From: ((Steven B. Harris))
Subject: Re: Ad claims HIV not cause of AIDS ???
Date: 11 Jun 1995

In <D9z4r3.CJx@spuddy.mew.co.uk> oleum@spuddy.mew.co.uk (Nick Hiams)
writes:


>Ken Cox <kcc@graceland.att.com> wrote:
>
>> If only more people were convinced of this.  Perhaps, to help spread
>> the word, you should inject yourself with the virus to demonstrate
>> its harmlessness; rather like Jenner exposing himself to smallpox to
>> verify his ideas about immunization.  Just think, you will forever
>> be remembered as the wise and noble genius who showed the scientific
>> establishment the error of its way.
>
>AFAIK Jenner exposed a 7 year old boy to pus from a smallpox victim. He
>wasn't so noble but certainly as wise as the gentlemen you mentioned.


Comment: there surely have been doctors who deliberately exposed
themselves to disease in search of proof.  Two doctors on Walter Reed's
yellow fever team allowed themselves to be bitten by mosquitos suspected
of carrying the organism, and both contracted yellow fever.  One of
them, a man whose name deserves to be better known, died.  He was Dr.
Jessie Lazear.  A few centuries before, a more famous doctor, Dr. John
Hunter, died of syphilis accidentally contracted while self-innoculating
with pus taken from a man with gonnorhea.  It was not clear at that time
if the two were the same, and Hunter was trying to prove it.
Unfortunately, he got the wrong man.

One of my favorite stories involves the development of the hepatitis B
vaccine, which was made from the blood of chronic hepatitis victims.
Nobody was absolutely sure the vaccine wasn't infective, and somebody
had to try it first (someone who'd never had hepatitis).  In
November of 1975, those first 11 human guinea pigs were an
epidemiologist, his wife, and 9 senior executives at Merck, where the
stuff was being developed.  Not your average picture of corporate greed,
is it?

                                  Steve Harris, M.D.