04/12/2020
r1usasos
Vaccines and antibiotics are cures that are derived from the natural world with the help of human ingenuity. We need good intentions - whether from policy or holistic virtue - to continue to save lives.
And for those anti-vaccine people...I really don’t want to have that conversation now...it really is such a first world conspiracy theory - one just needs to spend time in the third world or simply to study the days before vaccines to be reminded of how susceptible we were to diseases and how countless numbers of people, especially children, would die from what are now completely preventable causes.
Antibiotics:
“I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident.” - Alexander Fleming.
In 1928, Fleming began a series of experiments with common staphylococcal bacteria. An uncovered Petri dish sitting next to an open window became contaminated with mold spores. Fleming observed the mold was killing the bacteria. His discovery of penicillin has saved millions of lives.
Vaccines:
19th Century pioneer - Louis Pasteur - has saved millions of lives around the world thanks to his experiments with living viruses. He began inoculating chickens against chicken cholera when he discovered that injecting a chicken with a weakened microbe had taught the chicken immune system to fight the infection without causing any serious harm to the chicken. He later went on to develop the first human vaccine against Rabies.
Using live viruses to fight against current diseases still happens today and we now have vaccines against smallpox, measles, diphtheria, plague, tuberculosis, etc.
In modern times, we are able to have healthier lives and see our grandchildren - and even great-grandchildren - grow up.
As we hear news of a promising coronavirus vaccine, I’m hopeful that world cooperation will make it possible to end this deadly pandemic. And who knows - maybe with a little luck, bring humanity closer together as we finally realize how interconnected and interdependent we are as one species with a common homeland.