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Vaccines and Remembrance of Things Past
Pew polling indicates that about 40% of African Americans are vaccine-hesitant or resistant. These individuals cite various reasons for their hesitancy, among which are discomfort regarding how quickly the vaccines were developed and how limited the testing of the vaccines was before they were authorized, on an emergency basis, for use. Many are concerned about possible side effects. Reasonable concerns. The FDA has yet to release its risk-benefit analysis of the Pfizer vaccine despite full approval of the vaccine. Such a circumstance is contrary to all prior FDA practice, adding to concern about the vaccines.
Joe Biden’s imposition of mandates, and anger at those unvaccinated, jogged my memory regarding events that occurred around the time I started Medical School almost 50 years ago. I started Medical School at UCLA in 1973. At that time genetic screening for various genetic disorders was a hot topic. In Southern California with, at the time, the largest Jewish population (Ashkenazi Jews are particularly afflicted with Tay Sachs) on the planet outside of Tel Aviv, prenatal screening for Tay Sachs was de rigeur. If a child was born with Tay Sachs, (an untreatable, incurable recessive genetic disorder that resulted in the birth of a perfectly healthy baby that, nevertheless underwent deterioration and decline over months to a couple of years and died), a medical malpractice suit for “wrongful life” was sure to follow.
Screening for Trisomy 21 was routine. Abortion of Trisomy 21 fetuses was routine.
There was a major push to screen for Sickle Cell trait. The African American community in Southern California at that time, in contrast to the Jewish community in Southern California, was strongly resistant to genetic screening. A year before I started medical school, in 1972, an expose’ of the Tuskegee Study of syphilis in poor Black farmers in Alabama had hit the proverbial fan. Appropriate outrage ensued. That had a marked effect on the willingness of African Americans to undergo genetic screening.
Five years before I started medical school at UCLA, the UCLA Law Review had published an issue on biomedical issues in law, with a preface by Linus Pauling, the discoverer of the molecular defect causing Sickle Cell disease. In that preface, Pauling had called for what became called his “yellow star” program (after the yellow star armbands that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany a generation or more earlier). Pauling advocated placing a visible permeant brand on anyone with a single gene for Sickle Cell disease (that is, anyone who had Sickle trait, a benign entity) so that they would not marry someone else with Sickle Trait and run a 25% risk of having a child with Sickle Cell disease. He also strongly encouraged aborting any baby found to have Sickle Cell disease on prenatal screening, to limit the pain and suffering of such individuals. He vilified then Governor Reagan for failure to allow abortions for such pregnancies. Unfortunately, at about the same time, Nixon made a major effort to push research and treatment of Sickle Cell disease, but in announcing that effort, he identified Sickle Cell disease as a disease exclusively of African Americans, which is not true. It does not just occur in African Americans. It can affect Greeks, Cypriots, Asians, Spanish, Portuguese. Thus, African Americans were essentially labeled as the sole carriers of a feared genetic disorder, while the most prominent of scientists called for aborting affected Black babies and screening the entire African American community to enable that. It would be hard to think of a more effective way of alienating Blacks from the medical and scientific establishments. Much of that alienation persists, almost like memory T cell immunity.
Cal Tech, in Pasadena, where Pauling worked, was a hotbed of Eugenics enthusiasm. The Board of Cal Tech had established the Human Betterment Foundation in 1929 under the influence of E.S. Gosney and Paul Popenoe. Pretty much the entire Board, which included David Starr Jordan, backed that Foundation. As did most of the faculty, which included not only Pauling, but Robert Milliken and Thomas Hunt Morgan (who was somewhat more passive on Eugenics than his fellow colleagues). Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and the genetic code, was trained by Linus Pauling at Cal Tech, and was sent by Pauling to England to work with Francis Crick on the very promising research into nucleic acids. Later in his life, Watson was named head of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which had been the epicenter of Eugenics in the first half of the 20th Century (The Eugenics Records office, under the direction of Harry Laughlin, was housed at that laboratory–funded by the Harriman fortune and the Carnegie Foundation–and was eventually closed at the end of 1939 by Vanevar Bush, who ran the Carnegie Foundation when the nonsense that was Eugenics began to be recognized for the perverse pseudoscience that it was; Charles Davenport, arguably the most influential biologist of his time and an avid Eugenicist, headed the Laboratory). Watson eventually had to resign that post when his intensely bigoted comments, particularly demeaning to Blacks, became too much for his colleagues to stomach. Into the 21st Century, he was still under the influence of Luis Aggasiz’ vile “scientific racism” that underpinned so many attitudes among prominent scientists in the 20th Century
Cal Tech became the institution that accounted for the most forced sterilizations during the Eugenics era. The research there was funded primarily by the Rockefeller Foundation. Cal Tech was the institution at which the most forced sterilizations of the “unfit” were performed in America, somewhere around 16,000. The records of those patients are still under lock and key in the Cal Tech archives, off-limits to everyone.
Needless to say, there was a considerable lack of trust among African Americans regarding the Medical and Scientific establishments, in Southern California. One could hardly blame the African American community for its hesitancy to participate in genetic screening for Sickle Cell trait. While life span was short, and life hazardous and painful for Sickle Cell disease patients in the 1970s, marked progress in managing the disease has been achieved. The use of penicillin prophylactically during the first three years of life, to prevent pneumococcal pneumonia, to which patients with Sickle Cell disease are particularly susceptible, with high infant and childhood mortality from this one bacteria, markedly reduced infant mortality, which overall greatly increased the average longevity of patients with Sickle Cell disease. Another great advance was the discovery that hydroxyurea reduced the sickling episodes that are so painful, debilitating, and damaging, by 50%. The expected longevity of a patient with Sickle Cell disease has risen from about 25 years in the 1960s to now over 60 years. Sickle Cell disease has become a more or less manageable chronic disease. We are into the era now of monoclonal antibody treatment that can further reduce the impact of sickling events; bone marrow transplants that can potentially cure the disease, and potential gene therapy for cure. The Sickle Cell disease baby that Pauling wanted to abort in 1970 might have survived to see his or her disease become a manageable chronic disease with far less suffering and much higher quality of life and longevity. Scientists like Linus Pauling actually had little confidence in Science.
Then of course, Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the year that I started medical school. Now there was no longer a legal barrier to the genetic screening and abortion of babies affected with severe genetic traits. Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg thought that Medicaid should cover abortions to allow preventing the births of babies to poor parents, regardless of genetic screening or disease status, rather, aborting such infants of poor parents was a means to reducing the numbers of poor, among which, disproportionately were African Americans. Eugenics based on income. Which was one of the same arguments made for the Eugenics of forced sterilization earlier in the Century. Of course, there was the tension for abortion advocates (Democrats) between limiting the Black population, and getting the Black vote. A politician wouldn’t want to abort too many of his constituents, one would think.
In fact, Joe Biden seems to think that he politically owns the Black population, that to not support him politically is tantamount to not being Black. Joe Biden’s campaign wasn’t so much about the “soul of America” as it was about owning the souls of Americans, particularly Black Americans, in the sense of 16 tons(the Merle Travis sense). Joe Biden seems to think Blacks owe him politically. Why? Those Souls of Black Folks that W.E.B. Dubois labored hard to convince White Folk actually existed, are now fair game for ownership by Joe Biden, he seems to think. How could forcing a vaccine on them that might, as Nicki Minaj has alleged, cause orchitis, with impotence and sterility, not reduce confidence in his diktats? There is evidence that COVID itself can cause testicular damage. But that information is not likely to get the kind of attention that Nicki Minaj’s tweets have received. And the risks of the vaccine seem to be under wraps at the FDA. There is very little information on the effects of the COVID vaccine on testicular function. One study from Urologists at the University of Miami showed no testicular effects of the vaccine in 45 men studied (too small a sample to have any import). Whom to believe? Biden or Nicki Minaj?
Published in Healthcare
I have no reason not to believe Nicki. I have a significant history with BodyBagBiden that rationally justifies not believing anything he says. I can’t assure you that what Nicki says is accurate. I can assure you that what Joe says has a very high likelihood of not being accurate or true.
I’m going with Nicki on this one…
Tay-Sachs and a few other disorders are unique in that they are not treatable or curable. In Tay-Sachs, there is a cellular waste collection and recycling system that is broken completely, causing waste to build up in the cells. About the only way to actually cure it involves gene therapy. I understand a lot of Ricochetti believe that is pure evil and tampering with God’s Image, but if you do not fix the enzyme system it is only a question of how soon will you die of the disease. I cannot bring myself to judge some who aborts a child with Tay-Sachs
Sickle Cell was never so inevitably fatal once it was understood. In fact, we could see mutations that ameliorated the disease. (adult and fetal hemoglobin are different proteins. If you keep the fetal hemoglobin around longer, you don’t have as bad of symptoms) I believe hydroxyurea actually induces a similar state. I think genetic counseling is a good idea, especially for those with disease.
If I could, I would love to fix genetic disorders with therapy, (for example, take a parent’s normal copy of the Tay Sachs associated gene and insert it into the embryo) but I thoroughly reject mandatory selective breeding of people. Eugenics was a crude and brutal excuse for medicine, and belongs with the plague doctors and bloodletting of the past.
I read years ago that sickle cell anemia was a defense mechanism against malaria or sleeping sickness, I can’t remember which. Is this true?
The result is the same, isn’t it?
Yes, the heterozygous state is resistant to malaria. Thus the prevalence of sickle hemoglobin in malarial areas. (“Heterozygous” = carrying two different genes, one normal, one the sickle mutant.)
SSA is a very important disease. It is the sine qua non of molecular genetic medicine. Sickle cell disease was taught in infinite detail in my college biology and genetics courses (1976-78) and the basic sciences curriculum of medical school (1978-79). We learned about the single amino acid substitution that deformed the beta hemoglobin chain, we calculated the population levels of heterozygotes in primitive societies that would balance malarial resistance against 25% certain infant deaths, we kept up with amazement with the orders of magnitude decrements in mortality.
I have many times, at least 30, discovered a woman seeking infertility therapy to be a SSA carrier (heterozygous). Check her husband, see a geneticist, get good counseling, make babies.
The curiosity and dedicated work put into this disease by thousands of basic scientists and clinicians is proof to me that American medicine is not “systemically racist”. Racists like Linus Pauling, Joe Biden and their ilk are sufficient reason for American blacks to be suspicious of “the Man’s” medical advice for the next ten generations.
The advances in basic and clinical understanding of another genetic disease, Cystic Fibrosis, have been on a par with sickle cell. In med school I learned of the 15 year projected life span for this disease. Just twenty years later in my old infertility practice I had patients with it who were having second children in their 30’s.
Once you get past the politics (not only those of WuFlu) modern American medicine is awesome, a freaking miracle repeated daily.
This is a great post, Nanocelt, thank you for putting it up.
Good heavens.
What a choice.
No. The method matters. One is a tragic decision by parents, morally wrong but in a way that I can’t pontificate about, like a soldier who kills a friend who is dying in agony. The other is the dehumanizing treatment of people as livestock by the government – if you can be bred like cattle, you can be slaughtered like cattle.
My goodness, but you’ve brought back some memories.
My dad was diagnosed with a weird degenerative muscle disease when he was around 40 (and had five kids) around 1965. . He was referred to UCLA, where he went six times per year for testing. He was told to get his affairs in order, as he would never see 50.
My mother – who was no dummy, noted that the “testing” was doing him no good. And he came home grumpy. So he stopped it and proceeded to have another kid.
In the mid 70s all five of us were called to UCLA and given some tests. (I was the oldest at 16) We were told that under no under uncertain terms were we to have children without genetic testing. If memory serves my dad took us for ice cream after. And it was never spoken of again.
My dad made it to 85, refusing all calls from UCLA (and they hounded him for at least 20 years). His five children had 15. And those 15 are busily producing the next generation.
Not even sure this is relevant. Except that my dad’s whatever disease got a lot of attention at the time, and I’m glad he (and we) didn’t listen to the experts. We weren’t listening because it was the first time my dad sprung for a double scoop of ice cream.
I even liked her threats. “Threatening my family in Trinidad won’t bode well for you.” Nothing serious, just a warning.
And the statement from Guardian Media Limited on behalf of “journalist” Sharlene Rampersad is priceless. “We denounce intimidation of journalists in any form.”
Journalists intimidating family relations of celebrities is okay but intimidating journalists in return for intimidating regular folk is beyond the pale apparently.
Does the medical problem she talked about ever just happen in that way for other reasons?
Yes, and it’s not rare. It was most likely acute gonorrhea.
Oh, good. Thanks.
Well, nothing good about any of that. But it’s good that this is not a worrisome clue about some new vaccine problem.
Yes, mumps contracted as an adult will produce orchitis. Contracted in childhood it will not because the testes are not developed. That is far and away the main cause of orchitis. Other viruses and bacteria can cause orchitis. It can also be “Idiopathic” (cause unknown, or, colloquially, your doctor is an idiot).
Nanocelt, why do you call eugenics a pseudoscience?
Because it was, and is, a social activist movement trying to masquerade as a science. Just like Climate change now. It was fueled by bigotry and delusion and a positivist type of enthusiasm that Man could remake Man in his preferred image. That Man could eliminate the weak and the poor and the downtrodden and the inferior. It was concocted and promulgated by deluded and deranged individuals based on their own conceptions of themselves as the saviors of the species (“we have to improve the species and cull it to preserve the species). Because it was supposed animal and plant husbandry applied to humans, as if humans were a lower form of life. Francis Galton’s (he was the founder of Eugenics, and coined the term) vision of humanity was that of “prized sheep on a well tended moor.”
I admit, I do somewhat give it more credit than it deserves by calling it a pseudoscience, but many of its practitioners were called scientists in their day, such as Charles Davenport, Linus Pauling, David Starr Jordan, and/etc. And many of our current “scientists” are Eugenicists still. So I use an insufficient term, pseudoscience, which does not quite capture the actual horrendous nature of Eugenics.
Many Eugenicists were prominent Economists, Politicians (including William Taft), Pastors, Preachers, Social “scientists” and, etc. It is a damnable fraud perpetrated on humanity using science as a cover. The main point of Eugenics is to extirpate those deemed unfit or unsuitable members of the species. It is playing god with human lives. Abortion was an extension of Eugenics, by other means. I could go on. If you think forced sterilization of the ‘unfit” is a scientific procedure, feel free to consider Eugenics a “science.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but Charles Murray remains a prominent Eugenicist, as he uses the methods of Eugenics in his work.
Soon we will have Eugenics gone wild with CRSPR technology manipulating germ cells ad libitum to recreate the human to something more adequate for our elitist betters who run our society. They will soon be able to fundamentally transform….us.
Actually, testicular swelling has been reported to VAERS as a side effect, so it is not right to say anyone with swollen testicles after vaccination has gonorrhea.
Except for advice on how to become rich as a public servant, I’d take Nicki’s advice before Joe’s.
I would wonder if he might not have had a form of Ehlers-Danlos, a disorder characterized by hyperextensibility of joints. This can lead to arthritis in later life. Just wondering. I’m probably wrong. May have been a mild form of muscular dystrophy. There are so many possibilities. Whatever it was, it is highly likely that UCLA was more interested in characterizing the disorder and following in for their “scholarship” (read, professional aggrandizement in writing papers on the disease, gaining prestige among colleagues in the same area, etc). A lot of strange things go on in academic medical centers. As in medicine elsewhere.
This is why have have steered clear of the Mayo Clinic medical services. I’ve seen people they never finish with and they can miss the obvious while doing their research.
It was a degenerative muscle disease. It began with him losing the muscle in between his thumb and pointer finger, then went to his calves, which gave him a weird gait. He had to throw his feet. It was funny when he would walk with the youngest as a toddler, as the toddler would mimic his walking style.
When it went to his throat they told him the gig was up as it was progressing so quickly. Progress slowed to a crawl after that; he just had to be careful when eating. As the years went by the fingers on both hands pulled into a claw.
I remember some medical journals that he “starred” in (his words). He enjoyed the attention for awhile, but my mom said he always came back depressed. And as noted, they weren’t helping him at all.
I assume UCLA was curious whether any of us would inherit the disease
I had mumps on both sides during Christmas of 1959, I think. We have family movies of the chipmunk.
But VAERS only reports events happening after other events, and we have to reason our way to causality very carefully from those events.
If it happens 5 times in a million male vaccinations but also happens 3 to 10 times per random million males from mumps or gonorrhea, then I think the vaccines are not causing it.
It’s a different calculation if it happens 30 times in a million male vaccinations but only 3 to 10 times per random million males. Then I think the vaccines are probably a cause.
At the moment all I know is that it’s happened after the vaccine, and that it normally happens sometimes anyway. Without more numbers, I have no reason to think the vaccines are a cause.
So anyone got numbers?
Are human traits and characteristics not heritable?
It seems to me that there is substantial, if not overwhelming, evidence that a wide variety of traits and characteristics are heritable. You may have a moral objection to the application of this fact, but I don’t think that a political objection, or a moral objection, makes a theory “pseudoscientific.”
I appreciate the reference to Charles Murray. This exemplifies the problem. The people who call him a pseudoscientist are, in fact, the pseudoscientists.
The reasoning isn’t proof, but only educated guessing, statistical probability. It there were a proven and demonstrate biophysical link that would be plenty, but we don’t have any of that either.
We are along way, if ever, from knowing which fetuses carry which genetic traits to know which babies to abort.
Spoken like a true pSeudoscientist.
Not yet–not unless you have more information than I’ve had. All I know is that it’s happened after the vaccine, and that it normally happens sometimes anyway. Drawing any conclusion about vaccine causality based on that information alone is neither educated guessing nor statistical probability.
Unless you have more more information than I do, in which case please share.
Maybe I misunderstood your “So anyone got numbers?” What I’m saying is that causation cannot be proven by mere correlation. Which I’m sure you would argue for, too. Statistics can suggest a causative relationship, but cannot in themselves prove it.
Yes. So we don’t know that this is a side-effect of the vaccines.