Speaker 1: School of humans. Try to picture this a small chapel
Speaker 1: in an English market town October seventeen sixty six. Merchants, tradesmen, shopkeepers, farmers.
Speaker 1: They park their wagons, tie up their horses, and going
Speaker 1: to see what all the commotion is about. The chapel
Speaker 1: is in Ingateston, a common stop on the Essex Great Road,
Speaker 1: which travelers have taken since Roman times. Come in, please
Speaker 1: come in, Nobles and ignobles alike. Enter. All eyes are
Speaker 1: on the fiery reverend. This sickness is not unto death.
Speaker 1: This sickness is not unto death. His name is Robert Holton.
Speaker 1: He's not preaching on the word of God, at least
Speaker 1: not directly. He's evangelizing about a new medical curiosity. This sickness,
Speaker 1: as caused by inoculation, is not unto death. Some in
Speaker 1: the audience believe the product Reverend Holton is selling will
Speaker 1: invite Hell to their village, but he ignores the skeptics
Speaker 1: and rolls on. This sickness, as caused by inoculation is
Speaker 1: not unto death, is not worthy of divine vengeance or
Speaker 1: punishment because it violates no command of God and is
Speaker 1: not included under any sin that he has forbidden the
Speaker 1: practice of inoculation is justifiable. This sickness, as caused by inoculation,
Speaker 1: is not unto death. Reverend Holton's conviction comes with a cost.
Speaker 1: He's getting paid to preach by the founders of a
Speaker 1: fast growing family business, a business that began a few
Speaker 1: decades earlier with the near death of a promising young man.
Speaker 1: The young man's name is Robert Sutton Junior, twenty three
Speaker 1: years old and finished with his apprenticeship, ready to join
Speaker 1: his father, Robert Sutton Senior country surgeons and apothecaries, setters
Speaker 1: of broken bones, dressers of wounds, letters of blood, prescribers
Speaker 1: of medicines. Their patients are lords, farmers, millers, herders, whoever
Speaker 1: can pay. By this time, Robert Junior has learned how
Speaker 1: to heal ills, to remove piles and drain abscesses, set bones,
Speaker 1: and maybe even to amputate limbs. But before he can
Speaker 1: join his father's practice, Robert Junior has to be inoculated
Speaker 1: against smallpox. Inoculation means having someone purposefully cut open your
Speaker 1: skin in a rubbish scab or puss from an infect
Speaker 1: smallpox patient on the exposed wound. In other words, it
Speaker 1: means giving you smallpox, making you sick on purpose. Smallpox
Speaker 1: kills roughly one out of every three people it infects
Speaker 1: at the time, and you're paying someone to give it
Speaker 1: to you. Smallpox inoculation is a sort of ad hoc
Speaker 1: predecessor to vaccination. In a roundabout way, it's the beginning
Speaker 1: of one of humankind's greatest achievements, the ability to protect
Speaker 1: from disease. But it's a young procedure. There are no
Speaker 1: clinical studies and trials, no quality controls and production, no
Speaker 1: regulatory approvals or any other modern safety checks. By the
Speaker 1: time Robert Junior finishes his apprenticeship, innoculation has been performed
Speaker 1: in England and the American colonies for at least thirty years,
Speaker 1: and in Turkey, India, and China for many decades more.
Speaker 1: But in the mid seventeen hundreds, innoculation is still a
Speaker 1: serious risk for each individual patient and for Robert Sutton Junior,
Speaker 1: the soon to be country surgeon, it's not gonna go well.
Speaker 1: Over the past fifty years, we've seen many new diseases
Speaker 1: emerge Ebola, hive swine flu zeka, to name just a few,
Speaker 1: but there haven't been any truly planet wide pandemics until now. Now,
Speaker 1: a virus first scene in China can be in Washington
Speaker 1: in a matter of days, and driven by this pandemic,
Speaker 1: one completely unprecedented in our lifetime, a virus that has
Speaker 1: killed our neighbors, our friends, our families. We have been
Speaker 1: witnesses to a massive international effort to create vaccines and
Speaker 1: get jabs in arms. On this episode of Long Shot,
Speaker 1: We're going to speak to a human guinea pig, one
Speaker 1: of the first people on earth to get a COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccine, and we'll hear more about the predecessors to
Speaker 1: today's vaccine makers, the first big inoculation entrepreneurs who made
Speaker 1: a killing, preventing killing two hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 1: We know the ruined the pandemic has brought to lives, relationships,
Speaker 1: and economies on a global scale. Vaccines have instituted a
Speaker 1: real time revival for me and for millions. I want
Speaker 1: to know what went into these vaccines, not just the
Speaker 1: physical ingredients, but the historical ingredients. So I'm tracing the
Speaker 1: story of vaccines to their very beginning and bringing it
Speaker 1: back to today from my Heart Radio and School of Humans.
Speaker 1: I'm Sean Revived and this is long shot, a two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty year journey to the COVID nineteen vaccines.
Speaker 1: I can't handle needles at all. So when I have
Speaker 1: to get, you know, just a tiny bit of blood
Speaker 1: taken for like, you know, a yearly physical or something,
Speaker 1: I am the person who you know, has to start
Speaker 1: working on my breathing as I wind up having to
Speaker 1: put my head between my knees. Then I have to
Speaker 1: lay down. It's twenty twenty one, so we're speaking over zoom,
Speaker 1: so of course it kind of sus Sorry, can you
Speaker 1: give me just one more minute? I'm sorry, my printer
Speaker 1: was just acting a little funny. No problem, I'm really
Speaker 1: nice to meet you. Can you say your name again? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Nicola Pascarelli. Exactly a year earlier, Nicola is led
Speaker 1: into a windowless room with cream walls at the Hope
Speaker 1: Clinic at Emory University in Atlanta. She sits on an
Speaker 1: exam table covered in that paper that crinkles with any movement.
Speaker 1: By this time, Nicola's nurse already knows how nervous she is.
Speaker 1: I get this fear of needles from my dad. He
Speaker 1: once went to a safety class for his work, and
Speaker 1: there was like some I think it was you know
Speaker 1: the importance of wearing safety goggles video and he wound
Speaker 1: up feeling white headed after watching the video, so he
Speaker 1: went off to the bathroom to like compose himself and
Speaker 1: wound up passing out, hitting his head on the toilet,
Speaker 1: and they found him in a pool of blood. That is,
Speaker 1: you know my family line that I come from. Next
Speaker 1: to the table is a wheeled cart that holds one
Speaker 1: of those rubber tubes so they tie around your arm
Speaker 1: to help find a vein, and eighteen glass vials ready
Speaker 1: to be filled with Niccola's blood. And I just kept
Speaker 1: counting and being like, eighteen, hold on, count again, it
Speaker 1: can't be eighteen. That's verty too many. Like I don't
Speaker 1: have eighteen vials of blood in me. That's what really
Speaker 1: Like that made me a moozy. Just every time I
Speaker 1: looked over at the table, I was like, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: she's about to be one of the first people in
Speaker 1: the world to get them maderna vaccine. Though it's believed
Speaker 1: the formula is safe, it's still a risky move for Nicola.
Speaker 1: This type of vaccine is made with a strand of
Speaker 1: messenger rabu nucleic acid or mRNA surrounded by a fatty
Speaker 1: lipid nanoparticle bubble. No vaccine of this kind has ever
Speaker 1: been approved by the FDA. Ever, it's brand spanking new,
Speaker 1: and it's about to be injected into her body. Throughout
Speaker 1: the history of vaccines, going back centuries, there have been
Speaker 1: test subjects, guinea pigs, the first people to get the
Speaker 1: first shots. Not all of them have been willing participants,
Speaker 1: like Nicola, who knows exactly what she is getting into.
Speaker 1: Nicola has been chosen because she's young and has a
Speaker 1: clean medical history without any worrisome conditions. She is, as
Speaker 1: her nurse tells me, the healthiest of the healthy. She's
Speaker 1: passed a detailed physical and filled out questionnaires about her health, medications,
Speaker 1: and lifestyle. She's had her temperature and blood pressure checked
Speaker 1: over and over again. She's been assured she can drop
Speaker 1: out of the trial at any time. Despite her needle
Speaker 1: phobia and in all but genetically inherited fear of seeing
Speaker 1: her own blood, She's volunteered for this. You've already started this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just ask you straight up, what was your
Speaker 1: motivation for joining the trial? Initially just fear and helplessness
Speaker 1: like I felt like I needed to to do something.
Speaker 1: Um I felt very small and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of, you know, I felt. This
Speaker 1: is March twenty twenty, a couple of weeks after the
Speaker 1: entire country has shut down practically overnight. Tom Hanks has
Speaker 1: announced he has COVID. The NBA has canceled all games
Speaker 1: indefinitely after a member of the Utah Jazz tested positive.
Speaker 1: Soon after that, schools are shutting down, offices are closing.
Speaker 1: Ppe is suddenly hard to find. Nobody knows how long
Speaker 1: this is gonna last. Things have just gotten really real
Speaker 1: in the US for everyone, including Nicola. You know, rushed
Speaker 1: to the grocery store like every single other person, and
Speaker 1: you know, the meat sections where empty, and that just
Speaker 1: kind of that was a little eerie to see. I've
Speaker 1: never been in a situation going to a grocery store
Speaker 1: that's always you know, completely stopped to realize, Wow, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't even buy ground beef. I can't buy even
Speaker 1: cuts of beef that I don't want. There's nothing here.
Speaker 1: You know, that was when it really started to sink in.
Speaker 1: But at that point I still thought, this is just
Speaker 1: two weeks. You know, we're being crazy for two weeks
Speaker 1: and then it's going to be over and everything's gonna
Speaker 1: be fine, And all of a sudden, I just felt
Speaker 1: like everything was closed off, and I didn't like that feeling.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, what can I do to get
Speaker 1: everything to return back to normal as soon as possible?
Speaker 1: What can I do? What can I do to make
Speaker 1: things better? Because I felt just so hopeless. NICOLEA here's
Speaker 1: about the phase one trial on Facebook from a friend
Speaker 1: who works at Emory and signs up. The first phase
Speaker 1: of a clinical drug trial is when the drug, in
Speaker 1: this case, a vaccine, is first given to humans, generally
Speaker 1: after lab studies and testing in animals. Nicola will be
Speaker 1: one of the first forty five or so people in
Speaker 1: the world to get a COVID vaccine. It's kind of
Speaker 1: shocking to think that while most of us in the
Speaker 1: US are just starting to feel the impacts of coronavirus
Speaker 1: on our lives, not only has a vaccine already been created,
Speaker 1: but a clinical trial is already underway. This is eight
Speaker 1: months before the FDA will approve any vaccine for the
Speaker 1: general public. At this time, many experts are still wondering
Speaker 1: if it's even possible to get an effective vaccine produced
Speaker 1: in a year's time, much less three months. For the
Speaker 1: Phase one trial, the researchers at Emery are mostly interested
Speaker 1: in dosage and safety. The vaccine has already been tested
Speaker 1: in mice, but this is the first time they're testing
Speaker 1: it in people. They want to know the amount to
Speaker 1: give an adult so that elicits a strong antibody response
Speaker 1: without causing overly harsh side effects. Nicola is one of
Speaker 1: the participants slated to get the highest dosage to fifty
Speaker 1: micrograms of vaccine. That's only two hundred and fifty millions
Speaker 1: of a gram, but it's ten times higher than the
Speaker 1: lowest dosage group. It's a lot of vaccine. I remember
Speaker 1: the day that I went in for the vaccine. At
Speaker 1: that point, I was all excited. I put on makeup
Speaker 1: and I had, you know, mascara and stuff on, and
Speaker 1: I had my face mask on. And in the time
Speaker 1: that I had to sit there and wait for the
Speaker 1: vaccine to be ready, because they have to defrost it
Speaker 1: and then mix it all up and get it all prepared,
Speaker 1: I got so progressively more nervous about the needle itself
Speaker 1: that I was sweating so badly that my mascara had
Speaker 1: gone all the way down my face. My mask was
Speaker 1: all black on top, my hair got frizzy. That was
Speaker 1: I remember just being so distinctly worried about I have
Speaker 1: volunteered for this trial and what if they give me
Speaker 1: the vaccine and I pass out, Like they're going to
Speaker 1: kick me out of this study. I think maybe I
Speaker 1: once had this like momentary, you know, Okay, I'm in
Speaker 1: phase one, like I am one of fifteen people getting
Speaker 1: the highest dosage that no one else in this country,
Speaker 1: in this world has ever gotten. And I think for
Speaker 1: a moment I thought, oh god, it might crazy, like
Speaker 1: could I die? And then I was like, no, it's fine.
Speaker 1: Modern medicine is great. Like, you know, I think I
Speaker 1: had that one moment and then I didn't let myself.
Speaker 1: I just remember thinking, do not pass out, Do not
Speaker 1: pass out. The Maderna Phase one trial is a big deal.
Speaker 1: The first humans are getting shots of a vaccine meant
Speaker 1: to protect them against the novel coronavirus. Though by this
Speaker 1: point there are more than a hundred coronavirus vaccines in
Speaker 1: the works, Madernos is the furthest along even with billions
Speaker 1: of dollars at stake in the race for a vaccine,
Speaker 1: it seems like a minor miracle to already be jabbing
Speaker 1: it in humans. Historically, vaccine development has taken years, if
Speaker 1: not decades, to get to phase one, and before clinical
Speaker 1: trials were even practice in any real signific sense, inoculation
Speaker 1: was more about improvisation. It was more art than science.
Speaker 1: That is until the Sutton family came along. It's seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty four in Suffolk, England, and a disease called smallpox
Speaker 1: is a recurring terror in the lives of the English
Speaker 1: and people around the world. It's been that way as
Speaker 1: long as anyone can remember. One hundred miles away in London,
Speaker 1: just about everyone gets smallpox at some point in their lives.
Speaker 1: A lot of people die, succumbing to the fevered delirium
Speaker 1: and hemorrhaging. It's an ugly and tortuous disease. The morepox
Speaker 1: you get, the worse off you are. Five hundred is
Speaker 1: considered a lucky break. Sometimes they number in a thousands,
Speaker 1: completely consuming the skin. Swelling can be so severe that
Speaker 1: patients can't see or swallow. An eighteenth century writer describes
Speaker 1: smallpox patients as creatures flayed. Still, most people who get
Speaker 1: smallpox live, though forever scarred, they're also protected for the
Speaker 1: rest of their lives. A bit like lightning. In one sense,
Speaker 1: smallpox does not strike the same person twice. Wealthy families
Speaker 1: seeking caretakers for their children examine the skin of potential employees.
Speaker 1: It's too risky to hire someone who has never had
Speaker 1: the pox. In a way, it's reverse discrimination. Show your scars,
Speaker 1: get the job. For hundreds of years, smallpox kills and
Speaker 1: kills and kills in England. When Elizabeth the First dies
Speaker 1: in sixteen oh three, the Stewarts take over the royal family.
Speaker 1: Over sixty years time, they lose three potential rulers to
Speaker 1: the pox. In sixteen ninety four, Queen Mary the Second
Speaker 1: dies of smallpox. The future of the Empire is altered
Speaker 1: over and over by the disease. Smallpox does not care
Speaker 1: how much gold you have. It is a part of
Speaker 1: life for all rich and poor, urban and rule. Every
Speaker 1: once in a while, a smallpox plague comes to town.
Speaker 1: It's the way it is. But around the time that
Speaker 1: Robert Sutton Senior is ten years old, inoculation comes to England,
Speaker 1: and by the time his own son, Robert Junior is
Speaker 1: ready to be a country surgeon himself. Inoculation is a
Speaker 1: somewhat normal, if still hotly debated, totally unregulated, and frankly
Speaker 1: wild practice. Inoculators travel around and making incisions in people's
Speaker 1: arms and rubbing in live smallpox virus pus really collected
Speaker 1: from the pox of infected patients. The idea is that
Speaker 1: if you infect a person with a small amount of
Speaker 1: smallpox on purpose, they will get a little sick, not
Speaker 1: very sick, not die covered in hideous pustules that scar
Speaker 1: them for life. They will not only recover, but be
Speaker 1: protected from further smallpox bouts and live unafraid of the disease.
Speaker 1: What's craziest of all is it usually works to protect
Speaker 1: yourself from a lot of virus, give yourself a little
Speaker 1: of it. That's inoculation. Robert Junior knows that he can't
Speaker 1: be a country surgeon without being protected from a smallpox.
Speaker 1: He will eventually come into contact with an infected patient,
Speaker 1: but innoculation is not the Sutton's business, so they hire
Speaker 1: a neighbor and innoculator. Robert Junior's arm is cut open
Speaker 1: and a bit of a smallpox matter rubbed into it,
Speaker 1: but the procedure goes wrong. Maybe the cut gets infected.
Speaker 1: Maybe the innoculator infects him with too much virus, giving
Speaker 1: Robert Junior a full blown smallpox. Robert Junior nearly dies.
Speaker 1: His father is devastated. Robert the elder witnesses the failure
Speaker 1: of his son's inoculation and sees opportunity. He knows that
Speaker 1: some innoculations work perfectly. The patient gets a mild sickness
Speaker 1: a few pustules near the wound, and recovers. But some
Speaker 1: go badly, as it did with Robert the Younger, and
Speaker 1: the patient gets very sick. Precisely what innoculation is supposed
Speaker 1: to prevent. Robert Senior thinks over the many inoculation methods.
Speaker 1: Deep cuts through the entire thickness of the skin, shallow
Speaker 1: cuts that barely draw blood, insertions of thread dipped in
Speaker 1: smallpox matter, rubbing of a scab from a smallpox infected patient.
Speaker 1: He settles on a minimalist approach, an older method that
Speaker 1: is somehow lost favor. He takes a small surgical knife,
Speaker 1: dips it in smallpox matter, holds it at a slight
Speaker 1: angle to the arm of his patient, and sticks it
Speaker 1: only a millimeter into the skin, just deep enough to
Speaker 1: draw the smallest amount of blood and get smallpox into
Speaker 1: the body. It works. Robert Sutton Junior turns his discovery
Speaker 1: into an enterprise. He opens it innoculation house and advertises
Speaker 1: his services in the local newspaper. Gentlemen and Ladies, he writes,
Speaker 1: will be prepared, innoculated, boarded, and nursed. Fish and wine
Speaker 1: are included for only seven guineas. Farmers get Tea and
Speaker 1: Mutton with their innoculation for five guineas. And for the
Speaker 1: benefit of the meaner sort, the poor folks, the price
Speaker 1: is just three guineas, including a month's boarding for the
Speaker 1: recovery period. If you can board yourself while recovering, it's
Speaker 1: just half a guinea. For the pleasure of the knife.
Speaker 1: Word travels fast. Six months later, Robert Senior opens a
Speaker 1: second inoculation house, and in another six months a third.
Speaker 1: Soon he's got agents in sixteen towns convincing folks to
Speaker 1: get inoculated. Robert Sutton Senior's other son, Daniel, is an
Speaker 1: even better business man than his dad. He cuts the
Speaker 1: time required for innoculation preparation, allows patients to spend time
Speaker 1: outdoors after the procedure, rather than his father's preferred method
Speaker 1: of indoor confinement, and he lowers the price. Then Daniel
Speaker 1: uses one of the most effective mediums of his day,
Speaker 1: the pulpit, and hires that fiery Reverend Holton from a
Speaker 1: local church to help market the great Satonian system, which
Speaker 1: brings us back to that passionate sermon in October seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty six, held in Daniel Sutton's private chapel. This sickness,
Speaker 1: as caused by inoculation, is not unto death, the ravages
Speaker 1: of the smallpox. It's spreading. Infection and fatality strike with terra.
Speaker 1: No one is secure for infection rides on the wings
Speaker 1: of the wind, and the air is incorporated with malignant vapor.
Speaker 1: The danger the fatality of the smallpox, when received by
Speaker 1: natural infection, clearly evinces the efficacy and safety of inoculation.
Speaker 1: What does inoculation mean more than self preservation? The fire
Speaker 1: and brimstone delivery works on the back of the preacher's words.
Speaker 1: The Suttons become the standard bearers for inoculation. They franchise
Speaker 1: the Setonian system. Anyone who pays one hundred pounds can
Speaker 1: inoculate under their name. Their services spread around England and
Speaker 1: as far as France. Canada and the American colonies. The
Speaker 1: method works. Very few of the thousands of people inoculated die,
Speaker 1: compared to the thirty percent of smallpox patients who end
Speaker 1: up in the grave. It's also so easy that anyone
Speaker 1: can do it. You don't need to be a doctor,
Speaker 1: even by the standards of doctors back in the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: All you need is a night smallpox matter from an
Speaker 1: infective patient and an arm to jab it into The
Speaker 1: Suttons are not the first inoculators, far from it, but
Speaker 1: they may be the first to turn it into big business,
Speaker 1: to draw mass competition for arms to inject. The Setonian
Speaker 1: system of innoculation becomes so popular that copycats are inevitable inoculators,
Speaker 1: selling the Sutton name and method without sharing the profit.
Speaker 1: One of their rivals is a doctor named Thomas Dimsdale,
Speaker 1: who learns of the Setonian method of inoculation, sees that
Speaker 1: it works better than his own method, and embraces it himself,
Speaker 1: albeit without paying a fee to the Suttons. Dimmesdale is
Speaker 1: older than the upstart Daniel Sutton, his Uppercruss family, his
Speaker 1: own land in Essex. For centuries. He's got a reputation
Speaker 1: as an inoculator and physician. He even writes a book
Speaker 1: on his co opted innoculation method. The book spreads his
Speaker 1: reputation throughout Europe, lending him in the court of Russian
Speaker 1: Empress Catherine the Great. Dimmesdale earns fame and fortune on
Speaker 1: the back of the country bred Sutton family, whose contributions
Speaker 1: are all but forgotten. By the end of the century.
Speaker 1: He's named a baron of the Russian Empire and is
Speaker 1: spoken about all over London. The wealthy want to be
Speaker 1: inoculated using the Setonian method, but Dimmesdale offers the comfort
Speaker 1: of being a peer of his upper class patients. Two
Speaker 1: businesses selling the same life saving innoculation, Dimmesdale's and the Suttons,
Speaker 1: with many other innoculators on their tails, a battle to
Speaker 1: jab the most arms, make the most money, and protect
Speaker 1: the most lives. It sounds familiar. What inestimable advantages do
Speaker 1: the public reap from innoculation? Tis most certainly a happy discovery,
Speaker 1: a blessing of the most weighty concern to this kingdom,
Speaker 1: whose strength, happiness, and fecundity consist principally in the number
Speaker 1: of its inhabitants. The promoting of the practice of innoculation
Speaker 1: is therefore consistent with our best policy, and should be
Speaker 1: encouraged as much as possible. All all are saved by innoculation,
Speaker 1: but thousands, through neglect of it, are every year cut
Speaker 1: off in the prime of youth and manhood. Let any
Speaker 1: man seriously reflect what an immense loss this must naturally
Speaker 1: be to the nation. Despite the aristocratic competition, the Suttons
Speaker 1: become rich. In seventeen sixty five alone, Daniel Sutton inoculates
Speaker 1: more than four thousand people and earns the equivalent of
Speaker 1: more than a million dollars today. A couple of years later,
Speaker 1: the Suttons inoculate fifty five thousand people. They travel the
Speaker 1: English countryside inoculating entire towns. It was explosive. There were
Speaker 1: religious all over the country that adopted the Setonian system.
Speaker 1: By seventeen sixty seven he had fifty partners. Somebody in Virginia,
Speaker 1: there was somebody else in Canada. They were scattered all
Speaker 1: over the country and they advertised themselves as practicing the
Speaker 1: Setonian method. That's Arthur Boylston, an American pathologist. He went
Speaker 1: to Harvard Med School in the sixties and then came
Speaker 1: to the UK for what was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: three year grand period back in nineteen seventy two, and
Speaker 1: I married my boss's secretary and I'm still here. For
Speaker 1: a few decades, he was a professor in London and Leeds.
Speaker 1: Now he's mostly retired, though he's a senior teaching fellow
Speaker 1: in the Department of Pathology at Oxford University, and I'm
Speaker 1: a governor of the Oxford University Hospitals. The rest of
Speaker 1: the time, putter in the garden. You have become British. Okay, very,
Speaker 1: it's been a long time. Twenty five years ago, Arthur
Speaker 1: Boylston fell down in innoculation rabbit hole and he began
Speaker 1: scouring archives for records of the first inoculators, not just
Speaker 1: in North America, but also in England. Once I've discovered
Speaker 1: what inoculation was, I wanted to see how it had developed,
Speaker 1: because it's been almost completely forgotten even in the history
Speaker 1: of medicine. He ended up writing a book about innoculation
Speaker 1: called Defying Providence. Boyleston's research helped resurface the story of
Speaker 1: the Sutton's as innoculation pioneers, and he became convinced that
Speaker 1: in the story of vaccines and of the history of
Speaker 1: the United States. The innoculators have been overlooked. More I
Speaker 1: looked into anoculation, the more interesting. In God, it's the
Speaker 1: reason the United States exists, it's the reason Canada isn't
Speaker 1: part of the United States. We'll get into those claims
Speaker 1: in later episodes, and then ultimately the most interesting thing
Speaker 1: I think for most people is finding how Jenner really
Speaker 1: learned about Copas Boylston is talking about Edward Jenner, a
Speaker 1: doctor living in Gloucestershire, England, at the same time as
Speaker 1: the Suttons. Here's his story. As a thirteen year old
Speaker 1: boy and already an apprentice to a country doctor, Jenner
Speaker 1: met a milkmaid with a lovely, unscarred complexion. She told
Speaker 1: them she would never get smallpox because she had had
Speaker 1: cow pox. Apparently it was common country knowledge that having
Speaker 1: the latter meant protection from the former. Later, Jenner studies
Speaker 1: under a surgeon named John Hunter, whose catchphrases why think
Speaker 1: do the experiment? Jenner listens. When he becomes a doctor himself,
Speaker 1: the story of the beautiful milkmaid returns to Jenner. He
Speaker 1: does the experiment by exposing people to a small amount
Speaker 1: of cow pox and seeing if they develop immunity to smallpox.
Speaker 1: They do. That's the myth behind the invention of the
Speaker 1: world's first vaccine and the origin of the word. The
Speaker 1: Latin word for cow is vacca and the Latin word
Speaker 1: for cowpox is vaccinia. Jenner called his process vaccination. He
Speaker 1: would become known as the father of immunology, and Jenner
Speaker 1: is undoubtedly one of the most important scientists of any time.
Speaker 1: There's just one problem with this wholesome origin story. But
Speaker 1: it's not true. It's made up. Okay, here's what really
Speaker 1: happened with Jenner. As the Sutton's expanded the reach of
Speaker 1: their innoculation business, one of the many partners they took
Speaker 1: on was John Fuster, a doctor who opened an innoculation
Speaker 1: house in the town of Buckover. In Buckover, Fuster found
Speaker 1: that some patients who came in failed to get inoculated.
Speaker 1: That is, these unsuccessful patients showed no smallpox symptoms whatsoever,
Speaker 1: a sign that the inoculation hadn't taken They wouldn't get
Speaker 1: sick at all and would have no pustules show on
Speaker 1: their skin near the site of the jab. One farmer
Speaker 1: came in times for innoculation and had failed every time.
Speaker 1: The farmer had never had smallpox, but he told Fuster
Speaker 1: he had suffered a similar disease he called cow pox,
Speaker 1: which he literally caught from his cows. The cowpox had
Speaker 1: given him temporary immunity to smallpox. Fuster told this story
Speaker 1: of the farmer during a meeting of his local medical
Speaker 1: society in seventeen sixty eight. The society met at an
Speaker 1: inn called the Ship. At that time, Edward Jenner was
Speaker 1: only nineteen and an apprentice to a surgeon who happened
Speaker 1: to be a member of the very same medical society.
Speaker 1: Boylston believes the true origin of vaccination begins there at
Speaker 1: the inn. That Jenner learned of cowpox's power against smallpox
Speaker 1: via Fuster, not the milkmaid, and that means the work
Speaker 1: of the Suttons led directly to the first vaccine. Without
Speaker 1: the innoculators, which led to the discovery of vaccines, Nicola
Speaker 1: Pascarelli might not be getting her Phase one shot in
Speaker 1: April twenty twenty. I managed to make it through and
Speaker 1: it was a very smooth process. And I remember afterwards,
Speaker 1: you know, they wanted me to stay to observe me
Speaker 1: for a while after the vaccine, and you know, it
Speaker 1: was still just like getting used to the whole new
Speaker 1: change in the world. Four weeks after the first shot,
Speaker 1: Nicola gets the second. She has some minor side effects,
Speaker 1: but nothing too bad. She hears the results of the
Speaker 1: Majerna Phase one trial just like everyone else on the news. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: the funny thing is is my friend Jess who got
Speaker 1: me involved in the study in the first place. She
Speaker 1: is much more of an early riser than I am.
Speaker 1: So I woke up one morning to like, oh, my gosh,
Speaker 1: you know, the study has been published in a scientific journal,
Speaker 1: and like, look at the result. It's an incredible success.
Speaker 1: All of the participants show immune responses from the vaccines,
Speaker 1: and no big safety concerns are identified. I feel a
Speaker 1: lot of responsibility for my dissipation in it. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to read about the modernist
Speaker 1: study and these huge newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that, you know, and be like
Speaker 1: that's me, Like that's me in there, Like that wasn't
Speaker 1: really exciting, and no, efficacy isn't the focus of this trial.
Speaker 1: The results on that front are also very promising, but
Speaker 1: maybe most promising of all for Nicola. She doesn't pass
Speaker 1: out Nicola got her first shot in April twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: just over three months after the genetic sequence of coronavirus
Speaker 1: was posted online. On the next episode of Long Shot,
Speaker 1: we'll hear from a guy who spent twenty six years
Speaker 1: creating a single vaccine, and we'll speak with a woman
Speaker 1: who has a vaccine made from her own cells. But
Speaker 1: before we finished this episode, let's go back to the
Speaker 1: Sutton's hired preacher. There ordained Megaphone, his sermon two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years ago could be describing today. The danger,
Speaker 1: on one hand, is manifestly great. The extreme safety, on
Speaker 1: the other, is experimentally proved and universally known. There, death
Speaker 1: triumphantly walks the streets, seeking whom he may devour. Here
Speaker 1: he has banished from our habitations and deprived of all
Speaker 1: power to approach and hurt us. Let us not meanly
Speaker 1: and cowardly submit to death, when we have disarmed him
Speaker 1: of his sting and obtain this victory over the grave.
Speaker 1: This is the means, this is the way for our escape.
Speaker 1: Reason directs us to it. Experience proves the utility and safety.
Speaker 1: Men by the light of providence, I'll presume to say,
Speaker 1: have discovered inoculation and brought it to its greatest perfection,
Speaker 1: so great indeed, as to repel and subdue every dangerous symptom,
Speaker 1: and to have gained the most complete victory over this
Speaker 1: dreadful enemy of life, so that we may exclaim, in
Speaker 1: the language of Scripture, we triumph over death. This sickness,
Speaker 1: as caused by innoculation, is not unto death. This sickness
Speaker 1: is not unto death. Today's episode was produced, written and
Speaker 1: narrated by me Sean Revivee. A co producer is Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1: Juda Andrews is our fiery British preacher. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and L. C. Crowley. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Noel Brown and iHeartRadio, Nadine Rufael and Mary Bauer
Speaker 1: at the Hope Clinic Virginia and Joe Pascarelli and Doris Green.
Speaker 1: Long shot was scored by Jason Shannon. The score was
Speaker 1: mixed by Vic Stafford, Sound designed and audio mixed by
Speaker 1: Harper Harris with Tuonewelders School of Humans