Edward Jenner and Medical Ethics

[John Savard]

The story of Edward Jenner and the invention of the smallpox vaccine
is well known.
How he first vaccinated a young boy with cowpox, and then subsequently
exposed that boy to smallpox to prove it worked.
This, of course, looks like a rather egregious breach of medical ethics
of a sort that would not be tolerated these days.

However, I came across _this_ video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWT2mWf0ULY

It's about the Ukrainian doctor who was responsible for the project to
eradicate smallpox globally.
From this video, I learned that the process of _variolation_ was well-known,
and in common use, in Europe for several years prior to Edward Jenner.
Thus, it is at least *possible* that the test subject in question was, after
vaccination, merely exposed to an attenuated dose of smallpox, one
appropriate to the procedure of variolation - and the absence of the brief
period of mild illness associated with _that_ was how he determined that
vaccination worked.

John Savard