A SUPREME COURT OF SCIENCE 397 



against a danger which is probably little greater than the danger of 

 being struck by lightning. How these laws came upon the statute, 

 books, anti-vaccinationists explain by citing illustrations of activity on 

 the part of the lobbyists maintained by the virus makers. They say 

 school children are being vaccinated to sell virus. Now this move- 

 ment is costing a large amount of money. This society feels that pres- 

 sure must be brought to bear on legislatures throughout the United 

 States in order to modify the laws. These laws rest on the implied 

 scientific knowledge that vaccination is efficacious in a degree sufficient 

 to justify a wholesale application of the remedy to the people, and that 

 the danger of smallpox is sufficient to justify the application and 

 that no other remedy is available against the danger so desirable as the 

 remedy called for by the compulsory vaccination laws. 



We should remember that these laws were made by legislatures of 

 states, and that the legislatures passed the laws on the recommenda- 

 tions of committees composed of men of average intelligence who could 

 not have had scientific knowledge of the issue without expert testi- 

 mony. Now, such laws as these are apt to be passed without careful 

 consideration, and it is doubtful whether this scientific knowledge has 

 been sufficiently determined. We must as scientists differentiate between 

 traditional scientific knowledge and scientific knowledge based on evi- 

 dence which is conclusive enough to stand the test of a court of science. 

 Who would not like to see a case brought against the custom of 

 vaccination in a supreme court of science before a grand jury consist- 

 ing of twenty-five scientific and engineering experts drawn from the 

 various walks of the scientific professions. Let such a case be argued 

 by legal counsel and all evidence introduced by experts on both sides 

 be subject to cross examination. In a comparatively short time and at a 

 relatively small expense, society would be in a position to know whether 

 in the judgment of a jury of impartial experts trained to the weighing 

 of real scientific facts, the evidence justified the position that vaccina- 

 tion is clearly efficacious to a degree sufficient to justify a wholesale 

 vaccination of little children in the schools throughout the country, and 

 even if efficacious in such degree whether the danger of smallpox is 

 sufficient to justify the application of the precaution, and further that 

 no other remedy, less dangerous and less costly or more efficacious ex- 

 ists, such, for instance, as effective quarantine, which is considered by 

 the anti-vaccinationists to be the more desirable. In such a way, this 

 question, which has disturbed us for forty years or more and will 

 furnish a running agitation for a decade or two longer in all probabil- 

 ity, could be settled once for all with dispatch. 



Before such a court of science, all interested parties could appear 

 with experts; on the one side the virus manufacturers, the physicians 



