They take what we build

(5/2025) Inoculation against disease came into public use in the American colonies in 1721. African slaves introduced "Variolation" into America. The technique was used to inoculate against smallpox. A small amount of dried smallpox scabs was inserted under the skin. In Massachusetts, Cotton Mather learned about the practice from his slave, Onesimus. Mather is credited with introducing the technique during a smallpox epidemic in Boston in 1721. Colonists in America continued to test this inoculation process, but many were skeptical. One resistant colonial citizen was Benjamin Franklin. When his son Francis "Franky" Franklin was eligible to get inoculated, Franklin and his wife, Deborah, resisted. Franky was four years old when he died from smallpox, devastating the Franklins. Ben Franklin took up the cause of understanding as much as he could about inoculation against disease. This is the way he treated all the subjects in his life. He found out as much as he could, he studied, he tested, and then he spoke widely about his experience. He became an advocate for inoculation against disease.

From Ben Franklin’s autobiography:

"In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of the parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen."

Many people living in the 18th century resisted vaccinations of any sort as they were becoming more widely used. Resistance to vaccines had an audience up to and through the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919.

In the three hundred or so years of Western Medicine experience with vaccines, death from serious disease was more common than it needed to be as public opinion turned toward understanding herd immunity through vaccinating the majority of the population.

Take measles as an example. The peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association (JAMA) has a table on their website citing annual averages for measles cases before and after vaccines were administered to the public. For the years 1953 to 1962 the average per year was 530,217 cases. The peak in 1958 was 763,094 cases. The death rate average for those years was 440 people dying of measles. The most recent post vaccine data reported in this table is for 2006 when there were 55 cases in one year and zero deaths reported in 2004.

As inoculations became available for smallpox and other diseases, it took time for the general public to become comfortable with them. Will the use of a small amount of disease cause it to spread through the population? Could it cause other conditions? Today that refers most often to Autism.

How vaccines work: they give a person a small dose of the disease as dead cells which triggers their body’s immune system to make immunoglobulins to fight the real disease. If that were to cause any other condition, such as Autism, then measles itself would have caused Autism for centuries. Autism is related to neurology—our brain function. There is nothing in a vaccine that interacts with our neurology.

Our parents, grandparents, Onesimus the enslaved African who shared knowledge, and all those who came before, built this health system for us and our kids. We built a network of expertise and patriotism that has given us many healthcare innovations.

The Trump administration is freezing funding and disappearing data from federal websites.

They are taking what we built for our kids.

Special needs politics. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the cause of Autism will be found by September 2025, and that autistic people do not lead meaningful lives. Does he want to help them or disappear them? As a grandparent of a autistic person, I am confident that all parents ask the question "What will they do when I am gone." The next question is "What the hell is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talking about?". Autistic people, and anyone who fits the role of "different" are inconveniences to be monitored, managed, and ultimately disappeared.

The Administrations’s Education Department collaborators are defunding and dismantling support for public education. This includes support and advice for Special Education. There are parents everywhere with special-needs kids who have IEPs or some other way of describing support. We have a federal government that is good for organizing this information for our entire country—if we can keep it.

Infrastructure is being dismantled at every level, including language. It’s all about disappearing anyone and anything that are inconvenient. This administration is more concerned with taking our words from us. Words out of favor—inclusion, woman, equity—traded for other words—fear, deals.

The point to shutting down government offices is not to save money. It’s to remove the pieces of infrastructure so that the services we once had will be privatized. The people in power in this administration are showing their goal is to be able to tell people exactly when they can get help, or if they can get help at all.

The pieces of government are what We the People built for our towns, counties, states, to give anyone in the country a better quality of life. These pieces make it possible to follow through on our Founding Principle of the Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

They are taking what we built for our kids.