this isn't just a pie-in-the-sky idea.
To put it mildly.
It's too damn easy to get carried away with a huge discovery that shapes up well even against some other landmark discoveries.
We had to fight a pitched battle with our oldest kid's first school over a smallpox vaccine. Our pediatrician refused to provide, prescribe or recommend the vaccine that did some real harm to a few kids when there hadn't been a case of smallpox for generations.
Smallpox may have been unique among viral diseases in retaining its virulence through generations. Even the Black Death of the Middle Ages lost much of its terror though its purported milder descendant - bubonic plague - is no joy. Jenner's vaccine was a huge breakthrough though his use of an unwitting young boy as a test subject was vile.
Far tougher was getting doctors to wash their hands. Even Louis Pasteur became reckoned as little more than a street madman when he took up the cudgels for Ignaz Semmelweis - christened "Savior of Mothers" - passing out fliers to passers-by near hospitals before his death. Sammelweis had been arrested and died a week or two later from police beatings for demanding obstetricians wash their hands before examining pregnant women. The "germ theory" was still novel.
Hopefully Dr. West will fare a bit better than some of his forerunners with a truly astounding discovery. :-)
Best, Terry
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