Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

Good morning. Forty years ago this week, the World Health Assembly officially declared the world free of smallpox. Almost two centuries earlier, Gloucestershire physician, Edward Jenner published a pamphlet on his belief that vaccination could eradicate the disease. The story of Jenner is a reminder of scientific persistence and patience but also the contribution of the fruitful dialogue of science and faith in pursuing a vaccine. During his apprenticeship as a surgeon, the teenage Jenner overheard a milkmaid repeat a popular belief she could not have smallpox because she had a cowpox sore on her hand from milking. Although such stories were dismissed as nonsense by many doctors, over the next thirty years Jenner studied the claim and in 1796 he took material from a cowpox pustule on the hand of Sarah Nelmes and vaccinated 8 year old James Phipps who was rendered immune to smallpox. His paper detailing arguments and experiments however was rejected for publication and so he published it himself two years later. After initial opposition, it became the foundation that would lead to a world free of the disease. It’s interesting that Jenner didn’t speak of this as a battle or crusade against a malevolent natural enemy. He was passionate for truth and to relieve human suffering, and he also had a passionate love of nature – seeing it as creation informed by his Christian faith. In a letter to a friend he said, ‘While the vaccine discovery was progressive, the joy I felt ….to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities …. always ended in devout acknowledgements to that Being from whom this and all other mercies flow.’ His respect for science and the natural world came from his sense of both being gifts from God. His faith also energised his practice in providing his vaccine for the poor in his own home. In our search for a vaccine and our fervent action against illness and death, it may be easy to see the natural world as something to be conquered and subjugated and science as the only source of salvation. But this can lead to an arrogant sense of human mastery of nature – a view that has often contributed to our abuse of the environment. Yet Covid-19 reminds me of my vulnerability and therefore the need for respect for the natural world. And in Jenner, a commitment to truth, compassion for the poor, faith and patience provide me with an outstanding model that might inform any exit strategy from our current crisis.