Theories

One of the favorite targets of conspiracy theorists and science deniers is the field of medicine.

So reject medicine and go back to the way it was before real science became involved. Enjoy bloodletting, foul concoctions being administered via enema, high death rates during birth (for mothers and babies), no washing of hands or instruments between patients. Compound fractures were too complicated to set, so your arm or leg was removed with a meat saw and no anesthetic. During recovery, there was a very high chance of dying from the ensuing infection. Diseases and medical conditions that are easily treated now were death sentences. I could keep going, but it just keeps getting more horrifying.

Around 1600, Zacharias Janssen invented a compound microscope. It’s not clear if that was the first microscope, but it’s the first one historians are certain of.

Like any new invention, the science community jumped on it and began creating more and better versions. Soon, single celled creatures were being studied, as well as corpuscles and other cells of the human and animal body.

Around the middle of the 17th century, a few doctors were suggesting a possible link between germs and disease, but they were mostly ignored. For the next 200 years, any time the germ theory was brought up, the medical community rejected it. A small subset of doctors began washing hands and sterilizing their instruments, but the medical community in general thought that was a crackpot idea.

It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that modern medical science was born. Research began in earnest, new treatments and surgical techniques were devised, and sterilization became the norm. Since then, medical science has made strides faster and faster. People are living longer, healthier lives. Dozens of conditions and diseases are no longer a death sentence.

If you don’t trust medical science, why do you seek medical attention when you need it?

Medical science in and of itself is sound. Researchers genuinely want to find treatments and cures. Often they are motivated by a loved one suffering or dying from a condition which has insufficient therapies available.

If you don’t trust medical science, it’s because your brain isn’t making the proper connection. It’s greed at the highest echelons of the corporate jungle you need to be suspicious of. There’s a reason pharmaceutical companies often come under fire, through lawsuits or other means. Pharmaceutical companies are why society depends too much on pills. Many pills ARE necessary, but many doctors aren’t being taught that alternative therapies sometimes work better, and without the side effects. Don’t blame doctors. They’re doing what they’ve been taught, and most of them honestly believe it’s the best way.

Since there are so many anti-vaxxers out there, and since the Covid vaccine has been their favorite target for the last four years, it makes an excellent example of why politics and medicine shouldn’t mix.

On May 15, 2020, Trump announced Operation Warp Speed and signed the executive order that same day.

Here are the normal procedures for approving a new vaccine, which can take years:

Despite misinformation spread by the anti-vaxxer community, nobody in the NIH has any authority of any kind at all to approve a vaccine. The NIH is one of multiple entities that conducts the trials. After the trials are concluded, they submit the results to the FDA. The FDA evaluates the results, and if they are satisfied, they send a report to the ACIP, who then makes a thorough study of all reports. The ACIP then takes a vote on how to proceed next. IF the vote falls in favor of approving the vaccine, they send their recommendation to the CDC. The CDC evaluates all the data, then decides on whether to allow the FDA to approve the vaccine for use.

But Trump decided to ignore the  protests of the medical science community and chose to bypass the normal safety procedures. He bragged about pushing the FDA to hurry hurry hurry!

So the Covid vaccine reached the market in record time, including the military. The result was a series of recalls, by Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and others. Yet, Trump continued to brag about his role in getting it on the market in record time.

The rushed Covid vaccine could have been an unmitigated disaster; fortunately it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Either way, stop blaming science. Politics (Trump) and corporate greed (pharmaceutical companies) are to blame for any harm that befell patients who received an insufficiently tested vaccine.

Vaccinations in general have had a profound positive effect on society. Those who are against vaccinations don’t have a clue! How would you feel if you lost half or more than half of your children before they ever reached adulthood? If vaccinations were to all come to a halt, in a very few years there would be no anti-vaxxers. They would be begging for vaccines!

Pandemics began with the advent of civilization. As cities got bigger and regions got more crowded, pandemics increased. Smallpox is an excellent example to use.

It’s been around about 12,000 years. It was introduced to the New World when the Europeans carried it there, and is one of the primary causes of the fall of the Aztec and Inca empires. It was prevalent in Africa, Europe, China and India for millennia. The earliest Egyptian mummies found to have had smallpox date from 3500 years ago. Almost 7 million people died from smallpox in the Roman Empire in the second century A.D.

In 18th century Europe, about 400,000 people died from smallpox per year. Those who lived were permanently scarred, and one third of the survivors were blind by the time they recovered from the disease. Most babies and young children who contracted it died.

18th century Europe is of special note, because that’s when the first smallpox inoculations began.

Initially, the variolation method was used, but it wasn’t always effective, and sometimes harmful.

Then around the end of the 18th century, Edward Jenner devised the first safe and effective smallpox vaccination. It was slow to catch on, but the more widespread it’s use became, the slower smallpox spread.

Finally, in 1980, the World Health Organization announced the complete and total eradication of the smallpox virus, following a massive 10 year worldwide campaign to get every human vaccinated. Because of that, the smallpox vaccine is no longer administered, since there’s no more need for it.

If you really want to stop vaccinations, the diseases they prevent first need to be eradicated. The need for them will never end for good, though. New diseases will pop up, via zoonoses or whatever other means. But to keep it to a minimum, we have to trust the medical community to do it’s part.