By BEN R. WILLIAMS
Ignaz Semmelweis was a doctor and scientist who would ultimately become known as “the savior of mothers.”
In 1846, Semmelweis was hired in the obstetrics clinic at Vienna General Hospital. There were two maternity clinics at the hospital: the first clinic was operated by medical students, while the second was operated by student midwives.
Semmelweis noticed that pregnant women were terrified to go to the first clinic. They believed it was a deathtrap and begged to go to the second clinic instead. They were right to do so; the first clinic had an average maternal mortality rate of about 10%, while the second clinic had a maternal mortality rate of just 4%.
In 1847, one of Semmelweis’ friends and colleagues died after accidentally being stabbed by a scalpel which had previously been used in an autopsy. Semmelweis had an idea: perhaps the student doctors in the first maternity clinic were picking up “cadaverous particles” when they performed autopsies and were transferring these particles to mothers when they delivered their babies. The student midwives in the second clinic seldom interacted with cadavers, thus explaining the lower incidence of maternal mortality.
Semmelweis proposed a bold idea that shocked the Viennese medical community: maybe doctors should wash their hands before delivering babies.
Admittedly, Semmelweis couldn’t exactly explain his theory — this was before Louis Pasteur’s work and the widespread acceptance of germ theory — but his recommendation was obviously valid. Nonetheless, many of his colleagues rejected his theory since it ran against the medical understanding of the time. Some doctors were also offended that they were asked to wash their hands since they were gentlemen of high social status and couldn’t possibly be unclean.
To make a long story short, Semmelweis was rejected by the medical community, was eventually committed to an insane asylum, was savagely beaten by orderlies, and then died of gangrene as a result of his injuries. And now doctors wash their hands.
I couldn’t help but think of Semmelweis when I saw Sen. Rand Paul’s witch hunt of Dr. Anthony Fauci. The main difference is that the Rand Pauls of Semmelweis’ day didn’t know any better. The Rand Pauls of today have to try pretty hard to remain ignorant.
On July 29, Fauci was brought before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. Paul chaired the hearing, which was clearly and nakedly designed to get Fauci to contradict himself under oath so he could be charged with perjury and Paul could make good on his long-standing promise to jail an 85-year-old man who has devoted his life to the health of the American public.
The main argument I was able to piece together from Paul and his fellow brain geniuses is that Fauci lied to the public during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the extent of those lies are revealed in his journals.
For example, he initially wrote in his journals that he believed COVID-19 escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China, then later said that it emerged naturally after jumping from an animal to a human.
If you actually read Fauci’s words, he said that he initially thought the virus escaped from a lab, but after viewing more evidence over time, he began to believe it was more likely that it occurred naturally. I can understand why the Republicans on the committee can’t grasp the concept of changing your mind when presented with new evidence, but it’s actually something scientists do all the time!
“So why did Fauci keep invoking the Fifth Amendment and refuse to speak?”
Easy; because the man was in a kangaroo court and there were no answers he could give that wouldn’t be twisted against him.
“So why did Joe Biden pardon Fauci before he left office?”
Easy; because it was clear that the Republicans would hound the man until his dying day, just like they did at this Senate hearing.
For his part, President Donald Trump has labeled Fauci as a crazy person who denied the virus originated from a lab because he’s always trying to protect China. I bet Trump is really angry at the guy who gave Fauci a presidential commendation for his COVID-19 work back in 2021. His name was President Donald Trump. But hey, back then, Trump didn’t have the Epstein files and a failed war he needed a distraction from.
Since the pandemic started, the Republican messaging on COVID-19 has been nonsensical. It relies on ignoring the fact that the virus afflicted the entire planet and that other countries around the world approached it in the same way Fauci did.
It relies on believing that masks and vaccines are ineffective at preventing a respiratory disease despite hard scientific evidence to the contrary. It relies on somehow simultaneously believing that COVID-19 was a deadly Chinese bioweapon designed to bring America to its knees but also no worse than the flu.
It requires a person to reject science and logic in favor of blind, irrational belief.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the ruling party hates Fauci. A man who has devoted his life to serving the public has no place in a government that has no interest in helping people, only hurting the ones they think deserve it.
