Everyone knows how George Washington lived, but do you know how he died? The medical community killed him. In December 1799, America’s first president developed a bad cold and throat infection. His physicians prescribed the standard treatments of the time: bloodletting, harsh purgatives, blistering agents and enemas. Those medications didn’t cure George Washington, they hastened his death.
The practice of bloodletting is 3,000 years old. The Egyptians used it as did the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Asians and Europeans with the practice continuing into the 19th century. Bloodletting persisted not because it actually worked, but because people believed that it did. Doctors truly thought they were doing the right thing when they applied leeches or cut a vein and bled a patient until they got dizzy. That so many patients died from the treatment didn’t affect their belief. Not until the medical community switched to clinical trials did it became clear that bloodletting made illnesses worse, not better.
British Navy surgeon James Lind conducted the first documented clinical trial in 1747 onboard the HMS Salisbury. Sailors in that era were often plagued by scurvy, a condition with symptoms of fatigue, anemia, gum disease and bleeding under the skin. Lind gathered 12 afflicted men, split them into six groups and dosed each pair with a different treatment: sea water, cider, vinegar, oranges and lemons, an elixir of vitriol or a mixture of horseradish, mustard and garlic. In six days, he had an answer. The sailors who ate the lemons and oranges recovered from scurvy. Lind applied the findings of his experiment to the rest of the crew who all showed signs of improvement once they started eating citrus. He took his discovery back to England and, by 1795, the British Navy made it a standard practice to stock all of its ships with citrus fruit. It’s why British sailors became known as “limeys.”
Recently, a federal vaccine advisory committee voted to end the longstanding recommendation that all U.S. babies get the Hepatitis B vaccine on the day they’re born. The director of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired all members of that committee earlier in the year and replaced them with his own handpicked candidates. Several of the new members, like RFK Jr., are known to have anti-vaccine viewpoints. They don’t have evidence to back up their claims that vaccines are dangerous, they just have beliefs and feelings. Much like George Washington’s doctors who believed that relieving a man of 40% of his blood supply could cure a cold.
Hepatitis B is a virus which infects the liver and can cause cancer in people who contract it when they are young. It is spread by bodily fluids and can be transferred from an infected mother to her baby, but that transfer can be prevented by vaccination. When the hepatitis B vaccine was first introduced 1981, the strategy to lower infection rates focused on only vaccinating high risk groups such as prisoners, health care workers, gay men and IV drug users, but the number of cases remained unchanged. Ten years later the government issued a recommendation that all newborns should be immunized and the rates of infection fell dramatically, resulting in a near elimination of hepatitis B in children.
Vaccines are some of the most regulated pharmaceutical products on the market. Because they are, for the most part, given to healthy people, the clinical trials are much larger than those required to test a drug. After a vaccine is approved, any adverse reaction must be reported back to the manufacturer’s pharmocol-vigilance department and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a department at Health and Human Services. If a pattern of adverse reactions is detected, the vaccine is flagged for further investigation. If evidence indicates a vaccine poses a danger to the public, it is pulled off the market.
The hepatitis B shot has never been flagged. Its safety profile, including with infants, is excellent. That is a act backed up by data. Belief and feelings do not figure into the equation. Some members of the vaccine advisory committee admitted there was no documented evidence of harm from the doses given at birth, but suggested larger studies be conducted. Why? Because they believe there is a problem, but beliefs aren’t data.
George Washington’s physicians did not mean to kill him when they prescribed bloodletting for his cold. I’m sure they thought it was the best course, a belief backed up by 3,000 years of tradition, but it wasn’t backed up by data. During human history, a lack of facts has caused the deaths of millions. This changed when science decided to take beliefs and feelings out of the equation and base medical decisions on verifiable evidence.
RFK Jr. and his handpicked members of the vaccine advisory board are taking us into a dark time where, once again, ignorance will spread illness.
This is a contributed opinion column. Becky Bartlett taught microbiology at Northampton Community College for 15 years. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author, and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. Do you have a perspective to share? Learn more about how we handle guest opinion submissions at themorningcall.com/opinions.
