Artifact #7

Matt Saunders

3/28/17

Artifact #7 – Cholera

Historically speaking Cholera was able to cause pandemics through trade routes. What I find interesting is how the disease kills so quickly when at the time it took several days to get from one place to the next. Society to play a part as populations grew and living conditions grew worse. Cultural effects such as the bathing in the river i.e. (Ganges) caused Cholera to spread rapidly and made a “home base” for the disease. Historically speaking the disease is rather interesting since it became a pandemic by the time that it flared up and someone would start to figure out the cause it would be ending. Cholera is spread through bacteria, which is water born and can be food born.  Once the bacterium is spread and someone is sick it can spread rapidly but only through ingestion of the bacteria. The disease kills its victims through severe and rapid dehydration. To fix this you can drink a cocktail of clean water, salt, and sugar. This will turn off the value that keeps pumping fluid out of your system. Then the next best thing to do is get to the hospital and get an IV put in. The effects of the disease are vomiting and diarrhea.

Cholera has not spread to developed countries due to the standard of living and sanitation. Unlike other diseases that are viral and you need to vaccinate the entire population you only need to increase sanitation to prevent the others from getting sick. This includes washing hands, filtering water, cooking food in good water, protecting cooked food from flies, and cleaning the water source by moving the feces further away. John Snow, Henry Whitehead, Filippo Pacini, and Robert Koch were all doctors or epidemiologists that played a huge role in preventing the pandemics of Cholera from continuing. Through years of research and convincing Snow finally determined that it was spread through water and food and not through vapors (miasma). Henry Whitehead was a priest that believed in miasma but was convinced by Snow. Without his help Snow could have never gotten the word to the people. Pacini was not credited with finding the cause until eighty two years after his death. Robert Koch was unaware of Pacini work and found the disease and it was not until later that Pacini actually got credit and this is because of the speed of communication back then was very slow. Overall, effects on the sanitation and public health systems improved.

Cholera is endemic in Haiti and that is because of the sanitation level. Third world countries have a particularly hard time due to the standard of living. Sharing of restrooms and not having a clean source of water to drink or wash hands. It has become a problem because they use rivers to bathe in and there bathrooms may be too close causing contamination. Cholera is now in an epidemic stage in Haiti. Not very many preventative measures have been taken since the UN has promised support and given very little. However cleaning all water before use would be a good start.

Artifact #6

Matthew Saunders

3/23/2016

Artifact #6 – Tuberculosis – The Peoples Plague

TB is a terrible disease which I agree is not only a threatening disease that plagues the victim but it also effects the family members of the victim. TB is highly contagious and to even be a nurse or doctor and take care of someone with it can be extremely dangerous. Family members either catch the disease unintentionally or have to watch their loved ones suffer for six to twenty four months. The treatment is terrible; you have to have a massive amount of drugs and shots that have side effect that many demes worse than the disease itself. Many people do not complete the drug cycle and this is how MDR and XDR-TB came about. That stands for multi drug and extensively drug resistant which in many cases means certain death over a prolonged period of time. The disease is extremely contagious so those infected need to be quarantined otherwise the rest of the society is at risk. The treatment is so bad it has left several at the option of suicide. For as someone that knows someone with cancer it is probably the closest comparison that I can think of.  A slow debilitating disease that cripples you physically and mentally and the treatments are extremely painful with vomiting. To eradicate such a disease quarantining would have to be a major part but not just of those that are sick but of those that have been close to the victims in order to keep it from spreading.

Artifact #5

Cadet Matthew Saunders

3/23/16

Artifact #5 – Irish Potato Blight

The potato was of extreme importance to the eastern world, in particularly the Irish. The crop did not originate in Ireland in fact it started in Mexico/South America. The Irish however got the potato and found out that it would grow very well in the damp climate. The potato was seen as a poor person crop because it had such yield but was not that flavorful and was easy to grow. The amount of crop that could be harvested for the amount of land needed was amazing. You could feed a family of 14 with just a quarter of an acre. The potato was a large source of nutrients containing carbs, fats, and all other necessities to survive.

The political situation was unfortunate for the Irish. The land they farmed on and lived off of was not their own. Land was rented from British land lords and the Irish did not see why, to them this was their land and not England’s. When the potato blight struck there was no food to be found besides grass and leaves and of course the rent was still due. This caused tensions to rise and some revolts to actually take place. The people were furious because the blight had taken there only food source and then the British still required the same rent, if the rent was not paid you were forced out of your home and it would be burned. The population sky rocketed before the blight growing from one to two million n all the way to eight million in just fifteen or so years. This was poorly timed with the potato blight when as many as one in three to four people dies from either starvation or disease from the poor living conditions or on the journey to America where they found living condition to be even worse.

The massive Immigration from Ireland to the US was costly in the journey itself where many died. For those who did make it, roughly one million, they found terrible living conditions where rats and lice were infected and they lived in slums where there was one shower for every two hundred and fifty people. They did however find hope and food in America; it was interesting to see how the villages in America soon became segregated in groups of Irish that were from similar parts of Ireland.

The potato blight was brought to Ireland from Mexico is what is believed to have happened. The potato was vulnerable to a pathogen that rotted them very quickly and in some cases overnight. The pathogen deteriorated the part of the plant that was out of the grown turning it black. The actual crop would rot and have black spots and if several hours passed would be turned from a tough nutritious potato to mush. Trying to salvage some of the potatoes did not work either as the pathogen was spread by wind or water. So if you had good potatoes and put one that had just been infected in the same basket the entire basket would then become infected. Eating a potato with eh blight was also certain death, the Irish had a tough choice, eat the potato and die or starve to death as many refused to leave their country.

The GMO is not alarming it is simply a potato that is resistant to the blight and this is a rather amazing break through as this will help the price of potatoes since there will be less chemicals used to prevent the blight as it is still very present in today’s society.

Cadet Matthew R. Saunders, II

3/6/2017

Artifact #4

Artifact 4 – Smallpox and Vaccines

Smallpox is definitely one of the worst diseases that humanity has had to deal with. Smallpox is best known for what it does to the human flesh. It is extremely painful and in the twentieth century alone it killed three hundred million people. The American Indians had no immunity to the disease; this nearly wiped them off the earth; in particular the Aztecs and Incas. Living during that time would have been mentally straining. During the peak of the disease it was understood almost that at some point in life you would contract smallpox which would be terrifying. The disease itself was deadly and if for some miracle someone survived, there would be lasting scars. Like the majority of diseases the Smallpox is believed to have originated from a domesticated animal. Ramses V actually had Smallpox in 1157BC. Smallpox was contracted by face to face contact, air, infected body fluids, and contaminated objects. Smallpox was identifiable through lesions on the hands and feet typically and could include the body and face. The lesions or blisters were typically round with thick fluid inside and a depression in the middle. Smallpox was spread though war, movement of populations, trade routes, and the trading of slaves.

Some of the cures thought to fix this terrible disease started with bloodletting, leeches, fasting, laxatives, purgatives, and diuretics. On top of those treatments heating or cooling therapy was also used and these techniques were fairly ineffective and probably caused the victim more pain then were necessary.  Not long after came Red Therapy which was thought to helps cure the disease as well. To do this therapy one had have red walls, blankets, clothing, curtains, and lights; this was rather extreme and had no long term benefit for the patient.  Variolation came out next which was the process of taking the disease and scratching the surface of the skin and applying it to a small area. This in fact did help prevent some from contracting the disease and having it be life threatening. The basic thought was to see if one could contract a less serious form of the disease and build immunity for Smallpox. This became popular in the time of its finding. However, a man with the last name Jenner was the first to perform was is known as a vaccination. Jenner noticed that milk maids that had cow pox, which was most of them, could not get Smallpox. His action was very bold, he took a swab of this cowpox which was not life threatening and gave it to an eight year old boy. Sure enough he contracted cowpox; once he was healthy he then infected him with Smallpox which could be extremely painful and potentially deadly. Weeks went by and the eight year boy was fine, he had beaten Smallpox. This was the newest way to prevent Smallpox and in most developed area people were vaccinated and from that point on it did not affect the entire world once the word spread. However, in undeveloped third world countries Smallpox would still bring havoc until almost 1980.

Vaccines came to the rescue, World Health Organization workers had planned to vaccinate everyone in the undeveloped areas where Smallpox was still a threat in the mid nineteen hundreds. However, they were going to run out of vaccinations so they adapted and decided to survey an area that was affected and focus their vaccines where they were needed. This ended up years later actually defeating Smallpox right around 1980. This was a huge accomplishment for all involved and humanity in order to get rid of one of the most deadly diseases.

Matt Saunders

Artifact #3

2/21/17

Artifact #3 – Ethics and Infectious Diseases

Ethical issues that come with dealing with infectious disease include individual and population and within those titles are vaccines, isolation/quarantine, and public awareness. For example, quarantining can be very specific to an ethnic group like Typhoid Mary. Mary was a woman who was exiled basically just because of her race and ethnic background. Reports of white people being able to leave a quarantined area at that time were spreading but if you were in china town and not white you were forced to stay. This is an ethics issue amongst civilians and can start to cause questioning of the moral background of the medical field. A debate that is still going strong today is should getting a vaccine be an individual’s choice or should they have to for the benefit of the entire population. Some points for the argument are the constitution and others just want the best thing for the world. However, if you look at the evidence it is simply someone’s opinion that if everyone was to get vaccinated that it would fix the spread of the disease.

The issue of informed consent and communication about clinical trials is extremely important and can be taken advantage of, as did happen in the Tuskegee Syphilis study. In the Tuskegee study the government doctors came in treating “bad blood” which stood for more than Syphilis and was not exactly a medical term. This was intentionally misleading because the end result was not to treat the black men with Syphilis but to document the effects of Syphilis. The men were simply misinformed and lied too about what they were doing and what medicines were being prescribed. In many cases instead of getting penicillin they were given Tylenol or aspirin which would have no effect on the debilitating disease of Syphilis. Tuskegee caused distrust between the American people and those in the medical field. If someone today was to try and push one hundred percent of people should be vaccinated with every vaccine that is offered, that will never happen. Here is why, due to the Tuskegee study people no longer take what is said at face value; opinions and recommendations are constantly being questioned and rightfully so. If someone wanted to try and make headway in this issue with vaccines and “fix” the so called issue my advice would be to get the scientist and medical doctors all on the same page. Many highly educated doctors will tell you that certain vaccines are not needed. Therefor before pushing someone’s personal agenda the public needs to see consistency amongst the professionals. In the past the head of the CDC said that the Tuskegee trials were perfectly fine and come to find out they were blatantly lying to them and this will always haunt the relationship between medical professionals and civilians.

The studies have been rationalized by the idea that what is better for the greater good. I think it would be rather interesting to understand the thought process of the CDC head that authorized and encouraged the Tuskegee study. From certain perspectives these studies have been rationalized because of the potential to help mankind in a whole and for the future. Many people today question the rationale behind such decision as it is seen to be unconstitutional and unethical.

The potential consequences of the unethical studies will result in less people to be willing to trust medical professions. This may seem miniscule but, in the event of an outbreak and the medical professionals are correct then it will be hard to control the spread of the outbreak. What will change this you might ask and that would be for the people to experience it firsthand and once they see for themselves that there is an outbreak then they will seek medical attention. I think it is safe to say that in Mobile, AL. that there were not too many black males volunteering for government testing once the Tuskegee case was brought to light.

In conclusion, the Tuskegee study was unethical and because of that case people today are still hesitant to blindly follow medical professionals. In many ways that case alone has questioned the professionalism of the so called medical professionals. You fix this by educating the public and being honest with them. Being transparent is also a good fix to the issue. Ultimately time is what it will take because trust is earned and not given. Once trust has been broken it becomes harder to regain it.

HR: Class notes and PowerPoints along with material from canvas.