The Fight To Oppose Mandatory Vaccinations Has Been A Continuous Battle For Centuries

( A poster advertising a demonstration in Andover Town Hall in support of a Mrs. Blanchard on her release from imprisonment for refusing to allow her children to be vaccinated (date unknown). (Photo courtesy of MicroBiology Today).

I was under the false impression that controversy over vaccinations was a new phenomena, however as I was reading a biography on Thomas Jefferson, titled "A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity" by Alf Mapp Jr., I came across a passage concerning Thomas Jefferson receiving the smallpox inoculation, and the controversy surrounding this medical procedure, at the time:

"Fatalities were so numerous that doctors debated whether the disease or the supposed preventative was the greater menace...it was generally believed that inoculated persons spread smallpox to others...Inoculation was forbidden by law in New York and had excited mob action in Boston."

After doing a little research to get more information regarding this topic, I found that, in actuality, opposition to vaccination has existed as long as vaccination itself!

Even before vaccinations, it was common knowledge that survivors of smallpox became immune to the disease, so doctors were practicing a procedure called variolation, which is when a person was purposefully infected with smallpox (Variola), in a controlled manner, so as to minimize the severity of the infection, and also to induce immunity against further infection.  This procedure came under heavy criticism.

The origins of the practice of variolation, or inoculation, are hard to trace, however, we know that under the guidance of Rev. Cotton Mather, and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, variolation became quite popular in the American colonies.  Mather went around advocating the need for immediate variolation, however, he persuaded only Dr. Boylston, and not many others.  Still, with Mather's support, Dr. Boylston immediately started a variolation program and inoculated many volunteers, despite much opposition in both the public and the medical community in Boston. As the disease spread, so did the controversy around Mather and Boylston.  At the height of the epidemic, some in opposition to the variolation procedure were urging the authorities to arrest Dr. Boylston for murder, and a grenade was even thrown into the house of Reverend Cotton Mather!

According to Thomas Jefferson biographer, Alf J. Mapp, Jr.:

"On the eve of the [American] Revolution, debate over the practice [of variolation] would further exacerbate differences between Norfolk's rebels and tories.  At the climax rebels would smash the windows of a tory mayor's residence and march the inoculated women and children of his family to the Pest House, last home of those suffering contagious terminal illnesses."

Edward Jenner

Then came a physician/scientist named Edward Jenner.  For many years, Jenner had heard the tales that dairymaids, which are women who work milking cows, making butter, and cheese, on a farm, were protected from smallpox naturally, after having suffered from cowpox.  Using this information, Jenner concluded that cowpox not only protected against smallpox, but also could be transmitted from one person to another as a deliberate mechanism of protection.  On May 14, 1796, using matter from the cowpox lesions of a dairymaid, he inoculated an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps. Afterward, the boy developed mild fever, and discomfort in the axillae, or armpit. Nine days after the procedure he felt cold and had lost his appetite, but on the next day he was much better. Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion. No disease developed, and Jenner concluded that protection was complete.

The Latin word for cow is vacca, and cowpox is vaccinia; Jenner decided to call this new procedure vaccination.

Potential Conflict of Interest: 33% of Connecticut State Senators are Lawyers

There are over two hundred million working adults in America, less than one percent of which are lawyers.

33% of Connecticut state senators are lawyers.

If elected-government officials really represent the general population, you would think that legislators would come from employment-backgrounds that are reflective of the general population.  In my opinion, a House, or Senate, filled with people of various occupations, like, maybe a grocery store manager, a barber, a construction worker, an optician, a couple reps from the health care field, an engineer, a pizza shop owner, a mechanic, etc., and other people from everyday working-class jobs, would be a proper representation of the people in my community.  One lawyer thrown into the bunch, if there are one hundred representatives, would be a generous representation of the number of lawyers, compared to the number of working adults in America.  So if in the Connecticut legislature, where there is a much higher ratio, one out of every three legislators in the state senate are lawyers (12 out of 36), are the people of Connecticut being properly represented?

Also, is it a conflict of interest when people who make their living directly off of the laws passed in the legislature, work in that legislature?  I believe so.

Lawyers, working within the legislature, have an incentive to keep the laws complicated, and complex, so that citizens will continue to need more and more "legal representation", as hundreds of new laws get presented every year in the state, and federal, government, making it harder for the average citizen to know the laws, and properly protect, and defend, himself against them, thus needing a lawyer.

If, for instance, a simple change in the drug laws were made, where marijuana would be legalized, or decriminalized, as the majority of Americans believe it should be, it may free many people from the unjust bondage of the state, but it would also lead to many lawyers being out of, or lacking, work.  As one professor of law, Ilya Somin, stated, "The War on Drugs is, among other things, a full-employment program for criminal lawyers."

Of course not only criminal lawyers benefit from changes in the law, as Ilya Somin explains,

"In civil law, we have a massive tort law suit system and hundreds of state and federal regulatory agencies that issue mindbogglingly complex regulations that require interpretation by experts if you want to avoid costly liability. And of course we also have an extremely complex tax system that requires many people to hire tax lawyers if they want to keep the IRS off their backs."

The potential personal financial return that a lawyer may directly receive from changes to the law, in my opinion, has become too much a conflict of interest to be tolerated.

There are too many laws, and too many lawyers.

Why Do Judges Wear Black Robes?

I often sit and question the absurdity of the American justice system.  Everything from the drug war, private prisons, the role of police, to seat belt laws are subjected to my scrutiny.  Today I will discuss our court system, in particularly, judges.  I find it demeaning that we have to look up, and plead our innocence, to a man that is dressed in a costume. A question that I never seem to receive an answer to is, why do judges wear black robes, and not regular clothes like the rest of us?  I did some research, and this is what I have come across.