Should Facebook and Twitter ban postings recommending certain drugs for the treatment of Covid, but not endorsed by Dr. Tony Fauci? The CDC? The government?
Recently Dr. Fauci, the face of the Biden administration's war on Covid, told the world, if they criticize Tony Fauci, "they are really criticizing science, because I represent science."
Fauci's claim is not new. It is a claim of "eminent doctors" over the centuries to silence any doctor — or lesser person — who dared to propose alternate treatments to those endorsed by prevailing "medical science."
In 1537 in France, the masters of the medical profession were the physicians of the teaching faculty of the University of Paris. They were certain they were the medical "science" of their day. Gun shots were to be treated by pouring boiling oil on the wound. If the arm or leg received a serious wound, it was to be amputated as quickly as possible. To stop bleeding, you sealed the blood vessel with a white hot iron.
In those days, amputations and cautery were considered beneath the physician's dignity. They were left to surgeons, or to their barber assistants. One such barber was Ambrose Paré. He served France as a military surgeon in its 1537 campaign in Italy.
When he ran out of oil to boil to apply to the soldiers' wounds, he used what he had — a compound of turpentine, rose oil and egg yolk. He soon learned that those treated with his compound did far better than those whose wounds were treated with boiling oil.
Paré next began tying off blood vessels following amputation rather than using cautery. He found the amputees fared far better, not withstanding that the use of the white-hot iron was prescribed by medical "science."
Louis Pasteur was not a medical doctor. He was a chemist. In the 1850s, while dean of sciences at the University of Lille, he began analysis of the process of fermentation — the process by which grape juice changed to wine. The prevailing scientific wisdom was that fermentation was the result of an unstable body decomposing. After years of experiment, Pasteur proved that fermentation was not the result of an unstable substance dying, but of a wildly active multiplication of living cells. His "ferments"were microscopic living beings. Each type of fermentation was produced by its own specific ferment. These ferments were not spontaneously "born" within the fermented matter, but were introduced from the outside. Pasteur further deduced that microscopic beings might also be the causes of human sickness and death.
But at the time, the medical profession — "medical science" — attributed sickness and death to "morbid spontaneity," and not to a specific invading microorganism. Time and further scientific experimentation once again proved France's keepers of "medical science" wrong, and Pasteur right.
Pasteur begged doctors to use clean bed sheets in hospitals, to sanitize their instruments by flame, and to wash before treating a patient after performing a post-mortem dissection. "Medical science" of the day scoffed. His work to create an immunization for anthrax drew ridicule from doctors and veterinaries alike. But mere chemist Pasteur was right.
In the mid-19th century, while Joseph Lister was practicing surgery in Edinburgh, he noticed that 43% of the hospital's surgery patients there died. In Paris, 60% died; in Munich, 80%. The pattern was always the same. The operation went well, but then slight swelling developed followed by inflammation. Lister observed that simple fractures which were set, healed well; gangrene and septicemia occurred only in compound, open fractures. Lister concluded these infections were not the result of "spontaneous generation" or even the air. They were caused by tiny organisms in the air.
To kill these organisms, Lister began to use carbolic acid as a disinfectant. Instruments, bandages, ligatures were all bathed in carbolic acid. Lister set aside the traditional surgeon's black frock coat and wore a clean white apron. Acid was sprayed into the air. The result was an 11 year-old boy with a compound fracture came through the operation without infection.
Lister continued his experiment and kept detailed records. But while deaths dropped dramatically in his ward, his hospital colleagues followed the established "medical science" in their wards. For eight years, they ignored Lister's papers in The Lancet, as well as the morbidity in their wards, and the lack thereof in Lister's. It wasn't until 1877 that Lister's critics grudgingly admitted that he was right. That recognition came not from Edinburgh, but from London where he was made a professor at London's King's College.
Dr. Fauci has to know that medical science is not static. Best medical practice is nothing more than considered judgments based on observations, questions, hypothesis, experiments, interpreting results and making conclusions. Some medical judgments pass the test of time; others don't.
The most any doctor can say, is that "I am following what are judged to be today's best practices." Indeed Fauci has told the American people as much. He's said scientists need more information before drawing conclusions about omicron's severity.
Had Facebook and Twitter been around in the days of Paré, Pasteur, Lister, et al., would they have been blocked for proposing treatments not approved by the leading physicians of their day? Probably.
The most any doctor can say, is that "I am following what are judged to be today's best practices." Indeed Fauci has told the American people as much. He's said scientists need more information before drawing conclusions about omicron's severity.
Had Facebook and Twitter been around in the days of Paré, Pasteur, Lister, et al., would they have been blocked for proposing treatments not approved by the leading physicians of their day? Probably.
Copyright 2021, John Donald O'Shea
First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on December 10, 2021
First Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on December 10, 2021
