The potato was extremely vital in Irish society in the 19th century because it made up most of the diet of the average Irish citizen. The potato is a high yield crop and is relatively easy to farm. It is not only easier to farm it provides most nutrients that are required by people (Irish combined it with milk), so it is clear to see how important the potato was to Irish citizens in the 19th century. Some factors that lead to the severity in the potato blight were that Ireland had an increasing population, land owners exploited “peasants”, enforced exports of food crops to England, terrible housing conditions/poor standards of living, and the potato was almost the sole food that Irish ate. The biological factor that led to the potato blight was the pathogen phytophthora infestans and it originated in central Mexico. The potato was extremely vulnerable at the time in Ireland because the farmers had only planted one type of potato and that one type was very susceptible to phytophthora infestans, so it spread rapidly to almost all of the potatoes. It also did not help Ireland considering the summer that the potato blight hit was extremely wet and allowed the spores of phytophthora infestans to grow more rapidly. The blight caused approximately one million deaths and caused around one million Irish citizens to emigrate from Ireland to America (mostly). If it wasn’t bad enough that the blight killed scores of Irish people, other diseases took their toll like measles, cholera, TB, and other respiratory infections. Many of the Irish people got the previously mentioned diseases because of the poor living conditions they were exposed to in Ireland and tenements in the U.S.

Concerning the modification of genes, I believe that the benefits outweigh the risks in many situations. If we can modify the genes in crops, animals, insect vectors, and embryos to ultimately better society in the end I am all for it. A benefit of modifying genes in crops would be more disease resistant crops which means more food. Modifying genes in animals could help certain endangered species increase their population. Most importantly, I believe modifying genes in embryos could produce intellectually and physically superior human beings for future society. A major risk in all gene modification is that it could go wrong and produce side effects (mutations) that are not wanted. Even though there is a risk to performing gene modification I believe that the scientific advancements that could be accomplished outweigh the risk.

Help Received: Powerpoint on canvas, class research

Ethical issues are difficult to maneuver in modern day society some of these ethical issues that concern infectious diseases include, individual vs. population, biases against certain populations with respect to quarantine, and experimental studies. Individual vs. population includes things like vaccines and isolation/quarantine, the issue lies with individual’s rights. People have a right to refuse vaccines and quarantine, but when individuals do it can have a very negative effect on society. One ethical issue is that, should we force people into quarantine or to get vaccines? Also, with respects to quarantine an ethical issue that we face in modern day society is that the majority tends to think less about putting a minority population into quarantine, while the majority would have more of an issue with putting some of the majority into a quarantine situation. Finally, doing research on individuals in developing countries can be difficult because informed consent must be given and many impoverished individuals may not truly understand which is why it is important that whenever a research study is performed in a less fortunate nation that its participants are fully aware of the situation, so they are not taken advantage of.

The Tuskegee study was a major humans rights violation and disgraced the medicinal research community at the time. In short, the Tuskegee study was a study conducted by the U.S. government using only black male individuals ,who had syphilis, from a poor community. One major ethical issue that occurred in this study is that the “participants” were essentially used as human guinea pigs to figure out what syphilis does to the body. The “participants” were told that they were being treated for syphilis, but they were completely lied to, which goes against informed consent. The individuals in the study were not given informed consent which is now required in all research studies. Even though what had happened was clearly terrible, researchers tried to rationalize it by saying it was for the good of the black community and in the end would help them more than it would hurt them. Also, researchers continued the study even though many thought it was wrong because they believed that telling the participants would just hurt them more. It is clear to see that every aspect of the Tuskegee study was completely unethical from the lack of informed consent to the general lack of human morality.

Performing unethical studies not only hurts the population its targeting at that time it hurts that population for the years to come. It hurts the targeted populations (be it racial or gender) for years to come because once a targeted population is betrayed by medical professionals they will harbor a sense of mistrust and hate for medical professionals for a long period of time after the study. If they don’t trust medical professionals they are less likely to go to the doctor’s and seek help for illnesses. This occurred in Alabama after the study occurred proving the point that unethical studies hurt targeted populations through future mistrust.

Help Received: articles provided in class and film viewed in class

Smallpox had ravaged humankind for thousands of years proving to be a formidable disease that did not discriminate between peasant and nobility. Fortunately scientists were eventually able to destroy smallpox by eradicating it using a vaccine, but before the vaccine a vast history of eradication efforts had been performed. To understand how the modern day vaccine was created one must understand the history of previous vaccination methods.

The earliest forms of remedies for smallpox included such things as prayer because the underlying cause of smallpox could not be understood in early times, so they would turn to their gods for comfort and a hopeful cure. Other things like living an “unpure” life were thought to lead to the disease, so people were advised to cut the “sin” out of their lives like gambling and lust. Once people began to experiment with smallpox they began to understand what happens when the “crust” comes in contact with other people. They discovered “variolation (inoculation)”, that if the crust is scratched into someone else’s skin they would gain partial immunity from the disease and only get slightly sick (mild case of smallpox). Insufflation was also utilized, the only difference between insufflation and variolation is that the crust is placed up the nose to grant partial immunity. Once that variolation and insufflation had been discovered people began to realized that smallpox was not invincible and more research was needed to be done to grant total immunity. Jenner wanted to discover this “total immunity”, he focused on cattle and how they contracted cowpox. Jenner discovered that he could use cows to transfer cowpox to humans and essentially inoculate them, so smallpox could not infect them. Jenner’s idea would eventually lead people to discover the modern day vaccine for smallpox, since using cattle was not very practical. The actual eradication of smallpox was no small feat, it required the use of “surveillance and containment”. Scientists tracked where smallpox outbreaks occurred and would vaccinate the original patient and anyone they came in contact with, then they would vaccinate anyone that those people made contact with and so on, essentially creating a “ring” of immunity. The use of draconian public health measures were essentially the key to success in eliminating smallpox because with more drastic health actions like surveillance and containment it became easier to utilize resources to combat smallpox.

With the invention of vaccines, including the smallpox vaccine, social and societal issues arose across the world. Many people are for vaccines while some people are firmly against them, so I will list some pros and cons of vaccines. Some pros include that they save lives, they are proven to be safe, and they protect herd immunity. While vaccines are mostly pros some believe that they hold cons, some of which include, they infringe upon individual’s rights, they are “unnatural”, and that they can have serious side effects for people who may be affected. Even though some people focus on the negative of vaccines, the positive far outweigh the negatives.

Help Received:  https://vaccines.procon.org/, https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html, video in class