Immunity Challenge

• "[It] is a judgment of God, sent to punish and humble our sins; and what shall we so evade it, and think to turn it away from us?...God has predetermin'd and fixed the period of every ones life...so that if this time be come inoculation will not save the person's life."

• "[It is] a judgment on the sins of the people...to avert it is but to provoke him more".

• "[It is] an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah", who has the right "to wound and smite".

Do these religious statements sound familiar? I thought so. It turns out that they were spoken by theologians almost 300 years ago in opposition to smallpox innoculation.

An intriguing method of preventing smallpox was being studied to see if material taken from cowpox sores or even smallpox lesions could be used prevent the deadly smallpox disease. Then, just as now, religious zealots tried to impose their own morality on disease; it was a punishment from G-d. To interfere with this punishment, would cause further anguish and death. It took a smallpox epidemic in Montreal to cause a shift in attitude:

In 1885 a smallpox epidemic broke out in Montreal, Canada. Almost everyone was vaccinated except the Catholic population there. When the authorities tried to force vaccination on their Catholic citizens, they were met with opposition that threatened to become violent. Rather than explaining to their parishioners the benefits of vaccination, the catholic clergy tolerated and in some cases even encouraged the behavior of the laity. A priest of St. James Church said in a sermon that, "if we are afflicted with smallpox, it is because we had a carnival last year, feasting with the flesh, which has offended the Lord;...it is to punish our pride that God has sent us smallpox." One religious newspaper even went further, telling the Montreal Catholics to take up arms rather than submit themselves to vaccination. Instead the catholic ecclesiastical authorities in the city called on their people to make certain devotional exercises, to hold a procession with an appeal to the Blessed Virgin and to use the rosary as specified. Needless to say the Catholic population in Montreal suffered many needless deaths from smallpox until the proper measure was finally enforced.

We see this same kind of opposition pattern today in the case of a human papilloma virus vaccine, designed to prevent cervical cancer. Vaccine opponents fear that innoculation will lead to sexual promiscuity. We hear others define AIDS as a punishment for sin. I long for the day when disease is seen by all as a bane of biology rather than measure of morality.