Friday, November 27, 2020
Globulin and "stupid" parents
The mention of globulin in previous item reminded me...
Before the Salk vaccine, gamma globulin was the best available preventative against polio. Radio programs from 1949 to 1953 talked about globulin and encouraged listeners to give blood to the Red Cross to help with the globulin project.
I didn't know much about it, so I looked it up. Here's an interesting 2017 account of the project.
Because polio was a REAL epidemic, parents were eager to participate in the testing of globulin. The researchers were trying to run a properly controlled trial, but parents frustrated the scientific purity by bringing in their kids several times to maximize the chance of getting the real stuff instead of placebo. Parents wanted to PROTECT THEIR KIDS. Parents didn't want to help the researchers get grants and prestige.
Globulin created a short-term immunity for a few weeks without mobilizing the immune system's intelligence to form a permanent response. So globulin had to be timed accurately, given at the start of a local epidemic, to help people throw off the virus so it wouldn't continue spreading.
After the Salk vaccine came along, WHO used the "improper" trial to dismiss globulin entirely. But the trial was "invalidated" because parents UNDERSTOOD REALITY AND ESTIMATED RISKS ACCURATELY. Best of all, they knew how to USE RISK STRATEGICALLY.
Modern monsters continue to insist that people can't judge risks. Lethal nonsense.
Labels: Blinded by Stats
¶ 3:55 AM
